Charlottesville Virginia Real Estate

The analogy is kind of weird, but the sentiment is probably true in this DP article:

The In his most recent market report, Phillips likened the local real estate conditions to his recipe for pumpkin meatloaf — a dish defined by its disgusting clash of ingredients. “Like a good recipe, a good real-estate market is one that features a good balance of ingredients,” he wrote. “If you put in a little too much of one ingredient, the dish may not taste very good; however, if you put in way too much of that ingredient, the dish becomes unpalatable. The recipe for the Charlottesville area real-estate market has way too much of one ingredient — supply of homes for sale — and that has created an unbalanced recipe that is hard to swallow.”

A couple comments:

I’ve always found sellers are willing to come down a few grand - even in a tight market - except in the first week or so of the listing.

The best advice in the article was for sellers: “…be ready to walk away and go on to house No. 2.” That’s the key to getting the best deal, be it a primary dwelling or investment property.  Getting too invested emotionally before finalizing terms is usually expensive.  If your bluff gets called (and it is a bluff if you’re so invested that you can’t walk away) you either end up sad and discouraged or swallowing your pride and paying more that likely should.

The Daily Progress has an article about swelling fees for new sewer connections (Builders to see swell in fees | Charlottesville Daily Progress)  Here’s a quote:

In Albemarle, a developer or anyone building a new house needing sewer and water connections will pay $14,079, including other fees specific to Albemarle, starting Sept. 1. This year they paid $11,790. The city of Charlottesville’s fees are generally about $1,000 less for residential units, though the proposed fees, which would increase, have not yet been adopted by the City Council.

I have a couple thoughts:

First, while $14K is a lot of money, it is paid by the user.  I’m a fan of me not paying for someone else’s sewer.  It’s high but I guess it’s expensive to run a municipal sewer system.

Second: $14K is a ton of money… I had no idea.  I recently had estimates done for a septic system and it was between $2 and $6K depending on what kind.  And that’s pretty much a one time fee.  There is some periodic maintenance but very little.  And if you need to have a lagoon because of soil quality it’s unsightly.  But it’s way cheaper.  Even cheaper still I’d bet if you could share a larger system with a few neighbors (though people with septic tend to have far-off neighbors). 

I really liked the following from Keep land-use taxes in Albemarle:

Removing land-use tax does not pass the fairness and logic test.
A suburban acre supports two or three houses, which require education, police and fire services, while one unimproved rural acre requires none of those services and maintains the open space and beauty that all want.

To tax a farm, even a non-working one, the same as a city parcel IS illogical.  I don’t quite like the statement “that we all want” however.  True, no one is anti-beauty, I bet there are plenty of people that would prefer more development (assuming that translates into a larger supply of houses).

Re DP: The board cut two police officer positions from the proposed budget and took out money to hire fire personnel for a yet-to-be-built Pantops fire station. That means city and other volunteer fire stations will continue to respond to calls on Pantops, an area with an increasing population that has seen delays in emergency rescue services, officials have said.

I can’t understand how the county can fund arts projects but can’t fund fire protection.  That seems to me to be a fundamental promise of government.

I think this is probably a good compromise bill, but it seems pretty heavy handed:

Senate Bill 268 to the Local Government Committee, which voted 14-0 to approve the scaled-back compromise measure allowing the city to collect money from a developer in lieu of affordable housing units on or off the site of a high-density project.

Under the bill, the city could approve a rezoning or a special-use application for a high-density residential or residential and mixed-use project and collect money from the developer as a contribution to the city’s affordable housing fund.

The phrase “collect money from the developer” is code for “put an enormous tax on development to further drive up housing prices”.  It seems self-defeating to tax housing to get more money for affordable housing.  As I understand it, this bill applies to larger developments, so the tax – or mandatory payment from the developer for the privilege of doing business if you prefer — wouldn’t necessarily effect smaller, custom home builders.

I wish I’d found this dumpster (courtesy of the hook).

I found this interesting in the Daily Progress:

“If we’ve got money to spend, we’ve got to spend it on improving the development area, because that’s where we’re asking people to move,” Morris said. “We are also trying to discourage continual development in the rural areas. If you pave a road, people are going to use it.” 

It seems there are some wackos in our midst who think we should be DRIVING on our roads.

Libertarian state senate candidate Arin Sime got some great press in the Daily Progress today.  I love the libertarian positions on property rights and land use restrictions.  It’s fun to see a third party getting some attention.  The article is here and her website is here.

From LP.org:

Public Policy instruments including eminent domain, zoning laws, building codes, rent control, regional planning, property taxes, resource management and public health legislation remove property rights from owners and transfer them to the State, while raising costs of property ownership.

Biscuit Run now has all the approvals they need to go forward.  Love it or hate it, there is a need for more housing in the area and this will provide much of it.  According to the article in the DP, there was some positive public sentiment expressed at the meeting, which was a first.  I think I tend to skew pro-development, but I think this plan has really done an admirable job atempting to satisify its critics.

Charlottesville is such a difficult place to develop property in.  The DP has an article about Biscuit Run almost being ready.  The thing that gets me is that they had approval MONTHS ago but there are still zillions of hurdles.  I try to see both sides of these debates but I have a philosophical problem with people telling me what I can’t do with my own stuff.  The higher the hurdles are to development, the more expensive housing gets (I was already priced out of the market).  Only the very rich or powerful can afford to fight all the old coots raising a fuss, making the unequal income distribution in this community worse.  I don’t really know a solution.  I can appreciate people who look at NoVa and don’t want C’ville to turn into that, but there must be a better way.  Anyone?