Seattle Condo Review: Blog with News & Advice about Seattle Condos

Madison Tower / Hotel 1000

Madison Tower/ Hotel 1000 was Seattle's first hotel/condo project completed in 2006.  Fourty-seven homes sit above the Hotel from the 15th level to 24th floors.  The building is located between Pioneer Square and Pike Place Market on the corner of 1st Ave and Madison St and occupies a quarter block.

There are five homes on each floor with the exception of the penthouse.  The 00 and 01 floor plans are west facing and offer the most optimum water views. 

00 Floor plan         Two bedroom 1980-3,010 sqft.       NW 

01 Floor Plan         Two bedroom 1,562-3,740 sqf.       SW   

02 Floor plan         Two bedroom 1,444 sqft.               SE 

03 Floor Plan         One bedroom 805 sqft.                   E

04 floor plan          One bedroom  877 sqft.                 NE

Click here for the floor plans.

Feb 1 Seattle Condo Update

Well, it has only been a week since I was gone for my vacation but it seems like a number of condo projects have some news for us.

• Fifteen Twenty-One kicked off their grand opening event with a light show and tour of their model home. There are 11 homes remaining with the lowest price starting at $975,000.     

• Alex in Belltown announced that they are moving ahead in full speed as a condomium project. They will be selling their homes sometime in May. Completion for this condo building is going to be in late spring.  

• Market Street Landing, the condo project replacing the Denny's in Ballard is still under going design review. The 5 and 8 story buildings will house 330 homes. The design review board thinks that the design still needs a little bit of work. Read more here.  

• Equinox has updated their website. The construction progress is on track with windows installed and sheet rock started in the North Building. A model unit will be available for viewing in late March. Homeowners can be expected to move in in June.  

• Trace North is featuring 5 homes under $300k.    

• Ruby will be holding their grand opening on February 7th and 8th (Saturday & Sunday). Prices for their lake view homes start at $329,990 and bridge view homes start from $259,990. The project is also FHA approved. Read more on the hard hat tour.

Related Posts:

Alex Update
Equinox Update
Fifteen Twenty-One Opening Ceremony
Trace North Update
Ruby Condos Update

Olive 8- Green Roof

       

Last week, the Olive 8 hotel / condo installed one of downtown Seattle's largest green roofs. The 8,355 square foot green roof is on the fourth floor podium of the Hyatt at Olive 8 and is comprised of two parts. The first part of the installation was on top of the roof's mechanical system. The second installation was on the podium. Judging from the pictures, it's definitely a nice addition for the building and visually more pleasant than looking at the mechanical systems. I would imagine residents will get more enjoyment out of it if it is accessible from the building and they could pull out some chairs and relax on the roof. Read more on the green roof.

My thoughts on Four Seasons

(Photos from Nyhus Communications, LLC.)

Four Seasons's open house took place on last Thursday. I was curious if the completed project would really live up to the Four Seasons brand and whopping price tags so I decided to check out their open house. I drove up to the entrance and was greeted by courteous hotel staff dressed in finely pressed Four Seasons attire ready to park the car, open the front doors, and provide you with the courtesy they would any hotel guest. 

AVA Update

AVA, a downtown hotel/condo project, has received their Master Use Development Permit and is anticipating construction to commerce this fall. The sales center, located at the corner of Olive Way and 8th Ave, will be open to homebuyers by appointment only beginning next month. A large scale model of the tower, interior model vignettes of the kitchen and bathroom, final floor plans, views, finishes and other exhibits will be available for homebuyers to preview as well. To make a reservation, a $10,000 refundable deposit will be required. The reservations provide homebuyers the first right of opportunity to purchase the home within a provided price range. If you are interested in my opinion on this project, check out my previous review here.

Previous Posts

8th and Pine
AVA Condos

-Wendy

1 Hotel Residences Redesign

Several projects in the Belltown and downtown area are either on hold or converted to apartments. 1 Hotel Residences on the other hand is undergoing a redesign. The proposed redesign will eliminate 132 of the project's 176 individually owned condo-hotel suites. They will be replaced with 192 smaller, conventional hotel rooms (level 9th-14th). The heavily marketed City suites units will be located on the 15th and 16th level. The residential condominium units on the higher floors will not be affected. Read more.

