Dr. Delores Conway, director of the Casden Real Estate Economics Forecast at the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate, is quoted in the April 23, 2009 edition of Los Angeles Times:
Downtown builder brings high-rise condo project to market at a tough time
Los Angeles Times
By Roger Vincent
...When the Concerto high-rise condominium project opens this year in downtown Los Angeles, developer Hassan "Sonny" Astani will be lucky not to lose his shirt. With the market for condos in woeful decline, he already knows he won't make much money -- if any. Progress, at this point, would be to complete the $300-million project while staying out of bankruptcy.
Astani's struggles to keep the project going, his flirtations with disaster and his near-heroic efforts to save a project that is woefully out of time with the market are a painful illustration of the difficulties that face developers when boom goes bust. Theirs is a business with a long timeline -- it takes years to bring a large project to fruition. But a lively market can go bust in a matter of months. And then what do you do?
"There is a huge inventory of unsold condos in downtown L.A.," said Delores Conway of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate. "The supply is exceeding demand..."
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April 23, 2009