Long Beach Own Your Own-OYO-Owners Are Organizing for Condo Conversion-Breaking Long Beach Real Estate News
4 Comments »Breaking Long Beach Real Estate News:
Long Beach Own Your Own (OYO) Owners Are Organizing for Condo Conversion. Back in May the Long Beach Real Estate Home Blog published an article on OYO’s. So many buyers were inquiring about this form of ownership it made sense to publish an article, explaining this form of ownership, to be found on the Internet. Well it has been found, by several thousand Long Beach and potential Long Beach residents who have indeed read it, including many frustrated Long Beach OYO owners. Several days ago I was contacted by the lovely Deb Dobias, a Long Beach OYO owner who is a major contributing force in the quest to organize OYO owners to push state and local officials to loosen the reigns and convert the last of the existing Long Beach OYO’s to condos. Deb went on to explain what these owners have been up against and the efforts they have put forth. We invited her to write an article here and are very pleased that she accepted our offer.
It is our sincere hope that the District Weekly, Curbed LA, the Grunion and Downtown Gazettes, the Press Telegram, the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register will also pick up this article or will contact Deb and assist in this noble effort with an article of their own to help these troubled OYO owners. It is our further hope that both California state and local officials will get out of the box and make this happen.
Please understand that many of these owners are in deep trouble. They cannot sell their Own Your Own (OYO) homes because there is little or no financing available. Due to the problems plaguing this form of ownership many owners have rented their units out and have moved on. In doing so they have decreased the level of owner occupied units in the remaining OYOs which has eliminated any chance for a Long Beach buyer to obtain financing to purchase.
In July 2008 the Long Beach Real Estate Blog offered the communities of Long Beach a place to be published. This is another in a series of articles by Long Beach residents. Do You Want to be Published?
OYO
Conversions – An
untapped resource for Affordable Housing
Author: Deb Dobias
The City of
Long Beach Housing is under-served in providing affordable housing to
“first-time home buyers” and seniors on fixed incomes. “While Long Beach Housing Trust” continues to
build new projects for affordable housing, low income or fixed income buyers
are still unable to have enough funding to pay the down payment. Building costs
keep the price of these “Affordable” Long Beach homes high.
Purchasing Own
Your Own Apartments (OYO) in Long Beach is a means to becoming stakeholders and being
able to afford to buy apartment homes for reasonable sums. OYOs were the pre-cursors to Condos, usually
built before the 1960s. Long Beach has a large number of these
charming, well-kept, usually small buildings.
Most Long Beach OYOs, even after Condo Conversion, would sell for less than newer
“Affordable Housing”; this could
significantly add to the City’s Affordable Housing. Best of all, making it possible for people to
buy these affordable Long Beach homes would leave the Housing Trust funds for more
housing in Long Beach.
Little Problem…
Someone
who wants to buy a Long Beach OYO usually cannot get financing like Condos can. When a bank does offer loans, it usually
requires a high owner-occupancy in the OYO complex. For the past few years, only Long Beach investors could
cough up the cash to buy these places, so owner-occupancy is often low.
Which causes more problems…
One lady in our building got sick and
couldn’t work for a while. Our building, a Long Beach OYO,
had some serious maintenance issues so we had to levy some special assessments,
which she couldn’t pay. The City of Long Beach has Rehab Loans for low-income owners of houses or Condos, but not for
OYOs. This poor lady wound up having to sell
her OYO home for a very low price and move in with family. Had we been able to convert, she could have kept
her home.
- Many Long Beach OYO owners are elderly. Reverse mortgages are not available to OYOs in Long Beach.
- No home equity loans are available to
OYOs. This often causes owners to vote
against maintenance assessments or to avoid maintaining their own units. These are older buildings, so this affects
Long Beach neighborhoods and tenants as well as owners.
- A lady who lived in her OYO home told me that she wanted to take out an
equity loan so she could invest in another property. Renting that property would help her to pay
bills when she retires. She has
excellent credit and owes nothing on her OYO.
She cannot do this simply because her OYO complex can’t prove who lived
there in 1982!
Why can’t OYOs just convert to Condominiums?
California has an outdated law that prevents many OYOs
from converting. This law requires that
an OYO complex prove that they were at least 75% owner-occupied in 1982.
Why?
Since OYOs are already individually owned, there is a section of laws
that allows OYOs to convert in a different way than rental buildings. Part of this law was written to prevent
developers from owning OYOs, then converting them to condo for profit more
cheaply and easily than converting a rental building. They figured this 1982 owner-occupancy
requirement would close that loophole.
