House next door razed. Giant mcmansion to be built. Sell now or wait?

[norajean]

There is always risk the builder/owner runs into financial strife and abandons the construction part-way through.  This could lead to years of neglect of an unfinished structure which becomes a blight on the neighborhood.  Friends of mine lived next to one of these for about five years.  I know of two in my immediate neighborhood and two a couple blocks away. 

Sell now!

[spartana]

Any updates from your former neighbor, Spartana?

I was just over there checking out the place. Looks a lot bigger fully framed and just seems to loom over the 2 houses next to it and behind. Both the side house neighbor (with the disabled kid) and the rear neighbor plan to try and sell and move this spring. The construction is going very slow and quietly so it won't be done until then most likely. 

Now seeing it mostly built they are both worried it will be housing for a larger number of people then they thought if it is student housing or the like. We have a thing here called a "Density Bonus" which allows developers to by-pass current density limits and build extra units if they a certain percent of the units are rented to lower income people. In the case of a SFH and ADU being newly built as a rental then the Density Bonus applies to the number of people/beds per room. Normally the city codes allow 2 people per room but the density bonus allows you to have up to 4 people per bedroom as long as a certain percent of the rooms in the house are rented to lower income people - usually students but can be rehab places, nursing care, homeless shelter, religious groups, etc. While I think that can be a good thing for a tight housing market, uunfortunately usually only 20% of the rooms are rented to low income locals and the rest are used as AirBNBs for tourists. So the neighbors are pretty concerned that a 9 bedroom place could be a crazy party house.

ETA: No one knows anything about the owners who seem to be an international (likely Chinese) investment firm of developers.

She's still taking a wait-and-see stance?  I imagine if all that's going on then the property could sell for quite a bit.

No. She (and neighbor in back of new houses) really regret that they didn't sell last year before the construction began in earnest so are planning to sell this spring. Once it was fully framed and they could how huge, close and impactful it would be to them they wanted out asap. I don't think it will bring their property values up (maybe the opposite) as it is just too out of place. I don't even think another developer would be interested in their land value as most people in that working class hood would be looking for smaller less expensive homes and would shy away from living 5 feet from a giant 2 story lot to lot sized house and ADU. Especially if it ends up being an Airbnb or student housing. There are lots of small single story ADUs going up there though and they are more inline with the other houses.