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bearishgurl
ParticipantBased upon my rough calculations, each single family home will start out with MR about $1450 – $1500 year and condos $1064 – $1140 year which will go up 2% per year into perpetuity because there are no bonds to “retire.”
That has the same financial effect to the homeowner of adding $145K to $150K to the purchase price compared to a similarly-situated living unit nearby which does not have all these fees (Mello Roos) attached to it.
All the former arguments for MR here on the forum stated that they (the Pigg buyers) felt they got a better deal because they got more house for the money than they would have had they NOT bought into a CFD.
At Horse Creek Ridge, the opposite appears to be true due to the negotiations crafty County (who is NOT going to be left holding the bag) made with this developer.
ParticipantIf “Horse Creek will fund services only and not use long term bonds,” I’m now reading this that the fees for the CFD(s) (Mello Roos) would be indefinite. The County can never terminate its services to the development, right?
Somebody correct me here if I have this wrong.
Participant[quote=The-Shoveler]BG there is already an approved project just a little north of there DR Horton Horse Creek ridge (a little smaller project but still good sized)
http://www.drhorton.com/California/San-Diego/Fallbrook/Horse-Creek-Ridge.aspx
It is right off the 76 and I-15, there will be a lot of shopping going in there as well on the corners of the 76 and I-15.
Sprawl, it’s coming.[/quote]
Hearing Jan. 29 regarding Horse Creek Ridge development in Interstate 15 corridor will establish special tax district
By Joe Naiman on December 19, 2013
On Jan. 29, a public hearing will be held to establish a Community Facilities District (CFD) for the Horse Creek Ridge development, slated for the east side of Interstate 15 near State Route 76.
The hearing will take place at 2 p.m. in the hearing room at the County Operations Center at 5520 Overland Drive in San Diego. A 5-0 San Diego County Board of Supervisors vote Dec. 4 set the hearing date while also finding that the assessment district creation is within the scope of the project’s Environmental Impact Report adopted in May 2011.
“The Community Facilities District is an effective mechanism to fund parks, trails, and open space that will directly serve the future residents of Horse Creek Ridge,” said Supervisor Bill Horn.
The Horse Creek Ridge development is the residential segment of the Campus Park project approved by the Board of Supervisors in May 2011. The approved map calls for 521 single-family residences and 230 condominium dwelling units.
The one percent base property tax will not be sufficient to cover county, San Diego County Flood Control District, or North County Fire Protection District services which will be needed to serve the district. The County of San Diego and Horse Creek Ridge developer D.R. Horton (who purchased the residential component of Campus Park from Passarelle, LLC) have been working to create a CFD which would include a special tax to pay for services not funded by the regular property tax. The revenue would be distributed through a Joint Community Facilities Agreement which stipulates the collection process as well as the distribution process.
The CFD would allow for the collection of three special taxes: one for county services, one for flood control services (although the county supervisors also serve as the board of the San Diego County Flood Control District and the flood control district is administered by the county’s Department of Public Works, it is a separate legal district), and one for fire and emergency medical services. The initial tax for county services would be $655 per single-family residential unit, $496 per multi-family residential unit, and $5,256 per acre of undeveloped property. The base tax to fund flood control needs would be $267 per single-family unit, $203 per multi-family unit, and $2,144 per undeveloped acre.
There would be no levy for fire protection and emergency medical services on the undeveloped property. Each single-family unit would initially be assessed $201 for the fire and emergency medical services tax while each multi-family dwelling unit would be assessed $153.
The initial tax amount is for fiscal year 2014-15. The taxes would be increased by two percent annually to cover the increased cost of services.
“It’s also going to fund the park facilities and trails as well as two large detention basins,” said Michele Stress, the special districts program coordinator for the county’s Department of Public Works. “Those are all public facilities that will be funded by the CFD.”
The property will also be part of Zone A of the San Diego County Street Lighting District and property owners will pay that annual assessment, which is currently $6.48 per benefit unit.
