Charlottesville Virginia Real Estate

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.

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?

The DailyProgress has a story today about how Eco-friendly homes are the hot new thing.  The idea is to use less pollutant and more sustainable (easily replacable by the earth) materials when building a home.  There are three major development projects in Central Virginia underway that the article mentions that will use these principles:

The Belvedere project off East Rio Road in Albemarle County will eventually be a community of 700 homes that are certified as energy efficient. The developer, Stonehaus, broke ground on the project May 10.

South of Charlottesville, in North Garden, a 2,300-acre property called Bundoran Farm is being developed into an environmentally friendly community, in which 90 percent of the land will be conserved.

And in Zion Crossroads in Louisa County, a Utah developer is planning a 650,000-square-foot outlet mall, with office, retail and restaurant space. The project will include green building aspects, including solar power, recycled building materials and preservation of the 119-acre site’s existing wetlands.

This is such a Charlottesville thing to do.  I wonder to what extent this is happening nationally?  When sustainablility gets cost neutral, that’s when these efforts will really start to make a difference.

At Yahoo News a local builder got a shout out this morning.  Building Homes For A Lifetime: Interest In Accessibility Is Rising mentions custom-home building Charlottesvillian Randy Rinehart and his practice of building accessible custom homes for the elderly.

That 10,500 Americans turn 55 every day is a fact not lost on Randy Rinehart, 60, a custom builder in Charlottesville, Va. “About half of the eight homes we build each year are for active adults,” he said. “It’s not unusual for these people to walk in and pay cash for a $2 million house.”

I wonder how some smalltown person building 8 houses a year get’s an expert mention in an out of town publication?  Kinda fun.

The DailyProgress.com has an exhaustive article today on the places29 plan.  It gives a good overview of transportation and development in the Charlottesville area (though the article is long and unfocused so you need to be pretty interested to make it all the way through).  The Places29 website is detailed with lots of maps.  Judy Wiegand, a county employee in community development oversees the site and the plan (I think) and has really done a great job getting info out there and keeping it fresh.

The images of what the U.S. 29 corridor in northern Albemarle County could look like in the next 20 years show a different world.

Electric lines vanish. New roads appear, giving drivers a way to avoid 29. Some commuters simply avoid the hassle by riding the bus. Walking is encouraged, because residents work, shop and play in coordinated communities.

Places29 lays out that vision, one very different from how many picture Albemarle’s U.S. 29 corridor today, as an 11-mile stretch of construction and congestion connecting the U.S. 250 Bypass to the Greene County line. Planners, however, envision an emerging community where residents can walk up, down and across U.S. 29 to take advantage of coffee shops, stores and restaurants, and where home is somewhere nearby.

Laid out in a series of colorful maps, Places29 suggests how land could be used during the next 20 years and proposes a road network to cope with the growth that county officials say is inevitable. The plan, now in draft form, is to be considered by the Board of Supervisors late this year. Places29 proposes a specific vision, one the board will ultimately mold and then decide whether to embrace or discard.

Some say it’s a vision that provides for development residents do not want, a blueprint for employment and housing that will only attract unwanted newcomers. Other residents and business owners say that Places29 looks great, but ask: Who will pay for it?

The plan has supporters and detractors. What most agree on is that the vision of Albemarle’s future is something the county must get right.

A pipe dream?

In some cases, tomorrow is already here.

Places29 envisions the development and redevelopment that planners say is bound to occur during the next several decades. Much new development is already under way in northern Albemarle.

Dotting the sides of the U.S. 29 corridor, construction can be seen popping up everywhere, and more is on the way. The National Ground Intelligence Center is set to expand by adding jobs and facilities; North Pointe, a 900-unit housing development that also includes plans for significant commercial space, has been approved; and Hollymead Town Center, a huge, multi-parcel retail, housing and mixed-use development, continues to expand.

Bill West fears his neighborhood will be consumed by cement.

“We don’t want to be designated a development area,” said West, who lives near Shopper’s World, echoing the sentiments of many residents. “We want to be a residential area.”

Lee Catlin, county spokeswoman, says that Places29 seeks to provide the best of both. Residents should think of Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall, she said, not just “high rises and concrete.” While Places29 envisions a retail corridor, the area would still be livable and offer a high quality of life, she said.

It’s a dream that won’t be realized with the Places29 plan, says Wendell Wood, a developer and large landowner in the area.

Wood says the county’s emphasis on “neighborhood centers,” as well as other land-use designations that include plans for smaller retail stores, is “instant bankruptcy.”

per the News Virginian (Move in and up), new apartments are opening this week in dfowntown Waynesboro above the history museum.  Waynesboro politicians have been trying for some time to revitalize the downtown district, and Lord knows it needs it (ever tried to go our for coffee or anything on a weeknight after 8?) A couple years ago, the city council passed a new ordinance allowing for residential apartments on floors 2 and up in the downtown commercial district.  The idea is to lure people downtown that was, establishing a base for businesses.  When the businesses can afford to open and stay open, more people will come down and the effect snowballs and amplifies.  Sounds great to me!

