This week The Stranger is running a feature on views, A View Without a Room -
It’s the only part of your house that’s not part of your house. What’s a view worth, anyway?
The article touches on how marketers get those view shots before the condo is built. One way is with blimps, example Enso:
Two summers ago, in 2006, Fred Cavazos showed up at the Enso site, which was just a parking lot at the time, with an 18-foot-long helium blimp. Cavazos is the owner of Above the Rest Aerial Photography. The blimp is white with red fins and has “atrphoto.com” printed in black letters on its side. He attached a digital camera to the blimp and unspooled it up into the air like a kite. He had made markings on the tether to correspond with each of Enso’s planned floors. Cavazos maneuvered the blimp by hand and the camera, when the wind conditions were right, took dozens of pictures in every direction at each level.
Or with helicopters, example Olive 8:
…a miniature, remote-controlled helicopter came all the way from Chicago to buzz around above a pile of dirt at Olive Way and Eighth Avenue, where the 39 stories of Olive 8 would eventually begin to rise. Leslie Williams, head of Williams Marketing Inc. and the epitome of the successful entrepreneurial real-estate marketer in Seattle, is the one who hired the helicopter, which came with a trained pilot. The Chicago company SkyPan invented and patented the helicopter for the sole purpose of shooting views that don’t exist yet, because at certain heights, blimps are unsteady, and in certain urban zones, cranes are too unwieldy.
The article also points out the Cosmo problem of having your views disappear before you move in because of zoning nightmares.
For me I need a view. When I worked at Microsoft it was in an interior office with no outside light which was absolutely utterly depressing. So it was great to go home to a south-west corner apartment with views of downtown, the sound, the Space Needle, the Olympics and Queen Anne. When I bought a condo I couldn’t afford the same view but none-the-less I had a great view of downtown and the Space Needle.
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My current condo’s view is not a nice as my last one’s but I still have a view of downtown, the top of the Space Needle and the Olympics (I’m waiting for my upstairs neighbors to bore of downtown living so I can move up a floor and get a view of Rainer to the south.)
The other view question is price. At Meritage there was a $20,000 differential between my unit at the one above. At Trace Lofts the differential was $25,000. While I had the opportunity at Meritage to buy the unit above mine I decided it wasn’t worth it (and I’m still glad I didn’t) and at Trace I’m still kicking myself and cursing the Sloan’s that I’m stuck in #201 and not #301. A study of same floor plan prices for new construction and then re-sale would be interesting to look at. Does the higher floor premium increase or decrease after purchase?
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6 responses so far ↓
1 Dan L // Apr 4, 2008 at 2:37 pm
I’d say in general the price per floor difference stays fairly steady, provided that it was reasonable to begin with. In general, if the view is relatively similar from one floor to the next, it’s a $8-10,000 difference per floor. If there’s a substantial view change, such as clearing a neighboring building or getting water/mountain views that the lower unit doesn’t have it could be a $25-30,000 difference. Of course it all depends on how hot the units are and how much someone wants to get into the building.
2 Rachel // Apr 4, 2008 at 3:47 pm
We thought the difference at Trace was going to be $10k; Didn’t find out until the final walkthrough that it was $25k. That sucked, but we couldn’t do much about it. I don’t know if our view is worth $25k more than Matt’s…
3 Mark W // Apr 4, 2008 at 11:46 pm
It happens with rent, too. My 2-bedroom floorplan varies by up to $600/month depending on what floor it’s on. I did check out the different views when I was choosing my unit, but ultimately I figured I wouldn’t be spending that much time looking out the window.
Even so, I was disappointed when Cristalla blocked a chunk of my Olympic Mountains view and Mosler hid my glimpse of Puget Sound. At least I’ve still got my “if you stand here and lean like this” view of the Space Needle.
4 Mark W // Apr 5, 2008 at 12:00 am
I haven’t checked out the Enso “views”, but I think the ones for Olive 8 are pretty misleading.
In part because they’re really out of date - the view east omits the highrise that’s well underway across the street, and the view southeast makes no mention of the fact that Ava is moving forward.
But while the Olive 8 site acknowledges that the use of a wide angle lens makes “views appear farther away” it also distorts the buildings that are close up. Check out the sliver that the Quest Building turns into. That building will dominate views from the southwestern units, but the camera appears to have taken its pictures from the center of the property rather than from the perimeter of where the outside walls would be - which of course is where the views actually start.
Makes me wonder what a potential buyer might think who looks at the site and sees the open east-facing views and heads downtown to see the site only to find a highrise well underway.
5 Bob // Apr 5, 2008 at 10:49 am
The Olivian is building across from Olive 8. 27 floors. Ouch.
6 Mark W // Apr 6, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Got to wondering about Olive 8’s bus station/Lake Union views featured on the Olive 8 website’s 360 degree view pictures, especially with the proposal to replace the bus station site with a 51-story hotel/convention center complex just a half block to the north/northeast of Olive 8.
When I pulled up the 1/31/08 Times story to get the floor count, I saw that the developer for the 51-story is R.C. Hedreen - same developer for Olive 8.
A lot will depend on how the 51-story is sited, but seems to me that’s a question prospective Olive 8 N/NE view buyers might want to ask their developer before they commit.
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