In 2007, the county supervisors adopted Board Policy I-136 which outlines how potential CFD projects will be evaluated, ensures that CFDs are created for the public good, and stipulates disclosure requirements which notify prospective property owners of the assessment. Policy I-136 also defines credit requirements to protect bondholders from default for CFDs which issue bonds for reimbursement of constructed infrastructure, although Horse Creek Ridge will fund services only and will not use long-term bonds. Horse Creek Ridge would be the second CFD in unincorporated San Diego County; the first is in Harmony Grove.
The first step required to form a CFD is a petition from the developer, which has been received along with the proposed boundary map. The Dec. 4 adoption of an intent to form a CFD is the next step, followed by the noticed public hearing and adoption of a resolution forming the CFD. At the Jan. 29 hearing the county supervisors will consider not only the establishment of the Horse Creek Ridge CFD but also the proposed rate and method of apportionment of the collection of the special tax, the Joint Community Facilities Agreements with the North County Fire Protection District and the San Diego County Flood Control District, and other elements of the CFD.
On Oct. 22, the North County Fire Protection District board voted 5-0 to approve the Joint Community Facilities Agreement for Horse Creek Ridge. Seven percent of the one percent base property tax assessed on the land will be provided to the fire district along with the CFD assessment.
Because the proposed CFD area is currently uninhabited and D.R. Horton is the sole property owner, a consent and waiver will allow for a waiver of the normal election procedure to form the CFD and the ballot to form the CFD can be returned immediately upon the adoption of the resolution forming the assessment district.
(emphasis mine)
Well, I haven’t yet had a chance to peruse the minutes from the 1/29/14 BOS meeting but it sounds to me like County is NOT willing to take the hit for the cost of their services rendered to this community (like their brethren cities (stupidly) did in recent years and then when homeowners bailed en masse and defaulted on their property tax bills, they were stuck with the huge payroll for city personnel to service these outlying new subdivisions and ended up having to lay off hundreds of employees. (This is only the 2nd CFD that SD County has had before them for consideration, the first one being in Harmony Grove (Olivenhain Encinitas).)
If my math is right, the cost of all the proposed county services add up to $1129 per SFR unit and $858 per condo unit which will be increased 2% per year to pay for the increasing cost of services for this new area. This means each homeowner’s Mello Roos tax will go up 2% annually, along with the their base ad-valorem (1%) portion of their tax bill. The above amount does not include the cost of building and maintaining “park facilities and trails as well as two large detention basins” maintained by County Public Works.
The developer paid $7400 per acre for county services and flood control only for FY 14/15 ($5256 + $2144). Whether or not the CFD(s) have actually been formed yet, these fees will rise to $7548 per acre in FY 15/16 under DR Horton’s agreement with SD County and no ground has even been broken yet!
Does anybody know if there will be HOA dues as well for the single family homes … or two sets of dues, one for the “Master Assn” and one for each subdivision or condo assn?
WOW, County isn’t fooling around. They’re going to make bank here!
Oh, and I’m sure DR Horton is going to pass those ($3M++?) in fees County will have already collected from them onto the purchase price of each unit. Why not?
Hope all the worker-bee types who end up buying into this project (because they won’t read the fine print) get nice raises every year cuz they’re certainly going to need them! They’re going to get ripped a new a$$hole in compounded increases in their MR fees over their years of ownership.
Participant[quote=The-Shoveler]This is one example but there are many smaller (but still fairly large housing and planned communities) happening all along the I-15 corridor in IE and San Diego county.
http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-property-report-ontario-20141106-story.html
They all start out as bedroom communities then they evolve into Cities, just they way it has been for 75 or more years now.
