Laurelon Condos Are Officially Moderately-Priced Housing

Update: We've updated the title of this post to reflect concerns voiced by a Laurelon resident. To clarify-- Laurelon condos do not meet Federal standards for affordable housing. We never claimed they did. This post used Mayor Nichol's criteria for affordable housing (as reported in the PI), not federal standards, to call Laurelon "affordable."

Nevertheless, we know full well that Mayor Nichols is pushing the limits in what he calls "affordable housing." For this reason, we're replacing the term "affordable" with the term "moderately-priced" for Laurelon throughout this site. This terminology matches what is used in the Preliminary Draft EIS, so there should be no controversy.

(Note: Please pardon the crazy new title of this post-- we had to leave most of the title intact to avoid breaking a plethora of page links.)

The mean sale price for Laurelon condos over the last twelve months appears to be roughly $245,000 (rounded up). Prices (listed in the table at the end of this post) were obtained from sold listings on Redfin.com and John L. Scott. All listed condos were 1 bed/1 bath.

Our Mayor recently proposed a new, 12-year property tax exemption for builders of "affordable housing." This tax break would be awarded to builders of condos priced up to $350,000 as long as the units are sold to couples with incomes up to $75,000. The PI's headine for this proposal: "Nickels wants to widen tax break on affordable housing" (7/25/07). The PI editorial board encouraged the Mayor, calling this proposal promising (8/3/07).

We conclude that Laurelon condos qualify as affordable housing in Seattle by the Mayor's criteria. We make no comment on whether $350,000 is actually an affordable sum for many Seattle residents.

Update Repeated: Due to confusion with federal standards, we now call Laurelon "moderately-priced" instead of "affordable" elsewhere throughout this site. No need to overstate a strong argument-- the Hospital's Preliminary Draft EIS agrees that such a "significant loss" of moderately-priced housing would be "hard to replace" in this area.

Address	Sale Price	Date Sold
4XXX 41ST AVE NE	$230,450	12/14/06
4XXX NE 46TH ST	$254,000	4/26/07
4XXX 41ST AVE NE	$255,000	6/22/07
4XXX 41ST AVE NE	$239,590	8/13/07