I checked out their rents when they first listed. I get that there are folks in this world who light their Gurkha cigars with hundred dollar bills but who the fuck is dropping $17k/month for 1200 sqr feet? That shit is either insane or some sort of money laundering operation
More importantly, those who can afford it, don’t want to live at 5th and broadway. The core of Santa Monica’s might be fine for young professionals but nobody in mid life wants to be near the promenade and the freeway
exactly, those apps were $20k actually when they just opened, but knowing the location, and constant shenanigans at target right next to it - hell no! 700 broadway is unfortunately will be the next one to go bankrupt, their situation is even worse, right next to I-10 and boy oh boy all the shit is happening on that intersection
In order to get a loan, developers have had to proforma rents at a high level. At one point is was justifiable but as soon as all the units were built, those rents were no longer sustainable. Are all the new developments in the same boat? Or are some of the projects attaining full occupancy? I don't really follow Santa Monica real estate but I do drive past those buildings every day.
Most of the luxury buildings seem to have a lot of vacancies. They're offering progressively more generous lease incentives. Walking and riding past, a lot of the windows are empty. The ones on Lincoln and the Park also seem to be having issues attracting enough retail tenants to fill their spaces. It's why I really feel it's not so much about housing supply being scarce, but more *affordable* housing supply. If those units were priced at $2500 or $3000 for a 1br they'd be completely full right now I think.
To be clear, vacancies in a few ultra-high-end buildings do not negate the broader reality of extreme housing scarcity in santa monica.
The issue with these buildings is that they were financed assuming much higher rents, and once they’re built, cutting rents enough to fill them would reprice the entire asset and blow up the loan. So instead of prices adjusting, you get vacancies and incentives.
In other words: the rents aren’t high because that’s what the market wants, they’re high because the balance sheet won’t let them fall.
Break even price for a 1br unit in LA is $5k/mo due simply to runaway materials costs, labor shortages, permitting, and fees.
It's now literally impossible to build affordable units, and the luxury units can't take a 50% hit without collapsing. No big money lenders want to finance a project when half of the 1,000 new downtown units sit empty and the population has flatlined. The insane overhead on maintaining fancy amenities tanks the business model of these buildings further once vacancy breaks 20%, and we're far beyond that.
Plus, SM is broke and cannot afford to subsidize affordable units either.
Santa Monica and council's developer friends pivoted hard to luxury housing and extracting as much rent as possible pre-covid/riots, and that model died a gruesome death in 2020.
You’re right about one thing - at current land, materials, labor, permitting, financing, and operating costs, there’s a hard floor on what new units can rent for. That floor exists regardless of ideology, vacancy, or intent, and is above the fantasy “affordable” rate some people ask for.
But… once these economic incentives for the higher end of the market exist, you don’t need conspiracy theories about the city council or illuminati developers.
But if that is the case, then how does constructing more of it help in any way to ease the housing crisis? And how does one reconcile the idea that new supply cannot be affordable and break even, with the reality that it will not break even either if nobody rents it?
The "fantasy" of affordability is asking for rents that do not leave people severely rent burdened. Ideally that's 30% of their income, realistically perhaps less than 50%. 30% of income for someone making $100K before taxes is $2500/month. After taxes it's probably closer to 40% or more of their income. It's not even about low income people at this point.
I don’t mean that literally nobody can afford housing. The point is new housing is constantly expected to clear an unrealistic bar for affordability (“low income”).
FWIW I completely agree with you that these new luxury units are not fully doing their job. Ideally, their prices would keep dropping until the vacancy hit something reasonable like 5%. The thing that deserves scrutiny is the financing structure that prevents prices from adjusting, not the idea of building itself.
Not just financing, the actual construction industry in the US is cooked. Contractors are all aging out and CA alone is short 80,000 blue collar workers and rising. Plus the workforce for construction can't afford to live where housing needs to be built even if those workers existed in the first place.
