AGENDA #5c
MEMORANDUM
TO: Mayor and Town Council
FROM: W. Calvin Horton, Town Manager
SUBJECT: Orange Community Housing and Land Trust Quarterly Report
DATE: May 9, 2005
The attached memorandum is provided by the Orange Community Housing and Land Trust. The Quarterly Status Report is for the third quarter that ended on March 30, 2005.
ATTACHMENT
Date: April 26, 2005
To: Mayor Kevin Foy and Members of Town Council
Copy: Mr. Cal Horton, Town Manager
From: Robert Dowling, Orange Community Housing and Land Trust
Re: Quarterly status report
For Quarter ended March 31, 2005
The January, February, March quarter started slowly, picked up steam around Valentine’s Day and ended with a successful full-court press executed by our sales and marketing team. In sum, we closed on fifteen homes during the quarter, nine of which occurred during our own March Madness. Our sales duo of Crystal Fisher and Amy Singleton kept pace with the Tarheels, as they successfully met each challenge they faced.
We have now sold all but one of the thirty Vineyard Square townhomes built by Centex. Included among the Vineyard Square buyers is our 100th Land Trust homeowner! Again, a remarkable achievement for our sales and marketing staff, particularly since more than eighty of those homes have sold in the past two fiscal years.
We also made progress in our efforts to participate in redevelopment efforts in Northside. The Town of Chapel Hill approved $111,000 of CDBG funds for our use in the Sykes Street neighborhood. At this writing we have already purchased one property, and we hope to purchase two or three others in that same vicinity. Our goal is to collaborate with Empowerment and Habitat for Humanity to redevelop properties as homeownership opportunities for low income families. We have requested HOME and CDBG funds in the next fiscal year in order to realize these goals.
Other highlights from the quarter include the following:
· Two new board members joined the board: Sabrina Farrar was named to the board as the representative from the Town of Hillsborough, and Valerie Foushee was named as the representative from the Orange County Board of Commissioners.
· With the assistance of very generous donors, we were able to close on a Greenway condominium unit that is now the home of a former teacher who has been confined to a wheelchair for twelve years. She is very happy to be living in Meadowmont where she has easy access to the retail stores.
· Thanks to staff member Eleanor Howe, Whole Foods selected us as their profiled nonprofit organization in February. They also donated 5% of all sales to us on February 23rd. That donation, combined with our raffle, raised more than $6,000.
If you have any questions about the information provided in this report, please call me at 967-1545. Thank you for your continuing support.
The major work accomplished during the quarter was the following:
Greenway Condominiums:
In January we purchased a Greenway condo that was to be foreclosed upon. We re-sold that same unit in early April at a reduced price – making use of $11,000 of second mortgage funding. In February we closed on a ground floor, two-bedroom condo with the former teacher who is now confined to a wheelchair. Although her income is limited to disability payments, she was able to move into the Greenway condo thanks to the generosity of three special friends who were determined to move her out of her prior, unsafe living arrangement. We were very happy to participate in this unlikely, yet ultimately successful endeavor.
We are continuing to work with the homeowner’s association to solidify the HOA budget. We contributed $2,200 to the HOA in the course of the quarter and we have committed to additional financial assistance in the months ahead.
Rosemary Place:
We closed on our first resale in Rosemary Place in late March. The original owner lost her job and was forced to sell her home, which she purchased in July 2003 for $81,650. Her townhome increased in value from $140,000 to $155,000 in just eighteen months. The resale formula determined a re-purchase price of $84,300. The new owner paid $87,500, including $500 for the washer and dryer and a fee of $2650 to the Land Trust. As a result of this transaction, the home increased in price, but actually became more affordable relative to the appraised value.
Milton Avenue Homes:
We have continued to talk with the developers of Franklin Grove about our desire to someday redevelop the Milton Avenue homes more densely. Our homes are included in the Franklin Grove SUP that was approved by the Town Council. So increasing our floor area or our density will require a modification to the special use permit. However, the developer would prefer that we not increase the density on our site. We are now discussing the possibility of a property swap with the developer, whereby they would deed property in Northside to us in exchange for one or more of these Milton Avenue properties. These discussions have not gone beyond the conceptual phase, but we are certainly interested, given our new emphasis on redevelopment efforts in Northside.
We have a contract on the three-bedroom unit that has been on the market since last October. That unit sold in June 2001 for $100,000 and it is reselling now for $107,000. The Legion Road Townhomes are not as sought-after as are the Rosemary Place Townhomes. Over time we will need to adjust the prices of these two developments such that the Legion Road homes are less expensive than homes in Rosemary Place.
As stated earlier, we recently purchased our first property in the Sykes Street area using CDBG funds provided by the Town of Chapel Hill. We hope to purchase two additional properties in the same vicinity in the next several weeks. This Northside redevelopment effort will be our primary focus in the coming fiscal year, and we hope to collaborate with both Habitat for Humanity and Empowerment, Inc. We expect to contract with Habitat to build some of the homes and with Empowerment to provide neighborhood outreach and marketing.
We are working with seven first-time homebuyers of the affordable units in this Carrboro development. The developer of this long-delayed project finally closed on his financing in late March. He hopes to begin site work this month. We have re-started our efforts working with the prospective homebuyers.