Sounds like a fair compromise to me – if they can get around the construction-defect litigation that seems to come with every new complex. Two-story is preferred vs. three-story:
Owning a home has long been a core part of the American Dream. Today, however, there simply aren’t enough affordable options, and that ideal is increasingly out of reach. There’s a sensible way to address this shortfall, but it requires moving beyond the antiquated vision of a big house with a fenced yard in the suburbs.
The new American Dream should be a townhouse — a two- or three-story home that shares walls with a neighbor. Townhouses are the Goldilocks option between single-family homes in the suburbs and high-rise condos in cities.
Though townhouses have long been perceived as starter homes for young couples who hope to later move to a larger place, developers say that stereotype is changing. Today, townhouses are popular options for many kinds of households — couples with one child, single parents, people who live alone, couples in their 30s and 40s with no kids, and empty nesters in their 50s looking to downsize. People are drawn to the low-maintenance lifestyle and the sense of community. Many people don’t want to isolate themselves in suburban homes where they have minimal contact with neighbors and are fully dependent on a car.
“We absolutely love our next door neighbors,” said Katherine McKay, 40, who lives in a townhouse in Silver Spring, Md., with her wife. They met their neighbors — a retired couple — when they were all outside one evening on their back decks. They immediately bonded over the fact that they all enjoy having just enough space for a “postage stamp” garden. “Our townhome is 1,700 square feet. I don’t want more to clean.”
Hat tip to Jakob who left this in the comment section but it deserves full exposure. If you live within a half-mile of a transit station in the City of San Diego, this type of ADU construction is permissible.
Hi Jim, here’s one of these ADU complexes for sale. They bought the 1,385sf house for $1.1m two years ago (it was listed for $899,000). Then built 10 1br ADUs in the back and converted the garage to another 1br. For sale now as a 12-unit for $5.5m.
These guys are advertising on sports-talk radio and at first I thought it was just another ADU builder.
The problem with SB9 is being able to sell the newly-built ADU.
In order to obtain regular financing and title insurance, either the property would need to be condo-ized to sell the homes separately, or the lot would need to be officially split.
You can process the lot split yourself, if you have the time and patience.
How much are you willing to pay for convenience?
If you wanted to build an ADU for your own use and had no plans to ever sell it separately, then carry on. But if you have a larger lot and didn’t mind selling off part of it just to watch a new home be built and sold there, then take a look.
San Diego has emerged as the most active real estate market in California.
Our latest report, covering construction trends from 1980 to 2023 — a time frame that spans a millennial’s lifetime — reveals fascinating insights into the key drivers shaping the city we see today.
Ranked tenth in the nation for overall development, America’s Finest City is making waves with impressive expansion in the multifamily and office sectors. This growth cements San Diego as a real estate powerhouse in California, ahead of Los Angeles and San Francisco, and one of the nation’s most dynamic economic centers in the country.
Key highlights from the study:
Single family sector: In the past 44 years, San Diego has issued permits for over 76,000 single family homes, the highest number in California. Although the market remains active, the momentum has dramatically waned from the construction boom of the 1980s. In the first half of the 2020s, the average number of single family home permits issued annually is around 500, representing just 14.7% of the yearly output during the 1980s.
Multifamily growth: San Diego ranks ninth in the nation for apartment construction, having issued nearly 173,000 permits over the past five decades. Although still below the 1980s peak of 6,700 units per year, apartment construction has made a strong comeback, averaging an impressive 4,400 permits annually in the 2020s.
Office space expansion: In the last 44 years, San Diego has added over 77 million square feet of office space, leading California and ranking eighth nationally. Driven by thriving software and biotechnology sectors, this impressive growth solidifies San Diego’s role as a major economic hub.
Addressing the need for extra space: San Diego leads California in the self storage sector, adding over 7.3 million square feet in the past 44 years. Despite this substantial growth, demand remains high, with average rents for San Diego storage units hovering around a steep $183 per month.