These are jobs that require 7 year apprenticeships to gain basic competence, and frankly most people have no real interest in that type of work because the consequences are more serious, the training is more challenging, and the hours are more grueling than typical white collar jobs.
And you can't come close to importing immigrant construction labor at the skill level needed to replace a vanishing workforce.
Lastly, 3D printed buildings and prefab are overengineered solutions that crumple at scale on real jobsites.
Don't even get me started on skyrocketing insurance premiums and the subsequent over-regulation.
This is a real doom spiral, not a spreadsheet issue.
and of course the issue is that the average person or family even if they have decent jobs cannot afford anywhere near $5000/month. The choices to support luxury housing and rent gouging have not done anyone well.
Thanks for this. The knee jerk reaction to new project announcements around here is “yay more housing” and I always feel like I’m in the minority when I point out how pointless these new development projects are if they’re going to be too expensive for anyone to move in.
Unfortunately there seems to be a lack of nuance and very black and white thinking here sometimes. It's easier to just label people with childish terms like NIMBY and pretend they're supervillains than to perhaps understand that every endeavour has positives and negatives - and the negatives need to be discussed. Putting up housing nobody can afford to rent serves someone, or they wouldn't do it - but that isn't the city and it isn't renters.
Personally, I WANT more housing, very much. I do not want more housing that ends up in a financial disaster like this and sits half-empty while people struggle to find a place to live that won't take their entire paycheck. That's the elephant in the room. Putting up tons of buildings that sit empty and end up financially combusting accomplishes very little.
I agree strongly with this. I live in an apt in a dense, multifamily area and support more housing but also believe that people in single family homes or residential neighborhoods can have reasonable concerns about projects and their persoective ashould be treated with respect. It's not as if the developers and their allies can be trusted to have everyone's best interest at heart
“Serves someone” is doing a lot of work here. If the implication is that there’s some hidden beneficiary quietly winning while everyone else loses, I don’t think that holds up to Hanlon’s razor.
Not everything is Springtime for Hitler, but...if the housing is too expensive for most people in an area to afford, is too expensive for rents to be lowered, and sits half vacant until it combusts and defaults on its loans, who does that benefit and why would companies and developers keep making more of it and keep pushing it? What is the logic in continuing to invest in that? Investment fraud and things like the Magnetar Trade have happened, as well as owners benefiting off things like widespread Air BNBs in their properties and pushing out longterm tenants, so as much as Hanlon's Razor applies, one can't abandon all cynicism.
And if not, there's very dubious wisdom in continuing to embrace and promote construction of buildings of this type when existing ones have already failed, both to succeed and to help solve the housing crisis.
As much as the problem is the financial structure and not the building itself, we do agree on that - if those things are currently intrinsically connected and cannot be untangled, they become a single issue that needs to be solved.
Agreed, I am not a tin foil hat wearer typically but something has always felt off about all these expensive mixed use buildings going up before the last one is even half full. It’s not hard to imagine some shadowy figure or group getting rich, taking the money and running and who cares if the building fills up, they got their money. But if something like that were true, who is that entity and how have they been able to keep doing it over and over.
One has to assume that the loan is being sliced up and transmogrified into assorted “financial products”, collateralized debt obligations and whatnot… that’s likely the cui on this particular bono if i had to guess
It's not about getting rich off one project. PIMCO is isolated because 500 Broadway is owned by a single project LLC (DK Broadway), and PIMCO simply owns 98-99% of DK stock but takes on no actual reputational or meaningful financial risk. A $400M+ writeoff is a fraction of a fraction of 1% of their portfolio, so they don't have to care if the return lands this decade. These defaults are inconsequential for PIMCO.
We're left with a husk and PIMCO just slowly restructures the DK debt so the loss is a slow bleed and not a big hit. SM eats the shit of an underperforming asset and PIMCO is like "well you guys failed to deliver a tenant class, guess the building sits empty til you get your shit together. Do better."