Here is another in SD
YIKES! Okay, I’m going to take a stab at the proposed Newland Merriam development first (in SD County), which is currently not a whole lot more than a figment of Newland’s imagination:
[img_assist|nid=25468|title=Boulders, scrub & snakes|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=100|height=55]
WOWZA! First of all, according to your linked article, Newland RE Group (the *new* developer) somehow acquired (or hasn’t actually acquired yet?) this (unusable) land from Stonegate Dev Group, who couldn’t get approval from SD County just five years ago to build 2630 units on it. Newland’s plan calls for 2135 units which isn’t slated to be before the Board of Supervisors until the end of 2016 (at the earliest). Except for District 3 (NCC) all those same supervisors who were present for the vote five years ago will still be present at the end of 2016 to vote again on a slightly smaller version on 435 acres on the south end of the Merriam Mtns with community parks and trails on 1200 acres in the north end.
This area borders the Deer Springs Road area/exit of Escondido, which for many years was heavily sandbagged for several months per year due to road erosion from rain. But this did nothing for the occasional landslide or rockslide onto the road, which blocked Deer Springs/Mtn Meadows residents from entering /exiting their homes from I-15, until the debris could be removed.
There are burning questions in my mind as to how a development of this magnitude (or any development, for that matter) is going to “pencil out” for a developer in this very rugged, hilly terrain.
Was/is Newland aware that a portion of Deer Springs/Mtn Meadows residents (directly to the south of their proposed development) and a good portion of Valley Center residents (directly to the east) do not have access to sewer? How do they propose to bring sewer lines into these 445 acres to build 2135 homes on?
How are they going to remove all this big rock (average 1500 – 2000 lbs apiece)? With a helicopter?? What about the rest of the rock partially buried that we can’t see in the picture? How are they going to carve out a road wide enough to get heavy equipment up there and how are they going to park it to do its work? How are they going to prevent rock(s) tumbling down onto a “real” road or someone’s land below while they’re working and hurting or killing somebody? If they’ve got all this figured out, how much is all this “rock excavation” going to cost them?
Assuming Newland is able to get a road and sewer up there and pads in for the first phase, how much will each house cost? If they have to charge over $800K each for a <=2000 sf one-story home (due to extensive prep work of the land), who is going to pay that much to live in a smaller-lot subd in Esco/Fallbrook when they can buy an acreage in Deer Springs/Mtn Meadows or Valley Center for the same price or less? Where is the school bus stop going to be? On the I-15 ramp?? How many miles away will the assigned elem school be before the new school is finally completed (the plans only call for an elem school to be built up there). How many homes out of the 2135 planned have to be finished before construction on the school has started? (I see construction slow-going due to several obstacles.) How many minutes away are groceries and gas until Newland can get some services in there? 25 minutes? More? Will a resident have to use I-15 if they need anything at all? What if the demand isn’t there (due to location, price or both) after 1-2 phases are built and Newland decides not to build any more? Will they still build the elementary school and parkland shown in their community plan . . . or some of it? Or will they leave the first 300-400 units up there isolated in their own little “ghost town?” How are these new homeowners going to get fire insurance and how much is it going to cost? How much will Newland pay for fire insurance while it is building and are they going to pass this (exorbitant) cost onto homebuyers? I see from the article, that, in Newland’s plan, the new fire station was scrapped (it was present in the former Stonegate plan). I think that’s a very bad idea. I don’t see fire hydrants (if installed) working very well up there, lol, and I don’t see fire trucks from below being able to get up there very quickly. The way I see it, their only option is fighting fires from the air. How much is this "standby service" going to cost on a homeowner's tax bill .... in addition to MR (and HOA dues?) Sorry, I just don’t think this project is viable. It’s going to be interesting to see how far Newland gets with it. They must be very desperate to develop subdivisions if the Merriam Mtns is the only land in SD County they can come up with in their proposal.
Participant[quote=davelj]I, for one, and at long last, am moving to Baja. I’ve bought the lot, signed a lease on a rental (to live in while the house is being built), sold one of my two condos here in SD, and the one I’m living in will be for sale shortly. My new house will be a 15 minute drive from the border.
