San Francisco Business Times
From the article:
If a new Oakland condo was on your Christmas list, you'd have better luck finding a Princess Elsa doll. A whopping four unsold new condos are on the market in the East Bay, with no new projects under construction, according to a report released by Polaris Pacific this week.
Developers don't want to play Scrooge, so what gives?
Prices aren't high enough
Developers aren't seeing high enough sale prices to justify the risky bet of building condos. Condos that have sold in East Bay mid-rise buildings recently have gone for about $500 a square foot — half of what they'd get in San Francisco. (Even in San Francisco, condo development isn't keeping up with pre-recession levels.)
Three East Bay condo buildings sold out in 2014: Uptown Oakland's Broadway Grand, Jack London Square's The Bond and Piedmont's Il Piedmonte. Two-bedrooms in those buildings ranged from $380,000 to $1 million.
That sounds pretty high, but the median price of condos this year is still 9 percent below the East Bay market peak in 2006, according to Polaris Pacific. Even then, developers were rattled by prices that couldn't keep pace with construction costs, as detailed in our cover story back then.
Paul Zeger, partner at Polaris Pacific, said stick-built townhomes need to garner $500 a square foot, mid-rise buildings need about $650 and highrises need about $700 a square foot in order to justify building.