The entire developer ecosystem is built to dump short term risk and externalities onto cities and communities. PIMCO loses almost nothing long term, and we get to wear the blighted luxury outfit until winds change. If the market rebounds, DK goes back to the original model and PIMCO gets to clock a return. If not, PIMCO just waits it out.
Witkoff got sponsor fees, PIMCO effectively owns am insurable Class A building in a 1%er real estate market with no risk or civic responsibility, and that's all that matters to them.
What’s the fun label/acronym for recognizing we’re in this shitty housing situation - just like a lot of other major cities in the US - because of absolutely bananas financial incentives that can’t be neatly summarized by repeating “it’s just basic supply and demand”?
Supply and demand would address housing issues if we lived in a laissez faire capitalist system, not our present day state sponsored corporatism.
I fear we won’t be able to adequately address issues like housing if we keep applying band aids on a state and city level, when something would need reforming on a federal level. If we can’t accurately identify the source we can’t reliably create a cure.
Well,, employment with job protections, medical care and living wages for union construction workers is preferable to day laborers with no protections or benefits, so yeah, not sure what the beef with that would be. As for the rest of it - if you think it's preferable to have half-empty buildings like the Park while people are living in their cars, you do you I guess.
You’re not in the minority at all. Outside a few urbanist places on reddit, opposition to any new project is basically the default- usually a nimby saying “it’s not perfect so i don’t want it”.
The disconnect is the expectation embedded in “WHERE ARE MY AFFORDABLE SINGLE FAMILY HOMES??” - people want a product the cost structure literally cannot produce. That’s not a development failure, it’s a math problem.
With parking fees etc I pay $7200/month for a 1br high floor corner unit. First 6 weeks were free, effective monthly is like $6370 or so.
Its really nice, but I just moved a few months ago. Super comfortable, great for hosting people. I use the gym and rooftop pretty regularly. I’m new-ish to LA, so being comfortable and close to work was important to me.
I never hear the neighbors. Hopefully they don’t hear me too much :)
I only hear people outside when they’re really yelling bloody murder at each other. Otherwise got blackout blinds in the room with the unit, I sleep like a baby.
Yeah they left pamphlets in my mailbox lol checked out of curiosity, prices are a nope.
Actually when I first visited I loved the amenities, but units were kinda lame, especially for the price. Checked out a few other buildings including Landmark in Brentwood, then saw they had this corner unit available for like $100 more a month than I gave as my max, figured #yolo I’d jump on it.
Gotta say community is pretty great too, there’s a building groupchat everyone’s pretty cool/friendly. Neighbors are super nice.
Yeah I had a private tour of 700 broadway before they opened, and saw almost every 1 br/ 2br plan, all of them are awful. Especially for 1 br when you cant fit a king bed with two nightstands in any of them, but the bathroom is almost 1.5x bigger than a bedroom. Bonkers. 2 br are even worse, they basically cut down a living room in half and made a second bedroom out of it, there is almost no increase in usable space, and the bath in the second bathroom is plastic and super super cheap.
Yeah at The Park they were all units with pretty much no sunlight. Construction was ok, better than the last places I’ve lived but that’s a low bar.
The Landmark had nicer units, wrap around balconies insane views but amenities not as nice, and building management didn’t have great reviews, which is why I chose the Park. Also being close to the ocean/Venice is pretty sweet.
We’re not sure - we have a group chat where we’re discussing it, so far haven’t heard anything from the building other than they’re cutting a few fitness classes I can’t attend anyways.
With parking fees etc I pay $7200/month for a 1br high floor corner unit.
While the pricing is clearly not your doing and you moved for work...... This is utterly ridiculous for a 1 bedroom, even in Santa Monica. You can get a 2 br penthouse at that price a little bit down the street.
I looked around a bit on Zillow and couldn’t find anything nice under $5k/month. I told myself if I was gonna pay that much I wanted an ocean view, everything on Zillow/wtv was pricy anyways and not great.
Also, its def a personal choice. Work in tech, last 4 years I worked remote and paid under $2k/month for rent. Moved to LA recently for work, I’m comfortable there and I’ve hosted ppl over a bunch of times, it’s helped my social life get up and running quickly.