I know it’s going to be hell getting the house built – I expect the full panoply of delays, bribes, shenanigans, etc. But that will eventually come to an end. I’ve already managed my expectations to rock-bottom levels.
Anyhow, I’ll report back (in a year?) when it’s done…[/quote]
I know a few people from SD who have bought a vacation home in Baja and/or retired down there but did not build their own home. I’m curious. What made you decide to build your own house in Baja, davelj? Are you going to “own” the land it sits on?
ParticipantI just looked over the bill and feel that if it passes the way it is written, the State Bureau of Automotive Repair is going to make it harder and harder for older-vehicle owners to continue to get their vehicles registered every year, in spite of being meticulously maintained. I could see the BAR increasing the “smog check” to every year on vehicles older than ~20 years and putting those vehicles through other “tests” which have nothing to do with emissions. This will cause low-wage workers who typically drive older vehicles they purchased for cash to go into debt to buy a newer vehicle and will cause retired people on limited incomes who drive older vehicles (there are a LOT of these people) to donate them or junk them when they can no longer register them and begin using public transportation. The BAR is already very intrusive as to the condition of older vehicles with its use of a biennial “directed vehicle program” (into STAR stations). I can only imagine what will come next if this bill is passed as written.
Participant[quote=no_such_reality]You realize it takes close to an hour to cross Irvine at rush hour? That the 405 and 5 southbound traffic out of southbay and east LA is heavier than the traffic going into LA?
A job in downtown LA will take me about an hour to commute to. A job in the UCI/Newport area will take close to the same. One iis easily less than half the distance of the other.
Apparently the trivial solution is to sell my hell suburban place and move to Corona del Mar or Westside. Although coworkers from the west side have told me plenty of horror stories about taking an hour to get five miles. CDM is great, takes a half an hour to get out of it though so hopefully I work in about a three mile radius.
But let’s not let the reality of 18 million people wanting lives intrude on our anti development rants.[/quote]
Well, I’ve been busy on and off reading over (and investigating) Shoveler’s links of new development and proposed new development in the Southland and my first reaction was, “OMG, delusion reigns!”
I agree with everything you’re saying, NSR. On Friday afternoon, June 30, it took me 5.5 hours to go 166 miles across the southland to get home. That’s a record for me. I totally agree about the gridlock in the OC, both in the east and west side. This is all the more reason that a LA/OC worker bee shouldn’t be freeway dependent if at all possible. Or have multiple alternate routes scoped out. It also helps to live less than 15 miles from work (<=8 is much more doable on a daily basis. I'm not the only one opposed to any more growth. Most CA city/county officials (the ones that cast their votes on zoning, permit requests and proposed subdivision development) have learned their lessons the hard way and are now opposed to new subdivision development as well. Every single extra police and fire personnel that has to be hired for new, exurban police/fire stations has to be paid for periodic overtime and budgeted for pension contributions. Mello-Roos bonds only cover the cost of building the public infrastructure itself. It does NOT cover the compensation of the humans who will be stationed inside it. These extra salaries and pension contributions caused massive layoffs in all city/county depts in recent years when their property tax proceeds dwindled. This was just 1-3 years after hiring hundreds of new workers in jurisdictions where too many subdivision permits were approved during the "boom times." This happened in Chula Vista and many other cities in CA and heavily contributed to the City of San Bernardino's BK filing. Cities/counties must be assured of being able to pay new employees going forward to adequately staff services for the proposed new population before they will commit to new (outlying) subdivision permits (assuming there is any land left for subdivisions).
Participant[quote=Leorocky]The state Department of Finance projects that California will grow from about 39 million people now to more than 51 million by 2060. Though the state’s growth rate is relatively slow, the Public Policy Institute of California said in a brief in February that as the population expands, California will shoulder “increased demand in all areas of infrastructure and public services – including education, transportation, corrections, housing, water, health and welfare.”