Industrial revival: In the past five decades, San Diego has added over 56 million square feet of industrial space, placing sixteenth nationally. The recession caused a sharp slowdown, with annual deliveries falling from over 1.2 million square feet in the previous decade to just 280,000 square feet in the 2010s. However, the 2020s have sparked a remarkable comeback, with more than 1.9 million square feet delivered annually, marking a robust revival in the city’s industrial sector.
Retail sector slowing down: The retail sector has been San Diego’s slowest-growing area, with just 24 million square feet added since the 1980s, placing the city twenty-fourth nationally.
The ‘Villages of La Costa’ was the name given to the development of four large areas of south Carlsbad. La Costa Valley (bottom left) was graded and model homes being built when this photo was taken. La Costa Oaks South is the green patch to the right, La Costa Ridge in the middle, and La Costa Greens in the upper left, next to where Bressi Ranch and Rancho Carrillo were being graded in this photo.
Here’s a good summary of what Fred had to endure to get the Villages built:
We knew that Toll Bros are building 42 homes next to the Chevron gas station on La Costa Avenue and the freeway. They are doing the same treatment as the builder did at Halia – burying the contaminants instead of removing:
David Hill, a Batiquitos Lagoon Foundation board member who specializes in water quality management, criticized the developers for encapsulating rather than removing what he said were 6,300 tons of hazardous materials, including organochlorine pesticides, buried beneath the planned homes.
Another surprise is the planned hotel to be built next door:
Golf-course redevelopment is a terrific solution to providing new housing in the middle of town. They will work out the kinks like building enough roads.
A judge’s ruling halted construction this week of the 536-unit Junipers development in Rancho Peñasquitos — and could complicate and delay approvals of other dense housing projects across San Diego.
Superior Court Judge Ronald Frazier nullified an analysis of how the Junipers would affect nearby traffic, noise and wildfire threats, saying it had failed to account for two large nearby housing projects. In a ruling that made final a tentative ruling he issued last week, Frazier halted construction of the Junipers, where 36 units are complete, and said it can’t resume until the analysis is redone to account for the long-term presence of the 331-unit Millennium PQ and 826-unit Trails at Carmel Mountain Ranch.
The resident group that had sued to stop the Junipers called the ruling a victory for San Diego’s neighborhoods because it will require developers to provide more robust mitigation when they build impactful, dense projects.
In particular, the residents want Junipers developer Lennar Homes to pay for building more evacuation routes for their wildfire-prone area.
“Our goal in bringing this lawsuit forward is to require the city of San Diego to perform environmental review to address wildfire impacts on redevelopment in our area,” the PQ-NE Action Group said in a statement. “We are very pleased with the final ruling.”
The city and Lennar, which declined to comment Tuesday, could appeal to a higher court.
Or Lennar could settle with the residents, for instance by agreeing to construct additional evacuation routes.
If the ruling isn’t overturned on appeal, attorneys for Lennar and the city say it could have far-reaching impacts on how government agencies must analyze the effects dense housing projects might have on traffic, noise and wildfire threats.
“It would potentially grind development to a halt,” Deputy City Attorney Ben Syz told Judge Frazier in court last Thursday. “The city needs certainty as to what it’s looking at and what it’s analyzing.”
Ok, ok you want to downsize but you don’t want to bake in the desert – plus you like living in San Diego. Aren’t there any newer, smaller choices around here?
Lennar has purchased three local golf courses and are on their way to building them out. The development of the Carmel Mountain Ranch golf course off the I-15 freeway (above) faced some resistance from the locals, but they beat that back and a gated senior community is now underway.
The Junipers is a senior community (55+) in Rancho Penasquitos and will include a mix of 455 single-family detached-homes and townhouses for sale. There will also be 81 attached homes for rent for low-income seniors households. It will include a 2.87-acre public park and a 2.82-acre loop trail.
Pricing isn’t out in the open but I’m guessing it starts just under a million.
Another new-home development is called the Farm, and it’s right off Rancho Bernardo Road. It isn’t solely for seniors, but they have a couple of one-story plans. Here’s a quick tour of their 2,500sf one-story home under construction:
