Santa Monica is back in the new housing business.

Santa Monica is back in the new housing business

Despite its tough rent-control law, the number of housing units being built in Santa Monica is outpacing the number being demolished, according to a new report issued this month by the city Rent Control Board.

"What we show is a three-fold increase in the number of (housing) units being built over the number being removed," said Mary Ann Yurkonis, administrator of the Santa Monica Rent Control Board. "People have indicated that rent control has resulted in a decreased number of housing units and it's not true," she said.

The study, commissioned by the board, found that from 1988 to 1990, 250 housing units were removed from the market, and 990 new units were built, Yurkonis said.

The report was attacked by landlord leaders who have been battling with rent control officials since the city's rent control law was enacted in 1979. Since 1986, Santa Monica landlords have demolished hundreds of rent-controlled apartment complexes under the Ellis Act, a state law which allows landlords to evict tenants, providing the landlord agrees to go out of the rental housing business.

"Oh my God, that's the most incredible thing I've ever heard," said James W. Baker, one of the founders of ACTION, a landlord's group. "The private sector is replacing housing if you count condominiums. That's so dishonest to count expensive condominiums and to imply that those expensive condominiums are replacing rent controlled apartments."

Future condo development will not occur for a while in Santa Monica, because of a new city law, Baker predicted. Proposition R, passed by Santa Monica voters last fall, requires that 30 percent of the units built in any new development will be affordable housing.

The Santa Monica Housing Counsel, another landowner's group of which Baker is a member, "intends to launch a legal attack against Proposition R," he added.

Lisa Monk Borrino, a Rent Control Board member and an attorney who represents tenants in disputes with landlords, said that the study probably did not include projects started under the new Proposition R rules.

However, in Borrino's opinion, the study proves that "the land in Santa Monica is so valuable builders will always find a way to develop and there will always be new housing because the profit is there." Borrino added that residents have been complaining about the volume of new development in town.

Currently in the area of Santa Monica north of Wilshire Boulevard, there are about 12 to 15 condo projects either up for sale or under construction, said Don Bell, manager of the condominium division-west for Prudential California Realty. Most of the projects began construction about two years ago to beat a new city law placing restrictions on the condo construction in the city, Bell said.

There is a steady, normal flow of new condominiums opening all over the Westside, Bell said.

The Jon Douglas Co. is currently representing about $750 million worth of new condominium and single-family home projects, 95 percent of which are on the side, according to Sid Kibrick, director of new housing for the county's top real estate brokerage. Altogether, there are 60 new projects and about 700 new housing units which recently opened or are about to open on the Westside, Kibrick said.

The Westside's new housing units are being built as a result of the availability of financing 12 to 18 months ago, Kibrick said. He noted that because developers are presently having a tough time getting financing for new projects now there will be a shortage of new housing on the Westside in the next 12 months.

From entry-level newlyweds to wealthy seniors, there is a type of home buyer that asks specifically for new homes, he said.

Linda Berg, manager of the Brentwood office of Prudential California Realty, agrees there is a market for new home buyers. "There is a mystique about something that's new and not lived in by anyone else," she said.

Many of the new condominiums sport more spacious, fancier bathrooms and bigger closets, while the major feature of the "new" condominiums built 10 years ago were wet bars, Berg said.

New condominiums priced below $300,000 are selling well on the Westside, said Tim Corliss, owner and president of Westside Realty and vice president of the Los Angeles Board of Realtors. Condos priced above $300,000 are a tough sell, particularly if the unit is not equipped with special amenities, he said.

Mikki Wood, manager of Prudential California Realty's Westside's condo division-east said that luxury condominiums along the Wilshire Corridor in Westwood will no longer sell for the $600 to $700 a square foot range that buyers were paying in 1988 or 1989. But condos are selling.

In fact, Wood said she just sold a penthouse apartment in Westwood for $1.75 million.

PHOTO : Expensive condos are a tough sell even on the Westside: Brentwood Condominiums