Another lottery, another waste of time. That’s it for us unless Warmington Homes scraps this ridiculous lottery scheme and starts to sell the more than 300 houses still to be sold in a fair way.
We have now wasted almost 6 months without our number even being drawn once in any of the six different lotteries we’ve attended. I would happily have waited a year for the house to be built had they just sold me one when we first started looking at them. Now we will be looking for houses elsewhere, and anybody using a lottery scheme to sell will be excluded immediately.
Good luck to everybody left hoping that they win the chance to buy a house. There is one more Harbor release from block B in early January, and then nothing for a little while (spring time was best estimate they could give). That will probably be from block D (behind the models – see the master plan).
I would love to be able to suggest that people boycott Warmington until they scrap the lottery scheme and just sell the houses in the normal way, but that would never work in the current market. Perhaps there would be more chance of getting Alameda City to force them to drop the lottery scheme, but probably not while city employees retain the privilege of being able to bypass the lottery.
Anyway, here are the updated graphs. I looked at putting the values on the data points, but it made the graphs very cluttered. The main reason for me creating them was to show the trends more than to provide the exact numbers, and I think they do that pretty well as they are.
 |
 |
 |
|
Whoa John, sorry to hear that you are quitting. I can certainly empathize with your feelings, especially if you’ve gone through 6 drawings. But OTOH, I think the lottery is quite fair. Given the staggering demand for Bayport, having a first-come approach would result in overnight campouts and a free-for-all with token numbers et al (I’ve been to one of these a few years ago in San Ramon and it wasn’t pretty).
I quite like your solution (a ticket for each draw previously attended). Have you spoken to Bayport re: this? They seem to be quite reasonable and I’m sure there are other buyers like you who may be thinking of looking elsewhere.
btw, it looks like we’ll be residential development on another ex-Naval airbase across the bay.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/11/21/REGVM9UDF91.DTL
People would not be camping outside if they just sold the houses at any time. It is the small releases that generate artificial demand and with that the need to use the lottery to avoid the problems with the first come, first served scheme.
In developments where there are only a few houses (and only one ‘release’), the lottery scheme might make sense, but when, as in the Bayport case, there are almost 500 houses to be sold, they could simply let people come in and buy a house (accepting that it might take over a year before you can move in). They simply take a deposit.
I don’t believe that there have been anywhere near 500 different buyers present at the lotteries so far, so the demand is not as great as they would have you believe – it is entirely an effect of selling houses in small blocks slowly.
Additionally, those people that have been turning up to the lotteries have been arriving over the course of the last 6 months, not all at the beginning. The prices of the houses could have been increasing over that period of time at the same rate as with the staged releases.
I see your point. I think they release the houses in phases (with the estimated time of completion to be approx 6 months from release) as the entire development is expected to take 3+ years and I don’t know of anybody who would put down a deposit on a house that far into the future.
Maybe not three years, but 1 year to 18 months is not unrealistic. Remember that we have been playing this lottery game for 6 months, and if we had been drawn on Saturday it would still have been a six month build from now; that’s a year. I’d have happily put the deposit down 6 months ago when we starting this lottery game, even for a 12-18 month wait. That would have been much more agreeable than having to keep attending 9am lotteries with no guarantee of ever getting a house – even after 3+ years of trying.
Re. suggesting the ticket per previous lottery idea to Warmington, I did send an email to the suggested email address, and so far (over a week later now), I have heard nothing back from them. After the lottery at the weekend I heard one of the sales people trying to convince a lady who was wondering whether to come back for a fourth time that she should. He was less impressed when we mentioned that Saturday’s was our 6th without being drawn once, but did say that he’d heard they were reviewing possible fine tuning of the lottery scheme.
My suggestions, in order of preference would be:
1. Scrap the lottery in favour of just selling houses in the sales office any day of the week.
2. Add people who have attended 4 lotteries without being drawn to the VIP list that can pre-purchase.
3. Implement a ticket-per-attendence scheme.
I don’t suppose that will make any difference, but if anybody at Warmington is reading this, I’d love to hear your comments on this (posted on here, through the email address above, or call me – you have my numbers).
John,
Very valid comments.
If you have the time, perhaps you could stop by their office and talk to Debbi Garlick (sp?). She is the community manager. This is good feedback for her to know as I would imagine there are others who are in a similar situation as yours.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/11/24/BUG4FA0H581.DTL
Wonder what this means (if any, at all) for Bayport.
been verry quiet … anything happening?
Not much happening from a sales perspective until January when the next phase is released.
I did stop by the models the other day, and one of the people there in the sales office, a gentleman also by the name of John, who I had spoken to after the last lottery told me that the city is also restricting the number that they can release at any one time.
Does anyone know when the next release date will be? John, will you try again?
The next release will be around the end of Jan. Pl call the sales office for more info.
The city of Alameda restricts the number of permits they issue in a given month and this in turn controls the rate at which Bayport can build (and eventually sell). This is why they can’t release all 485 houses at once.
The next drawing will likely be on the 22nd Jan.
The next release is on the 22nd Jan at 9AM.
Avg prices for Phase 18 are:
3: 729464
4: 766323
5: 786877