-Wendy

Olive 8 update- Price Guarantee

Olive 8, one of the Seattle hotel/condos combos has recently announced that they will be offering new buyers a price guarantee.  The developer feels so confident that their project is offering high quality and outstanding value in the market place, that they are prepared to back it up with a price guarantee to new buyers.  The agreement says that if the same floor plan within Olive 8's remaining inventory sells for less than the current price prior to closing, the buyers who contracted for a higher price home will benefit at closing with the equivalent discount to their price.  According to the developer, the low price guarantee assurance is offerred to help shore the confidence of those who are on-the-fence.

Seems like a great marketing strategy -- will be interesting to see whether other projects follow suit.

Construction for Olive 8 has been progressing nicely. The hotel floors have been poured and condominiums floors are being poured at the rate of one every seven days. 

Previous post

-Wendy

1913 Fifth Ave: Billion Dollar "Out There" Hotel Condo

It seems like yesterday that the hotel-condo concepts imported from more trend-setting condo cities were still testing the waters here in Seattle.  Based on the new 1.2M square foot project set to break ground next year, it would appear hotel condos are here to stay.

Some highlights from this new project:

• *Located across from Westin (current residents include the Icon Grill and Avis)
• *High-end hotel (185-200 rooms), retail, office, and 22 floors of condos (400-500 condos)

*Twin, 43 story towers (North Tower-Pagoda, South Tower-Heron)

*Wind and solar will provide 7% of the building's electricity

*7 underground floors of parking

*Design that says Seattle looks not toward Vancouver but toward Chicago and New York.  (Personally, I find it a lot to take in and a bit Robocop as far as first impressions goes but that may be due to the lack of color in the rendering.)

The project is still in the early design guidance phase. Additional information will be presented, and public comments taken, at 7 p.m. Tuesday in Room L280 at City Hall.

More info from the PI article here.

-Wendy

Seattle's Best Looking New project

Fifteen Twenty One               Escala                             AVA

        1 Hotel                        Olive 8                      Four Seasons

 

Hotel Condo Shoot Out

With many buyers deferring their purchases till next year, you'd think the condo-hotel projects would be slowing down a bit as well. As it turns out, buyers looking for this class of property seem to be fairly unaffected by the national market concerns. So far, the Seattle condo hotel market has proven quite resilient. Recently, I put together a table comparing each of the top Seattle condo-hotel projects for one of my clients and put an abridged version here as well as put a quick summary below for SCR readers. Hope it helps!

Olive 8

Olive 8, the fourth hotel/condo project in Seattle has a scheduled completion in late 2008/early 2009. Its reasonable pricing and modern design atop the Hyatt hotel has been receiving a great response from the public. Even though some of the west facing units’ views are blocked by Qwest Building, home buyers do not seem to mind. The developer added 3 more levels on top of the originally planned 36 story building. Since a lot of units are sold, there is not a whole lot of selection available except for the top 3 levels. Olive 8 probably has the best value compared to the rest of the condo/hotel projects.

Previous post

___________

AVA

Across from Olive 8, standing at about the same height is AVA. Most developers assign the higher floors for penthouse residential units to maximize as much revenue as possible. In AVA's case, they have chosen to allocate a portion of the space on the 38th level as their owners’ lounge and media room with an outdoor deck! Both AVA and Olive 8 enjoy close proximity to I5 and the transit Terminal making it easily accessible for out of town 2nd home owners. This makes for a great location to hop on to the soon to be opened light rail to get to the airport.

Previous post

____________

Stewart & Minor

Many hotel/condo projects are focused on differentiating by their location or design (e.g., AVA & Olive 8) or brand name (Four Seasons) or one of a kind offering and world class amenities (1 Hotel & Residences City suite rental options).  Stewart and Minor, a new proposed hotel/condo project, focuses on their floor plan.

If approved, the hotel/ condominium project will break ground summer 2008 with estimated completion in 2010. 150 hotel rooms (operated by a private hotel management firm yet to be selected) will take up the first 14th stories of the building with 168 loft units starting from the 15th floor to 28th floor. The condominiums range between 500-1,900 square feet. Prices will start from Low $400,000 to over $1M.