But concern about growth runs counter to demographers’ greater worry: Not that California is growing too fast, but that its population is growing too slowly.
“It’s totally the wrong question,” said Dowell Myers, a University of Southern California demography professor. “Without immigrants, California would be dead as a doornail. We don’t have enough children right now as it is to replace the workforce and the tax base … when Californians retire.”Myers attributes fear of population growth to a mindset formed in the 1980s, when population grew rapidly. He said “a lot of people’s attitudes about immigration … stem from that period” and are now “behind the times.”
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article25672837.html%5B/quote%5D
Leorocky, more immigrants or no, everyone has to live somewhere. If living units are capped in a jurisdiction and its occupancy is near 100%, then the newcomer will have to shop for housing in the next city over. Take San Mateo (SM Co), for example. It has and is surrounded by thousands of high-paying jobs but the amount of its living units have been capped for more than 35 years. If a new employee of a nearby company cannot find housing in San Mateo due to “no vacancy,” they will have to shop for housing in the next town over. And on and on until they find suitable housing for themselves. San Mateo has PLENTY of vacant land but it was all dedicated to open space in the 1930’s through early ’60’s. This is the case in most CA jurisdictions, especially in the most desirable coastal areas to live and there is nothing anyone here (or any “forecasting think tank” or “bureaucrat”) can do about this. Gubment officials can “forecast” a future CA “population explosion” of 12M more people all they want but the reality will be quite different, IMO. From the article, the Governor is essentially saying it is up to cities and counties how they want to (upzone?) to accomodate increases in population. I doubt too many cities are going to attempt to upzone their residential areas wholesale simply because they can’t afford to hire and pay the extra city/county personnel that a big increase in population will need. I could see a city/county giving lip service to scattered low-rise live and work lofts over commercial buildings, just to say, “Look what we did. We’re promoting `density!'” But they’re not going to utilize their (now bare bones) personnel constantly preparing for and appearing in public hearings fighting private property owners and neighbors for years over proposed density projects. It’s not going to happen because the prospective “developers” will just get tired of throwing money away on “environmental testing and mitigation” and go somewhere else in search of building permits.
If CA companies can’t find enough employees in the state in the year 2060 (in spite of well over a hundred CA universities churning out graduates twice yearly as well as attempting to recruit from out of state), then some CA companies might move somewhere else. Do we care?
CA “retirees” will retire in place or elsewhere in the state. A small portion will leave the state to retire but this will even be a smaller portion of current homeowners. That doesn’t necessarily mean more houses will be on the market in established areas. If it costs a retiree next to nothing to hang onto the home they had while they were working, they will, and rent it out for monthly income. This is especially prevalent in the SF bay area, where retirees have the highest net worth in the state (in the aggregate). Meaning they don’t have to sell the old family homestead to buy their retirement home. The more rural areas many CA retirees have and will retire to are not attractive to a worker-bee trying to raise a family, due to lack of good jobs and isolation from major freeways. So those areas are off the table and do not add to the state’s population as their new inhabitants have simply traded residency in one county for another. There are ALWAYS rental vacancies available in CA’s small towns but often very few listings available for sale at any given time (depending on town).
Props 13, 58 and 193 has and will see to it that the state could eventually become home to mostly longtime resident-retirees and their children (who may or may not need a FT job to exist). This will be the “homeowner class” and new immigrants (if they’re still coming) will be the “renter” and “new homebuyer” classes.
That’s how I envision CA’s future and I don’t feel it is entirely bad.
Participant[quote=The-Shoveler]LOL So no large scale development is happening now or in the future in Socal?[/quote]
Shoveler, why don’t you post some link(s) where this is happening. How big will the subdivision be and how long ago was the land purchased for subdivision purposes? WHO originally purchased the land and why has it not been heretofore developed?