Best move for best value-for-money.... take your time, ideally 3 months+.
Figure out what YOU want, and what you want to prioritize.
Walk/bike around and take notes of possible places you might want to live. Note which of them are corporate landlords vs smaller mom-pop.
If they're a corporate landlord.... create a burner email and get on their email list ASAP. They'll send out incentive emails and discounts that may not be immediately posted online. If you know someone who is already a tenant in a corporate building... tell them and ask if their landlord gives referral discounts/bonuses. (Many corporate landlords offer 1 month free rent to a referred tenant AND give the existing referring tenant a cash bonus and/or free rent.)
There are property management companies that have their own listing websites... those can be GOLDMINES for those with patience. Smaller landlords generally tend to announce upcoming units further in advance, usually on their own websites.
Ok sweet good to know! Still a while to go, I’m comfy for now but never know good to have finger on the pulse. My radius is pretty much 10 mins from Santa Monica business park where I work, looking to avoid traffic as much as possible.
If you're feeling ambivalent/have a ton of time..... set up a burner email for apartment offers and check in monthly.
New-build apartments priced over $5k/1BR.... they aren't necessarily giving "discounted rent", but they WILL aggressively spam you with meaningful end-of-quarter lease offers/rebates.
Just a casual overview of subject lines... Windsor communities is offering 3 mos discounted rent in their email campaign..... yet visiting their property website, they're advertising 1 month of discounted rent.
Depends on my company’s stock price on any given day, but it’s roughly ~15-17% of gross. I can afford it.
Also why comfort and proximity to work is super important, and why I have no problem paying for it. It’s an investment into less day to day friction for me, which makes the rest of my life easier.
Steve Witkoff is the same greedy yahoo Trump put in the drivers seat to negotiate a deal to end the Ukraine war. He’s done a brilliant job at that so far, seeking out every angle on how to partner with Putin to make money for himself and Trump in the future while leaving Ukraine twisting in the wind. Stand up guy that Steve. He has the medias touch.
Who really cares about the default? The building is full of new homes and it’s not going anywhere. Heres hoping everyone gets a rent decrease when the dust settles.
What’s most important is to build more new homes so landlords have competition. We need that competition to come from mom and pop property owners.
At the Jan. 13th council meeting, voting to make permanent single stair and off site affordable will be on the agenda. We are going to find out if the council majority is NIMBY or YIMBY. In other words, council members have a binary choice: vote no and keep prices high, or vote yes and see new homes built. If a council member tries to water down either item, they are NIMBY as that is simply a political tactic meant to appease our ever dwindling number of no/slow growth single family homeowners.
Years ago the city council and mayor could have taken a tough-on-crime and zero tolerance policy to homelessness and these properties would have flourished, further bringing in capital and investment opportunities into Santa Monica.
Instead we have vacancies, loans defaulting, skyrocketing crime rates, and a mass exodus of businesses and professionals. It's truly sad
I checked out the website and saw a 2 bedroom for rent at only $17,305
https://preview.redd.it/rp035s0e6m8g1.png?width=602&format=png&auto=webp&s=f9cf4127984c111b161134d9e24b095f155c6df5
I checked out their rents when they first listed. I get that there are folks in this world who light their Gurkha cigars with hundred dollar bills but who the fuck is dropping $17k/month for 1200 sqr feet? That shit is either insane or some sort of money laundering operation
More importantly, those who can afford it, don’t want to live at 5th and broadway. The core of Santa Monica’s might be fine for young professionals but nobody in mid life wants to be near the promenade and the freeway
exactly, those apps were $20k actually when they just opened, but knowing the location, and constant shenanigans at target right next to it - hell no! 700 broadway is unfortunately will be the next one to go bankrupt, their situation is even worse, right next to I-10 and boy oh boy all the shit is happening on that intersection
In order to get a loan, developers have had to proforma rents at a high level. At one point is was justifiable but as soon as all the units were built, those rents were no longer sustainable. Are all the new developments in the same boat? Or are some of the projects attaining full occupancy? I don't really follow Santa Monica real estate but I do drive past those buildings every day.
