San Diego affordable housing development

[Nathan Vaughan]

Hey ya'll!

So I was in a meeting today with an architect talking about my current project.

I showed him a property that's zone rm-2-5 with a 40' height allowance. It's basically a teardown on a 7500 sqft lot. Right now listed at $560k... A little steep, but maybe they would come down. I haven't run any numbers, but the architect said that if it was development as affordable housing, you can double the number of units as long as over 5 units are allowed.

I'm not really sure where to start on looking in to this. It would probably be a conversation with the architect to find out more about the building requirements. I also have no clue on how the rent system works for section in terms of how you collect rent when its subsided.

It's really intriguing and I'm gonna look into it more! There's potentially to create some really interesting architecture, provide affordable housing, and create a great cash flow asset.

Does anyone have any experience with this kind of development? Does it work?

I started by sending an email to the real estate agent just to get a read on where the seller is at. It's been on the market for 90 days. So maybe they'd be open to negotation...

If we ran the numbers and the construction/time cost maybe it would be worth it and could be our next project!

- Nate

[David Frandsen]

@Nathan Vaughan I’m not a developer but have some food for thought. I once looked into a similar kind of project in NorCal and discovered that the city fees to get utilities on site (water meters at street, electrical transformers, ect) were in a certain range depending on the unit mix. The fees were not that much higher for a 3 bed 2 bath than for studio apartments. So the smaller units didn’t pencil out (It was zoned for up to 12 small units.) I then realized why all the developers were building 3-2’s.

I would find an experienced developer to nail down these numbers because the cities are horrible at getting accurate info to you.

Best of luck!