Downtown Everett Condo Conversion

Most of the stories I post on here are about trends and big-picture type things, but it's good once in a while to look at individual examples of how the housing craze is affecting people and places around the Puget Sound. In that vein, here's a story about "downtown Everett's biggest apartment building," its impending sale and likely conversion into condos.

In Mastro Properties' sales flier about the Nautica, it boasts that the complex is "ready for conversion to condos." All around the Puget Sound area, apartment complexes are being bought and transformed into condo blocks to meet demand for such housing.

"Developing condos from the ground up on raw land is becoming a very risky proposition for most developers. So the alternative is looking at apartments that are already constructed ... and convert what is here," Hoban said.

Living at the whim of the property owner is certainly one of the downsides of renting, but for my money it's still better than being a slave to a ridiculously high mortgage.

(Eric Fetters, Everett Herald, 03.16.2006)