Most of the luxury buildings seem to have a lot of vacancies. They're offering progressively more generous lease incentives. Walking and riding past, a lot of the windows are empty. The ones on Lincoln and the Park also seem to be having issues attracting enough retail tenants to fill their spaces. It's why I really feel it's not so much about housing supply being scarce, but more *affordable* housing supply. If those units were priced at $2500 or $3000 for a 1br they'd be completely full right now I think.
To be clear, vacancies in a few ultra-high-end buildings do not negate the broader reality of extreme housing scarcity in santa monica.
The issue with these buildings is that they were financed assuming much higher rents, and once they’re built, cutting rents enough to fill them would reprice the entire asset and blow up the loan. So instead of prices adjusting, you get vacancies and incentives.
In other words: the rents aren’t high because that’s what the market wants, they’re high because the balance sheet won’t let them fall.
Break even price for a 1br unit in LA is $5k/mo due simply to runaway materials costs, labor shortages, permitting, and fees.
It's now literally impossible to build affordable units, and the luxury units can't take a 50% hit without collapsing. No big money lenders want to finance a project when half of the 1,000 new downtown units sit empty and the population has flatlined. The insane overhead on maintaining fancy amenities tanks the business model of these buildings further once vacancy breaks 20%, and we're far beyond that.
Plus, SM is broke and cannot afford to subsidize affordable units either.
Santa Monica and council's developer friends pivoted hard to luxury housing and extracting as much rent as possible pre-covid/riots, and that model died a gruesome death in 2020.
You’re right about one thing - at current land, materials, labor, permitting, financing, and operating costs, there’s a hard floor on what new units can rent for. That floor exists regardless of ideology, vacancy, or intent, and is above the fantasy “affordable” rate some people ask for.
But… once these economic incentives for the higher end of the market exist, you don’t need conspiracy theories about the city council or illuminati developers.
But if that is the case, then how does constructing more of it help in any way to ease the housing crisis? And how does one reconcile the idea that new supply cannot be affordable and break even, with the reality that it will not break even either if nobody rents it?
The "fantasy" of affordability is asking for rents that do not leave people severely rent burdened. Ideally that's 30% of their income, realistically perhaps less than 50%. 30% of income for someone making $100K before taxes is $2500/month. After taxes it's probably closer to 40% or more of their income. It's not even about low income people at this point.
I don’t mean that literally nobody can afford housing. The point is new housing is constantly expected to clear an unrealistic bar for affordability (“low income”).
FWIW I completely agree with you that these new luxury units are not fully doing their job. Ideally, their prices would keep dropping until the vacancy hit something reasonable like 5%. The thing that deserves scrutiny is the financing structure that prevents prices from adjusting, not the idea of building itself.
Not just financing, the actual construction industry in the US is cooked. Contractors are all aging out and CA alone is short 80,000 blue collar workers and rising. Plus the workforce for construction can't afford to live where housing needs to be built even if those workers existed in the first place.
These are jobs that require 7 year apprenticeships to gain basic competence, and frankly most people have no real interest in that type of work because the consequences are more serious, the training is more challenging, and the hours are more grueling than typical white collar jobs.
And you can't come close to importing immigrant construction labor at the skill level needed to replace a vanishing workforce.
Lastly, 3D printed buildings and prefab are overengineered solutions that crumple at scale on real jobsites.
Don't even get me started on skyrocketing insurance premiums and the subsequent over-regulation.
This is a real doom spiral, not a spreadsheet issue.
and of course the issue is that the average person or family even if they have decent jobs cannot afford anywhere near $5000/month. The choices to support luxury housing and rent gouging have not done anyone well.
Thanks for this. The knee jerk reaction to new project announcements around here is “yay more housing” and I always feel like I’m in the minority when I point out how pointless these new development projects are if they’re going to be too expensive for anyone to move in.
Unfortunately there seems to be a lack of nuance and very black and white thinking here sometimes. It's easier to just label people with childish terms like NIMBY and pretend they're supervillains than to perhaps understand that every endeavour has positives and negatives - and the negatives need to be discussed. Putting up housing nobody can afford to rent serves someone, or they wouldn't do it - but that isn't the city and it isn't renters.
Personally, I WANT more housing, very much. I do not want more housing that ends up in a financial disaster like this and sits half-empty while people struggle to find a place to live that won't take their entire paycheck. That's the elephant in the room. Putting up tons of buildings that sit empty and end up financially combusting accomplishes very little.
I agree strongly with this. I live in an apt in a dense, multifamily area and support more housing but also believe that people in single family homes or residential neighborhoods can have reasonable concerns about projects and their persoective ashould be treated with respect. It's not as if the developers and their allies can be trusted to have everyone's best interest at heart
“Serves someone” is doing a lot of work here. If the implication is that there’s some hidden beneficiary quietly winning while everyone else loses, I don’t think that holds up to Hanlon’s razor.
Not everything is Springtime for Hitler, but...if the housing is too expensive for most people in an area to afford, is too expensive for rents to be lowered, and sits half vacant until it combusts and defaults on its loans, who does that benefit and why would companies and developers keep making more of it and keep pushing it? What is the logic in continuing to invest in that? Investment fraud and things like the Magnetar Trade have happened, as well as owners benefiting off things like widespread Air BNBs in their properties and pushing out longterm tenants, so as much as Hanlon's Razor applies, one can't abandon all cynicism.
And if not, there's very dubious wisdom in continuing to embrace and promote construction of buildings of this type when existing ones have already failed, both to succeed and to help solve the housing crisis.
As much as the problem is the financial structure and not the building itself, we do agree on that - if those things are currently intrinsically connected and cannot be untangled, they become a single issue that needs to be solved.
Agreed, I am not a tin foil hat wearer typically but something has always felt off about all these expensive mixed use buildings going up before the last one is even half full. It’s not hard to imagine some shadowy figure or group getting rich, taking the money and running and who cares if the building fills up, they got their money. But if something like that were true, who is that entity and how have they been able to keep doing it over and over.
Nobody is getting rich. The article is literally about a default.
One has to assume that the loan is being sliced up and transmogrified into assorted “financial products”, collateralized debt obligations and whatnot… that’s likely the cui on this particular bono if i had to guess
It's not about getting rich off one project. PIMCO is isolated because 500 Broadway is owned by a single project LLC (DK Broadway), and PIMCO simply owns 98-99% of DK stock but takes on no actual reputational or meaningful financial risk. A $400M+ writeoff is a fraction of a fraction of 1% of their portfolio, so they don't have to care if the return lands this decade. These defaults are inconsequential for PIMCO.
We're left with a husk and PIMCO just slowly restructures the DK debt so the loss is a slow bleed and not a big hit. SM eats the shit of an underperforming asset and PIMCO is like "well you guys failed to deliver a tenant class, guess the building sits empty til you get your shit together. Do better."
The entire developer ecosystem is built to dump short term risk and externalities onto cities and communities. PIMCO loses almost nothing long term, and we get to wear the blighted luxury outfit until winds change. If the market rebounds, DK goes back to the original model and PIMCO gets to clock a return. If not, PIMCO just waits it out.
Witkoff got sponsor fees, PIMCO effectively owns am insurable Class A building in a 1%er real estate market with no risk or civic responsibility, and that's all that matters to them.
What’s the fun label/acronym for recognizing we’re in this shitty housing situation - just like a lot of other major cities in the US - because of absolutely bananas financial incentives that can’t be neatly summarized by repeating “it’s just basic supply and demand”?
Supply and demand would address housing issues if we lived in a laissez faire capitalist system, not our present day state sponsored corporatism.
