- Of the 40 tenant buyouts recorded in Santa Monica last year, the average payout was $27,435, according to the city’s data. The average to date this year is $24,738.
That’s a potential windfall for tenants willing to vacate affordable housing for quick cash, but Santa Monica landlords stand to make considerably more from such five-figure deals in the long run.
Worse for tenants, $25,000 won’t last very long if they’re forced to pay market rent in a comparable neighborhood.
Phillis said that when she talks to tenants who have received a buyout offer, she encourages them to work out the math to see if they’ll be able to afford new housing for the long term.
“I remind them to think about the value of their tenancy and what the market rate is,” Phillis said. “If you’re paying $700 a month for a two-bedroom apartment, your landlord’s going to be able to get $3,600, $3,700, maybe $4,000 for it, so I would say, minimum, that’s around a $3,000 difference per month. How many months does it take to get to that? That’s not going to help people get into another apartment.”
Santa Monica landlords are commanding record-high rents — about 10% more for new tenancies in 2015, according to city data — with a one-bedroom unit, on average, going for $2,050 a month and a two-bedroom reaping about $2,750.
It's so funny listening to my Seattle friends bitch about real estate prices.
I think it's more because nobody wants to become the next California. Granted, Seattle can't have it both ways. By which I mean complaining about increasing rent and housing prices but also complaining about new housing construction...well, that would be true if the housing was catered to be affordable and not "luxury" or "upscale"...It's so funny listening to my Seattle friends bitch about real estate prices.
WRONG. It's because nobody understands how far you have to go to get there. This apartment is 27 miles from DTLA and is in a sun-parched hellscape. This apartment is 13 miles from DTSEA and is in an actual neighborhood. Your delta$: $600/mo for 60 more square feet. Woodland Hills is the LA equivalent of Puyallup.
I'm not saying right now, but ten years down the road don't you think that the Seattle area could end up in a similar situation (I'm guessing not?)?
Not a snowball's chance in hell. Seattleites who point at California don't understand the clusterfuck that is California real estate. Prop 13 is literally rent control for your property taxes. It rewards speculation and monopolization and feeds into a preposterous amount of property barony. It also applies to commercial properties. Here's how it works: You buy a house in Tacoma in 1978. You paid $40k for it (my wife's parents bought their Lynnwood house for less than that in '79). Your property taxes are 1% of whatever the current value of the house is assessed at. In '78, that's $400. Right now your house is probably worth $160k. You're paying $1600. You buy a house in Santa Monica in 1978. You paid $90k for it (family friends did this). Your property taxes were leveed at the time of purchase at 1%. Your property taxes when yo bought it were $900. Now everything changes. Because right now, your house is probably worth around a million and a half. But you're paying $1200 in property taxes. That giant sucking sound is money leaving the school system, the highway fund, civil government, everything. And it's going right into the pockets of property owners, who now get to charge you $800/mo for a shithole 1BR in North Hollywood where, in your brief time there, you lost TWO neighbors to drive-bys AND THAT WAS NINE YEARS AGO. California is completely dysfunctional. It has income tax and sales tax higher than WA and the roads are still a little worse than Addis Ababba, according to a friend who lived for two years in both. There are alleys in Venice behind million dollar houses that have never even been paved.