So what is so different about this project over their competition? According to the developer:

5th Ave & Stewart, Heron Tower I

There seems to be no shortage of hotel/condo projects coming on the market. 2200 Westlake/Pan Pacific hotel and Madison tower have already been completed and a few others are in the works (Olive 8, 1 Hotel Residences, Four Seasons, and AVA) including the most recently talked about Stewart and Minor.

For those who didn't think that was enough of a selection, here is another proposed 45 story hotel/condo project on the corner of 5th Ave and Stewart St, Heron Tower I.  If approved, buyers who bought into the southeast corner units of Escala will probably have their views affected.

- About Wendy

[UPDATE 2/13/08: The Heron project has been re-designed to become twin towers.  For more info, see the latest post here.)

1 Hotel & Residences

With all the doomsday media coverage of the sub-prime credit market, many Seattle home buyers have been anxiously hoping for prices to drop considerably. So far, while $5-10k reductions are becoming more common, it doesn't look like the market is giving up too much of it's gains accumulated over the recent years.

How are the hotel/condo projects affected by this? Apparently, not too much. 1 Hotel, which will be launching their private purchase appointments next month, claims to have been receiving great interest in their units. So far, 70% of their 176 city suites and 50% of their residence units are reserved (reservations require a refundable $10k deposit).

 

City Suites: 9th-16th floors

While the sales center itself is still in the works, prospective buyers are eager to find out more about the City Suites, the first of its kind in our market offering homeowners fully furnished units and the ability to participate in a rental program. The City Suites model displays clean lines, neutral colors, and 5 star hotel like finishes. Unlike many other projects which have upgrades available for homebuyers, the City Suites and Residence units will each have their own fixed offerings with no upgrades.

What you can find in the these homes:

• Flat panel TVs
• Dual flush water closets
• 5 fixture bathroom with soaking tubs

   

2200 Westlake Flippers....Still Waiting to Flip

I was doing some research for one of my clients this week who is interested in getting into a pre-sale construction project for the purpose of selling the property shortly after the construction is complete next year. While this may have been a lucrative practice a couple of years ago, the current data for 2200 Westlake investors tells an interesting story.

Specifically, there are 31 Westlake condo units on the market as of this post. Morever, 12 of them have been on the market for over 90 days and 7 of those have reduced their initial asking prices (price drops ranged from $20,000-$485,000). Regardless of whether one thinks flippers ought to make outsized profits or not, it's interesting to try and figure out what's going on. What has led to this challenges of all those pre-construction buyers who snapped up vulcan units, descended on grand openings, and listed their units for sale moments after they got the keys?

The bar chart below shows flipped units on the market by days on market -- less 30, 31-90, more than 90.

AVA condos

Seattle's soon to be tallest residential tower (445 feet), AVA will break ground this fall. Local renowned architect Weber + Thompson and award winning interior designer Garret Cord Werner will be involved in this hotel/condo project on 8^th and Pine St.

According to Blaine Weber, principal of Weber + Thompson, "AVA will be a graceful, tall and slender addition to the skyline." Ceiling heights for these homes will range from 9.5 to more than 12 feet, full height windows, air conditioning, and European inspired interiors will focus on entertainment spaces, spacious bathrooms and walk in closets and owner flexibility. Most homes will include either a balcony or a solarium (which can open to outdoors a large terrace or be enclosed to create a sunroom). Sound familiar? That's right, 1521, another W+T recent project has the window solarium feature as well.

The preview event will occur in July, home buyers will have the opportunity to view their offerings and to make a reservation prior to public release. Finishes and interior specification information will also be available during the event.

Other Weber + Thompson projects:

1521
Expo 62
Cristalla
Icon Tower
7th and Westlake

Previous post on AVA

Interested in working with a condo expert?  Contact Wendy

Technorati Tags: Eighth and Pine, 8th and Pine, downtown Seattle condos, Seattle condos, Seattle downtown condos, Olive 8, Urban condominiums, Ava condos, Live at Ava, Seattle real estate, Expo 62, 1521, Cristalla, 7th and Westlake, Icon Tower, Weber + Thompson, Weber Thompson, Garret Cord Werner