Living in a massive high-rise with no neighbors
This 32-story condominium in Fort Myers, Florida has 200 units and only one is occupied. The Vangelakos purchased their unit four years ago and nobody else has ever moved in. The scene sounds like something from a JG Ballard novel, which is appropriate considering I heard about it from Simon Sellars's @Ballardian Twitter stream. From the Associated Press:
"Fla. highrise has 32 stories, but just 1 tenant"Most of the other tenants in the 200-unit condo didn't close on their contracts, and the few that did have transferred to an adjacent building owned by the same company because more people live there.
The Vangelakos' mortgage lender will not allow them to do the same.
That leaves them as the sole residents of the Oasis Tower One.
"It's a beautiful building," said their attorney, John Ewing, who is representing 27 others who made deposits on units. "The problem is, it's a very lonely building."
When the Vangelakos' travel from Weehawken, N.J., to spend a week or a few days in their Florida home, they have exclusive use of the pool, game room and gym, but they miss having a few tenants around.
"Being from the city, it's very eerie," Vangelakos said. "It's almost like a scary movie."
A large, circular fountain in front of the building is dry. The automatic glass doors that lead to the front lobby are locked. On the front desk is a guest sign-in sheet. The last entry: Feb. 13, 2009.
"It's like time froze here six months ago," Ewing said.
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The first thing I'd do in that situation would be to adopt a less formal dress code for the pool area.
If I were a janitor there, I'd make life interesting for the tenant by planting disguised speakers in various rooms and corridors and playing stuff like:
* Coyotes yapping.
* Five year old girl reading from the Book of Revelations.
* Unearthly howls of tormented souls.
* Tuvan throat singing.
Sounds like heaven to me.
That would be so cool. First thing I'd do is race my bigwheel down the big lonely hallways.
Horse Badorties would know what to do, man.
...And yet they keep slapping these things up all over, here in Austin, regardless of the occupancy slump.
This is already front page USAToday stuff, but still interesting nonetheless.
I wonder, instead of getting out of the lease, they could transfer to the first floor...
Yet more zombie buildings...part of the postmodern, post-peak Oil society we live in...
I have a friend in a similar situation in a luxury condo hirise in Philly. The only one in a huge, 90% finished building. It's a little creepy, but also very cool. Post apocalyptic luxe is very sexy.
I know where I'm gonna crash the next time I have to pass through Fort Meyers...
Come play with us, Danny.
The reasonable thing to do:
Reduce prices. Because every unoccupied flat will deteriorate much faster without residents than with, plus, you can make good on at least some of the losses. Also, there are lots of possible applicants who were thrown out of their homes lately for not paying their mortgages.
The actual thing that will happen:
Nothing. The whole thing will stand empty and idle, decay and eventually be demolished. A net loss to the whole of the community, plus a few more homeless people on the street and dead people after the next hurricane bears down on inadequate housing.
Why is that? This is *not* a house. It is (together with other such erected concrete structures) a financial asset that is all that stands between the owner, his credits and his bankruptcy. If any of the flats were rented out below projected rent, the value of the asset would immediately plummet, because it just become painfully obvious that it isn't worth as much. And as the value of the asset + the net worth of the owner plummets below the owners credit with the bank, he would be bankrupt. And when he is bankrupt, the bank will have to write down some of *its* assets and *also* be one step close to its well deserved bankruptcy it is so vigorously trying to avoid. (Just about the only thing banks do with any vigor these days anyway.)
I thought these buildings alienated you from your neighbours anyway. It's just one step further to remove the neighbours entirely.
One of my neighbors keeps trying to pick me up. How do I get in on this one-person-per-building deal?
Actually, this sounds terrifying to me. I wouldn't be able to sleep. Every sound the building made would wake me up.
It does sound like a Ballard premise, although his Highrise was full of people.
It reminds me more of the 1979 French film .
Doesn't this article just put a big sign on the building saying, "Squatters and criminals, welcome"?
Because of Stefand Jones @#2 I just spend the last half hour listening to Tuvan throat singing on YouTube.
Oops. Something happened to my link. I meant to say "It reminds me more of the 1979 French film Buffet Froid" and I meant to link this http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078913/
If movies have taught me anything, when you're the only one living in a high-rise, that's when the replicants show up....
"Home again, home again, jiggity-jig. Goooooooood evening, J.F.!"
I visited the area earlier this year and saw many of these uber-sleek condos with ocean view, great location, and only a moderate risk of hurricanes. If they would just lower the prices, I bet some interesting micro communities could develop within these towers of glass and steel.
All the bankers and builders that were in on this should have to work out agreements with the government mandated housing authorities to turn these properties into affordable apartments.
Maybe it would revitalize the area and the property value would eventually stabilize. Locking people out with ludicrously high rent while the property value falls through the floor just seems so stupid.
Can we film "The Shining 2" in there?
"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"
The bigger story here is that his wife faces 10 years for embezzlement from her job which might go along way to explain how they afforded a down payment on a 1/2 million dollar condo to begin with.
Original article about condo:
http://www.news-press.com/article/20090730/NEWS0110/90729077/1002/RSS01
Original article about wife:
http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2008/06/court_official_charged_with_po.html
Then the newspaper noticed the reader comments tying the stories together and ran this piece and linked it from the top of the first article above.
http://www.news-press.com/article/20090730/BUSINESS/90730073/1076
Personally I found the whole excersize quite fascinating watching the readers tie the stories together. Be sure to read all of the comments in the news links above as well.
#18 I was much more interested in a french film titled '.' :)
Capitalism is so incredibly efficient!
Sounds like heaven..
interior design heaven!
