Quote:
Originally Posted by OMG!WTF!
I'm not sure that's a real comparison though. Whatever they might pay for their lot, it would have to include shares of the common lands in and around the park. That's going to require a condo corp with shares that they'd be required to purchase and maintain. Whereas your house is its own entity, these lots are not and that brings up significant differences.
The difference between a lot where you live and a much smaller lot in that park is huge. You can never build a house on the exact lot someone would theoretically buy for 55k. You'd need about three of them to amount to anything of any value for any developer. You can see this occasionally in Calgary neighborhood where a house is 25-50% less than the other houses in the area and then you look at the lot. It's chopped up and totally impossible to do anything with.
Financing for a serviced lot is much different than financing a developed lot with a house. The infrastructure in the park is in no way adequate for a development to take place so you'd essentially be financing bare land. The down payment might be 35% though more likely 50% and the rates might be prime plus 3%. Your house is essentially 100% liquid.
And similar to the really out to lunch argument that someone would have begun a law suit if there were anything illegal going on here, asking people who can afford to own and live in a mobile home to come up with tens of thousands to buy something that would require a significant and sophisticated further investment is kind of dumb. Try rounding up ten of your favorite neighbors and start talking about development. Or sit in on a condo board meeting.
|
Some of what you are talking about is fair - except that one. The lots in the park are pretty close to the minimum lot size in the rest of the city - 25 feet wide, check it out. Lot depth is also fairly similar to the rest of the city, especially in the inner city, which is comparable in location to the Midfield park. At most, you would need two lots to build one house. That's 110k, plus 70k for infrastructure, to buy a lot worth 300k, minimum. Sounds like a great deal to me. Even if you needed 4 lots to buy one house, now all of a sudden you are dealing with a MUCH larger lot, and therefore a much larger house, and a much larger value. With the view on the North and East end, there isn't a scenario I could imagine where if these people were able to buy the land themselves, it wouldn't still become at minimum high end housing in 5-20 years. It's just too lucrative. Heck, that corner lot that is currently being used to store small trailers is alone worth a cool million, if it wasn't in a trailer park.