sacbee.com -- Business -- Opening the door to starter condos
Nobody can beat developers at coming up with euphemisms. Condo conversions are now "adaptive reuse." How sustainably diverse of them.

Sacramento developers often complain that sharp increases in land and construction costs have made it nearly impossible to build homes affordable to families of modest means.
For one local real estate investor, the Nehemiah Sacramento Valley Fund, the solution is to avoid the cost of new construction altogether.

The fund has invested nearly $4 million to help a developer buy and renovate a 20-year-old North Highlands apartment complex, where all 116 units will be resold as condos.
Plans call for the one-, two-and three-bedroom units to sell for $139,000 to $157,000. That's in line with Sacramento County's median price of $155,000 for resale condos and well below the $238,000 median for new condos. For all homes, the median is $305,000.

"With the increase in prices of land, building materials and labor costs - as well as the lack of government subsidies available - it's much less expensive and much quicker to get affordable units on the market by doing an adaptive reuse (converting apartments to condos)," said Peggy Jones, director of community development at the Sacramento-based Nehemiah Corporation of America, which created the fund.
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