Floor One: Industrial Modern
Floor Two: Hollywood Regency run amok
Floor Three: 1940s Carnival Absurdism
Floor Four: European Art Deco
Floor Five: WPA Americana....
Of course this is on the assumption that I OWNED the entire building.
Is Ft Myers/Naples the next Catskills?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AWeicklZGc&feature=related
Knock out five or so floors in the middle, create giant swimming pool/miniature ocean.
What they need to do is bring a bunch of old furniture up to one of the upper floors, and arrange them in the hallway. There's just something weirdly appealing about turning such an impersonal setting-- a hallway with a bunch of locked doors-- into a living space. If nothing else, it would make a pretty memorable setting for a party.
Nah, man. Seal it up tight, strap a coupla rockets on that sucker, and pow! Space Hotel!
San Diego had someone do this in the last real estate bust. Michael Berg lived alone in the 41-story One Harbor Drive (now Harbor Club) tower from 1993-1995. Said his favorite part was taking the trash out naked :-)
@Planettom
Brilliant! Yes, Bladerunner, but I was also thinking Omega Man/ I Am Legend - tho I like your reference better!
I think it would be quite cozy being the only tenant - with or without the embezzling wifey that got me there - in a 200 unit condo. Can I haz glass containers by teh pool?
tp1024 @#12 - Spot on. There's a really proof of the failure of capitalism here. Basic capitalism says that, if you have a commodity bu the market can't afford the price you want for it, you sell it at a lower price, you don't just destroy it or leave it fallow and get an instant recoup by declaring bankruptcy.
Ditto the "sounds like heaven" comment.
Wonder what it costs to keep building utilities online to serve two tenants. Crazy.
Reminds me of Sharon Stone in Sliver (1993). Question is, what's on the top floor?
The problem is specifically the "easy money policy" imposed by central banking.
This kind of malinvestment is "incentivized" by creating more credit in excess of real savings.
We then observe a feedback loop, as TP1024 so astutely summarized, where assets acquired with credit (rather than savings) are then leveraged for more cheap credit, for more malinvestments.
("When investments chase capital, that's normal. When capital chases investments, prepare for disaster.")
It's a house of cards / Ponzi scheme, where dividends on investment are only possible because of increasing the supply of credit... which originates with monetary policy at the Federal Reserve.
Ultimately, there are only two possible outcomes: the necessary deflationary correction (i.e. a coordinated depression), or hyperinflation (i.e. an uncoordinated depression).
I grew up near NASA-Johnson Space Center, off I-45 between Houston and Galveston. The old NASA Rd 1 starts at the freeway, skirts Clear Lakem and meets Galveston Bay at Seabrook. Halfway down the road, next to the tiny town of El Lago, is a finger-like extension of Pasadena, fabled metropolis of oil refineries and storage tanks, but you wouldn't know it to look at the Clear Lake end. The Pasadena cops do, so keep a close watch on the speed limit signs and don't panic if a squad car tailgates you for the mile or so you're inside the Pasadena city limit. They're just running your plates and hoping to panic you into going a mile over the speed limit running a yellow light.
In 2008, at the height of the real-estate boom, of course, some developers put up a 30-story condo tower called Endeavour, with units selling at $400,000 and up. It's the tallest building in the Bay Area, and they were going to put up four just like it, with more development planned for the area.
Fast forward to Jun 2009, and the building is in bankruptcy, with just under half of the units sold. The land destined for the other towers has already been sold.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/biz/6445525.html
The comments are worth a read also. Slight update:
http://blogs.chron.com/eastharris/2009/06/court_to_appoint_trustee_for_e.html#trackbacks
With 36 of the 80 units sold, chances are the place is more deserted than the numbers would imply, as it's a good bet that a lot of sales went to speculators or flippers who never planned to move in at all.
http://www.houstonarchitecture.com/haif/index.php?showtopic=1504&st=180
My dad mentioned that the semicircular front drive wasn't wide enough to accommodate an ambulance and a resident almost died. FAIL.
@#15 : I also immediately thought at Buffet Froid when reading this. Surrealist movie where the only residents of a huge apartment building in (at the time) brand new La Défense district near Paris are a cop (Blier) and a man (Depardieu) who has memory issues and believes he might have murdered somebody. All about people going nuts and lonely in huge modern places.
But but... if we reduce the prices of the apartments, how do we keep the riffraff out?
#12 posted by tp1024
There was a thing on This American Life not too long ago about these empty condo units, except it was set on the north side of Chicago.
The cool thing is, I hear that either in NYC or Chicago (Sorry, it's still early and I'm lazy) they're going to try to force the developers to rent these places out to Section 8 tenants. Absolutely fantastic idea, if you ask me - poor people don't deserve to live in shitty places just because they're poor.
Also, I know that it most likely won't really happen, but it's nice to think that maybe, just maybe, some of those disgusting real estate developers will get their comeuppance.
The last thing that I'd want is for the whole country to know that I live alone in this huge highrise.
I don't know how much sympathy one should have for them.
http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2009/08/why_new_jerseys_going_south_fa.html
I am the only resident in my condo building in NYC. Sadly, though, we have no pool. I've gotten quite used to it though, and kind of enjoy it while everyone else sorts out their mortgages and such.
This thread has nothing to do with AP licensing. Off-topic comments removed.
Ballard...this is past Ballard, this is Samuel R. Delaney!
That would be awesome. My own sniping tower for one thing.
Then I'd build the airplane which takes off from my window.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085426/
@#2: LOL!
This (like the pictures from Detroit a few days ago, etc etc) are trying to tell us that something is broken.