ParticipantCommuting over one hour each way to work 4-5 days per week for a parent (especially BOTH parents in a family) is a horrible way to raise a family unless that family has reliable local relatives available at all hours to pick up/drop off their kids or care for them themselves.
This is just my opinion which is based upon the many available housing alternatives out there for families with children.
Participant[quote=The-Shoveler]What happens if there is no lower paid spouse?
Both are highly paid professionals?
The above is very common these days.
Easier said than done.[/quote]
If they are both “highly-paid professionals” than the one who can get a state license and hang their own shingle locally should (if they want to remain in their current home for the long haul).
Participant[quote=The-Shoveler]You realize Ventura, Westlake, Irvine and Newberry park used to be exurb’s right?[/quote]
Yes, I get all that. Some of that occurred when the rest of these counties’ open space had not yet been set aside. But when there is no more land for subdivisions, there is no more land, period. Game over. Billionare developers would not have packed up and left SoCal if there was anything here left for them.
The areas you mention above were mostly developed between the ’60’s thru ’90’s (mostly ’80’s). Irvine (in the OC) was developed up through about 10-15 years ago.
Participant[quote=The-Shoveler][quote=bearishgurl]Oh, and people CAN drive less, Shoveler. Uhhh, it’s very simple. They can move closer to work! Novel suggestion if I do say so myself! No one … and I mean NO ONE is “trapped” in exurban hell. Everybody has choices in life and can vote with their feet if they don’t like the length of their daily commute.[/quote]
Easier said than done, What it your spouse works close and you just got laid off and your next job is 45-50 miles the other direction?
Happens all the time.[/quote]
I’m sure it does, Shoveler. The solutions I see are that the spouse should have taken a lesser-paying job closer to home, should keep looking for a good closer job while still working far way or the family could sell and move 20-25 miles so they are living between both employers. However, I don’t feel moving is a good option unless the spouse with the far-away job has passed his/her probationary period and feels secure in their new position.
I really feel that if your sample worker-bee couple had purchased a home in a more central location where there might be hundreds of available FT job openings within a ~15 mile radius at any given time, they wouldn’t have likely run into this problem during the years they resided in their home and BOTH of the parents would have had more time with the kid(s) (if there are kid(s)).
The above paragraph and the reason you cite above for long daily commutes to work is the main reason why subdivisions in “exurban hell” are more transient, Shoveler. And the homeowners who live there are more financially vulnerable than those in more established areas, causing housing distress and neighborhood (financial) volatility. During a “RE bust,” these areas are the first to fall in value and the last to rise in value during a recovery. Not only that, they fall the furthest in value (50% or more) compared to the entire region they are situated in. This phenomenon is due to the prevalent type of buyer who chooses to purchase in these areas being entirely dependent on a steady W-2 income for a living, imho.
Participant[quote=paramount][quote=bearishgurl] No one … and I mean NO ONE is “trapped” in exurban hell. [/quote]
Can you please elaborate on what you mean by “exurban hell”?[/quote]
“Exurban hell” refers to areas where there is a dearth of jobs that pay well enough to support a household …. or even half of a household in comparison with its population. That said, many families choose to move to exurban hell all the while knowing that their commute(s) to work will be an hour-plus each way. These people made the bed they’re sleeping in and continue to sleep in it every day they choose to remain where they are living.
I have nothing against anyone’s housing choices, paramount (including yours or mine). But I am in the camp of those who firmly believe that every single able-bodied adult of sound mind needs to take responsibility for themselves and own their own sh!t (choices they made). In my experience, too many adults (boomers and seniors included) are of the “victim” mentality where they incessantly complain about having been a “victim” (of someone else) their entire lives and this is the reason they weren’t able to accomplish xxx or are in a compromising or seemingly untenable position today.
It’s akin to buying a home directly under an airport landing path and then claiming the noise is ruining your hearing (and quality of life).
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