Twenty-six years later, this law not only doesn’t serve its intent but
very few people can come up with that kind of proof because no one keeps
records that long.
We
tried to fix it.
Long story short -
the City of Long Beach won’t grant exceptions to this because it’s a California State Law. We couldn’t get the California State Law corrected via
an Omnibus Bill sponsored by Senator Lowenthal because a Tenants Rights group
objected. The next step is to try to get
separate bill sponsored by a legislator.
Wait. Why would a Tenants Rights group object?
Understandably,
they worry about the large number of rental buildings that have been converted
to Condos in Long Beach. When they do that, it boots
people out of their Long Beach homes and makes fewer rental apartments available so the
rents are higher. When it comes to OYOs,
though, it’s a matter of converting units that have already been individually
owned for 50 years. Who owns these
places won’t change with conversion.
Some OYO owners may sell their unit/s after conversion; many of those would sell
whether they are converted or not.
Conversion
helps tenants, too!
Rental Availability
OYO’s in Long Beach provide an
approach for “Mom & Pop” owners to enter into the investment/rental market
which can continue or increase the availability of rental units. Once loans are made available, these new
rental unit owners will be motivated to maintain and upgrade their units.
Maintenance
Of course,
maintenance isn’t a tenant’s job since they are paying rent. Because there is no financing available to
OYO buildings, owners have less money available to them for maintenance and
upgrades. It lowers the quality of life
for everyone.
Owning your own
There’s a guy in my OYO building who has
rented his unit for 23 years through 3 changes of ownership. He wants very badly to buy his place, and
could afford it now, but there is no financing available.
His landlord charges as much rent as the market will bear, which is
typical. His housing costs would
increase at a much slower rate if he could own his home.
The new legislation would ease the condo conversion issues so
that there are loans available for these “self owned
apartments”. There are great loan
programs out there for first-time home buyers in Long Beach, some with no down payment. The new proposed legislation will help these
kinds of Long Beach properties get the financing needed to make them available to those of
us who need affordable housing.
For more info on
this law and our efforts to correct it, visit our website.
Contact us with
your comments, questions, or if you can help us to change this law. We are gathering a list of OYO buildings for
the sole purpose of helping change the law.
If you own an OYO home, please add your building to the list!
Deb Dobias
Deb@OwnYourOwnCondo.org
We
have supporters from the following OYO complexes,
as well as Realtors and HOA Property Managers.
Our list is growing. This list only partially covers
the Long Beach area but we are expanding our search.
Please contact us to add your name to our list of
supporters or if you can help us change this law.
700 E 1st St
Ocean View Apts or Ocean Gardens.
1311 E 1st
2225 E 2nd street
The Montclair
1250 E 3rd
1250 E 4Th St
1280 E 4Th St
Clarendon OYO Apartments
1739 Appleton
Palm Garden Apts.
617 Cedar
354 Chestnut Ave
Welles Apartment HOA
325 Elm Ave
Princess Apartments
82 Lime Ave
Lime Ave OYO
337 Lime Ave
Villa Aqua
1101 E Ocean Blvd
*Disclaimer: The opinions and statements in this article are not necessarily the sentiments or opinions of the Long Beach Real Estate Home Blog, its author’s, owner, or any affiliated persons or entities and we accept no liability for them.*
Related Posts:
- Long Beach Own Your Owns-OYO-OYOs-Condo Conversions-Income Properties in Long Beach
- Downtown Long Beach Stock Co-operatives
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This is interesting – although we do not have these issues as of yet where I live – I find it very interesting. We have HOA issues which can be similar.
Hi Thesa,
Long Beach has many forms of ownership, a couple of which are rarely found elsewhere. Own Your Owns (OYOs) are an outdated form which really needs to be left in the past. There comes a time when it is just time to move on for the benefit of all. We have HOA issues in some Condo complexes here as well. This really is a very different and unique kind of problem that nobody seems to want to deal with.
Thank you for bringing this injustice to the light of day. If OYO’s were converted to Condo’s they could get financing. Condo’s provide an excellent path to home ownership. They are generally much more
affordable than a stand alone house.
We only had a few of these complexes in the South Bay… to my knowledge all but one has made the conversion from OYO to condo status. I know it took them years to accomplish but it was worth it for the home owners. You are so right that this is an outdated form of ownership
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