I fear we won’t be able to adequately address issues like housing if we keep applying band aids on a state and city level, when something would need reforming on a federal level. If we can’t accurately identify the source we can’t reliably create a cure.
I want more housing BUT it needs to be affordable, fully occupied, beautiful, and provide plenty of parking and use union labor 🌈🦄
Solar, all electric, granite countertops, marble showers, high end appliances, and then people wonder why they aren’t affordable.
there are actually a bunch of tax breaks and incentives to making LEED buildings, which do make them more affordable.
Well,, employment with job protections, medical care and living wages for union construction workers is preferable to day laborers with no protections or benefits, so yeah, not sure what the beef with that would be. As for the rest of it - if you think it's preferable to have half-empty buildings like the Park while people are living in their cars, you do you I guess.
lmao gotem
this x1000
not to mention if all these mega buildings get filled, the strain on schools, parks, grocery stores, the streets and parking goes way up.
You’re not in the minority at all. Outside a few urbanist places on reddit, opposition to any new project is basically the default- usually a nimby saying “it’s not perfect so i don’t want it”.
The disconnect is the expectation embedded in “WHERE ARE MY AFFORDABLE SINGLE FAMILY HOMES??” - people want a product the cost structure literally cannot produce. That’s not a development failure, it’s a math problem.
I live there 👋 ask me anything
how is it? how much you pay monthly?
With parking fees etc I pay $7200/month for a 1br high floor corner unit. First 6 weeks were free, effective monthly is like $6370 or so.
Its really nice, but I just moved a few months ago. Super comfortable, great for hosting people. I use the gym and rooftop pretty regularly. I’m new-ish to LA, so being comfortable and close to work was important to me.
yeah thats not that bad, are on top floor? also whats you sq feet?
6th floor, I think about 950 sq fr? 2 balconies, one in bedroom one in living room.
btw how is the sound insulation? Do you hear your upstairs neighbors at all?
I never hear the neighbors. Hopefully they don’t hear me too much :)
I only hear people outside when they’re really yelling bloody murder at each other. Otherwise got blackout blinds in the room with the unit, I sleep like a baby.
950 for 7200 is not that bad at all, 700 broadway are like 700sq feet max for same price
Yeah they left pamphlets in my mailbox lol checked out of curiosity, prices are a nope.
Actually when I first visited I loved the amenities, but units were kinda lame, especially for the price. Checked out a few other buildings including Landmark in Brentwood, then saw they had this corner unit available for like $100 more a month than I gave as my max, figured #yolo I’d jump on it.
Gotta say community is pretty great too, there’s a building groupchat everyone’s pretty cool/friendly. Neighbors are super nice.
Yeah I had a private tour of 700 broadway before they opened, and saw almost every 1 br/ 2br plan, all of them are awful. Especially for 1 br when you cant fit a king bed with two nightstands in any of them, but the bathroom is almost 1.5x bigger than a bedroom. Bonkers. 2 br are even worse, they basically cut down a living room in half and made a second bedroom out of it, there is almost no increase in usable space, and the bath in the second bathroom is plastic and super super cheap.
Yeah at The Park they were all units with pretty much no sunlight. Construction was ok, better than the last places I’ve lived but that’s a low bar.
The Landmark had nicer units, wrap around balconies insane views but amenities not as nice, and building management didn’t have great reviews, which is why I chose the Park. Also being close to the ocean/Venice is pretty sweet.
There’s a building group chat?? I live here, how do I get added? lol
Lmao guess it’s just the cool kids 😂 I’ll dm you
Is this default going to affect your living situation?
We’re not sure - we have a group chat where we’re discussing it, so far haven’t heard anything from the building other than they’re cutting a few fitness classes I can’t attend anyways.
While the pricing is clearly not your doing and you moved for work...... This is utterly ridiculous for a 1 bedroom, even in Santa Monica. You can get a 2 br penthouse at that price a little bit down the street.
