Apartments, Conundrum

Apartment City 

Apartment City 

While we are aware that Norfolk is chock full of apartments, with more in the pipeline, seeing the statistics makes it even more apparent that Norfolk is really a city of transients.

And transients don’t vote or care to vote because they are too transient to care about food trucks or art districts or poverty.

Norfolk tried to attract homeowners during the middle of the last decade, with its “Come Home to Norfolk” slogan and campaign.

The city can point to East Beach as an example. But that is an isolated example.

Yet renters reign.

The number of owner-occupied units rose from 39, 238 in 2000 to 39,242 in 2010, the year of the annual census.

Meanwhile, the number of renter occupied units rose from 46,972 in 2000 to 47,233 in 2010.

Now we love apartments. They are all the rage.

It used to be condos, until the market collapsed.

It used to be houses, until the market collapsed.

Now it’s apartments, which may never collapse.

But the assessed value of apartments amounts to less than 10 percent of the total assessed value of properties in the city.

Residences, however, generate the bulk of property values and thus make up the majority of tax revenue for the city.

Yet property values of homes declined from fiscal year 2011 to fiscal year 2012, which ended July 1, 2012.

	2011	2012	Change	%
Apartments	$1,451,404,500	$1,564,411,100	$113,006,600	7.79
Commercial	$3961,217,600	$980,759,200	$19,541,600	4.93
Residential	$12,052,092,600	$11,573,448,500	$478,644,100	-3.97

Source: Norfolk Real Estate Assessor Annual Report, Fiscal Year 2012

A Conundrum

A Conundrum
Figure this one out and let me know.

Following Mayor Paul Fraim’s speech Friday, February 8, the city issued a press release saying it had agreed to buy to purchase the Traveler’s Inn motel and property located at 800 East Ocean View Boulevard for $800,000.

Kapan Enterprises LLC is the owner of the property, which the city assessed at $1,006,000, according to City Council documents.

Yet the sale isn’t final until City Council approves the sale. Today. February 12, four days after the city announced the purchase.

An out of town group offered to buy and develop the property but withdraw because the city changed its mind and decided to issue a request for proposals for the property, according to several people familiar with the situation.

The property is located in Super Ward 6, represented by Barclay Winn, who won re-election last May, and Ward 5, represented by Tommy Smigiel Jr.

If I were a property owner, I wouldn’t agree to sell the property until I knew the bigwigs would approve the sale.

Or maybe Kapan LLC had assurances that City Council would certainly approve the sale.