Downtown was the epicenter of non-owner occupied flipper speculation, driving up not only prices but new starts. It will suffer the appropriate fate now that the speculators have retreated and the units sit empty.
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“Unlike single family houses, apartment/condo* buildings don’t age very well. They’ll look old and tired in a decade or two. Then no one will want to live in them anymore.”
This blanket statement is flat-out untrue, not to mention irrelevant. Several of the prestige buildings downtown are older yet remain an elite address (see Harbor Club and the Meridian, for example). There is nothing “old and tired” about these addresses. And a sfr can certainly look more than “old and tired in a decade or two”.
Regardless, the simple fact is that “old and tired” properties have been selling like hotcakes in SD for years. How many “old and tired” houses in Clairemont or North Park were snapped up over the past 7 years?
While the more weathered properties are likely to languish in a buyers’ market (unless priced extremely well), in a market leaning slightly to largely in favor of the sellers there certainly will be many who will bid on and indeed live in these types of properties. To suggest otherwise shows ignorance of the very market we have just transitioned out of.