I looked around a bit on Zillow and couldn’t find anything nice under $5k/month. I told myself if I was gonna pay that much I wanted an ocean view, everything on Zillow/wtv was pricy anyways and not great.
Also, its def a personal choice. Work in tech, last 4 years I worked remote and paid under $2k/month for rent. Moved to LA recently for work, I’m comfortable there and I’ve hosted ppl over a bunch of times, it’s helped my social life get up and running quickly.
Not hating on your choice! You didn't (over)price it, your landlord did.
When your lease is up, just know that there's larger/nicer units near you if you feel like switching things up.
Yeah definitely - I heard way to go is to walk around and find places with signs and call the numbers? Or just know the right people?
Any buildings you can recommend? Lease is up later next year
Best move for best value-for-money.... take your time, ideally 3 months+.
Figure out what YOU want, and what you want to prioritize.
Walk/bike around and take notes of possible places you might want to live. Note which of them are corporate landlords vs smaller mom-pop.
If they're a corporate landlord.... create a burner email and get on their email list ASAP. They'll send out incentive emails and discounts that may not be immediately posted online. If you know someone who is already a tenant in a corporate building... tell them and ask if their landlord gives referral discounts/bonuses. (Many corporate landlords offer 1 month free rent to a referred tenant AND give the existing referring tenant a cash bonus and/or free rent.)
There are property management companies that have their own listing websites... those can be GOLDMINES for those with patience. Smaller landlords generally tend to announce upcoming units further in advance, usually on their own websites.
Ok sweet good to know! Still a while to go, I’m comfy for now but never know good to have finger on the pulse. My radius is pretty much 10 mins from Santa Monica business park where I work, looking to avoid traffic as much as possible.
If you're feeling ambivalent/have a ton of time..... set up a burner email for apartment offers and check in monthly.
New-build apartments priced over $5k/1BR.... they aren't necessarily giving "discounted rent", but they WILL aggressively spam you with meaningful end-of-quarter lease offers/rebates.
Just a casual overview of subject lines... Windsor communities is offering 3 mos discounted rent in their email campaign..... yet visiting their property website, they're advertising 1 month of discounted rent.
Is $7200 represent 30% of your gross salary?
Depends on my company’s stock price on any given day, but it’s roughly ~15-17% of gross. I can afford it.
Also why comfort and proximity to work is super important, and why I have no problem paying for it. It’s an investment into less day to day friction for me, which makes the rest of my life easier.
Steve Witkoff is the same greedy yahoo Trump put in the drivers seat to negotiate a deal to end the Ukraine war. He’s done a brilliant job at that so far, seeking out every angle on how to partner with Putin to make money for himself and Trump in the future while leaving Ukraine twisting in the wind. Stand up guy that Steve. He has the medias touch.
He’s the dickhead that’s getting a corrupt business deal in Russia to screw over Ukraine
Creative destruction: boy you love to see it.
Who really cares about the default? The building is full of new homes and it’s not going anywhere. Heres hoping everyone gets a rent decrease when the dust settles.
What’s most important is to build more new homes so landlords have competition. We need that competition to come from mom and pop property owners.
At the Jan. 13th council meeting, voting to make permanent single stair and off site affordable will be on the agenda. We are going to find out if the council majority is NIMBY or YIMBY. In other words, council members have a binary choice: vote no and keep prices high, or vote yes and see new homes built. If a council member tries to water down either item, they are NIMBY as that is simply a political tactic meant to appease our ever dwindling number of no/slow growth single family homeowners.
The default helps because it ends the game of chicken that the lender and the owner are playing. Agree on everything else.
Years ago the city council and mayor could have taken a tough-on-crime and zero tolerance policy to homelessness and these properties would have flourished, further bringing in capital and investment opportunities into Santa Monica.
Instead we have vacancies, loans defaulting, skyrocketing crime rates, and a mass exodus of businesses and professionals. It's truly sad
Pono Burger. ZJs. Jo's Burger. The pharmacies. Nearly every commercial building is for lease. Down votes don't fix the reality we live in kids!