The museum project was overseen by the Redevelopment & Housing Authority, to get some apartments going.  So far, no new apartments have been made, but perhaps this will be the first of many.

This is outlined in the article well as follows:

Converting the often lesser-used second floors of downtown buildings is seen as another way of getting more feet on the street, an element critical to the district’s revitalization and encouraged by the city, which several years ago made second-floor housing a by-right property use for the otherwise commercial area.

New housing means new tenants whose presence downtown, it’s anticipated, will contribute to a livelier atmosphere and provide a built-in audience for neighborhood shops and restaurants.

Few building owners so far have latched onto the idea, but developers hope the museum project - a first for downtown - will inspire more to pursue it.

Per The Daily News Record, there is a really interesting zoning decision before the Rockingham County Board of Supervisors.  A company that owns Endless Caverns wishes to develop it into an RV park (the website already reads “Endless Caverns and RV Resort”) and is seeking a special use permit on the land zoned agricultural.  Near-by residents, as is their custom, oppose the plan.

The interesting bit is the news today that the Caverns owners hired a Private Investigator who claimed to be a professor and interviewed neighbors and the newspaper trying to find out who opposed the group.  Having that secret exposed isn’t going to win them much local goodwill.

The nearby residents are arguing (site & pdf overview) that there are environmental issues, traffic concerns, & neighborhood character concerns but their most promising angle is the zoning / land use one. “residents who oppose the expansion say they gave the county several documents supporting their claim that an RV resort is not a good use of land zoned general agriculture.”  That’s probably true.  Rockingham county has been really pushing development and incenting folks to bring in outside money, so depending on what the company intends, this may be unstoppable with the current board.

Stultz said she hopes to have a decision on the site plan by April 1. The Rockingham County Board of Supervisors will reconsider the special-use permit, which was tabled in December, whenever it’s ready, she said.

Per the Waynesboro News Virginian, some protected wetlands may be paved over to build some houses.  The county ruled against the developer (Countryside Investments) but they were given more time to come up with a better arguement.  Poor drainage and increased flooding are prime concerns for the project. In a shocking development, neighbors are opposed to the new construction.

A couple of facts I didn’t know:

• City officials cannot take the value of the wetlands themselves into consideration when evaluating development plans
• Permitting wetlands construction is a power left solely to state and federal authorities

So much for local control.

Per the DailyProgress Charlottesville assessments are up big this year, hitting poor neighborhoods particularly hard.  Here’s a chart of the percent increases:

Charlottesville tax districts with the highest and lowest percentage increases in existing housing assessments:
Top 5
1. Fifeville - 32 percent
2. Venable - 27 percent
3. Willoughby - 24 percent
4. Forest Hills - 22 percent
5. (tie) 10th & Page - 20 percent
5. (tie) Ridge Street - 20 percent
Bottom 5
1. University-Maury Hills - 0 percent
2. (tie) Towles-Merryden-Ivy Terrace - 3 percent
2. (tie) Azalea Gardens-Green Valley - 3 percent
4. 28 Holmes & North Avenue Area - 6 percent
5. Little High St./E. Jefferson St. - 7 percent

From the article:

The assessments of houses in Fifeville jumped 32 percent this year, the highest rate of any tax district in the city, following a 24 percent jump the prior year. Values of homes in the Ridge Street area spiked by 20 percent, compared with 8 percent the year before.

The average increase of existing residential home assessments in the city was 16.2 percent, with the typical Charlottesville house now worth approximately $280,000, said Roosevelt Barbour Jr., the city’s assessor.

Driving the demand for houses in these communities is the old real estate mantra of location, location, location. Situated halfway between UVa and the Downtown Mall, Fifeville and 10th and Page now draw young couples like the Pearsons who are attracted by easy access to the city’s main commercial center without the necessity of owning a car. 

I’ve been involved in Central Virginia real estate for more than a decade and the best time to buy has always been “a couple years ago”.  In hindsight that means NOW.  I’ve been more bearish lately on Charlottesville, feeling like things are as high as they can sustainably be right now.  The Staunton and Waynesboro markets seem to have more runway, in my opinion.  I’m not ready to say that a single family home in Charlottesville is a bad investment, but for investment property, I think greener fields lie elsewhere.

There does seem to be an oversupply of townhomes in Charlottesville, but those prices aren’t coming down like they are in other parts of the country.  I think the developers of the condos and the apartments-converted-into-condos in Cville are sufficiently diversified in the cash-cow that has been the Charlottesville real estate economy, that they’re neither willing nor needing to sell at bargain prices to cut their losses.  They’d just as soon double down.  The real opportunity in Charlottesville seems to be for people wanting to rent those condos.  When there’s oversupply in housing, even if the owners won’t sell at a loss, they still would rather lose money with low rent than eat the entire mortgage.  Empty apartments are expensive.