There’s potentially thousands of dollars in your garage and it has nothing to do with staging a garage sale to clear out what you’ve accumulated and no longer need.
It has everything to do with the space under the roof that you could convert into a separate studio apartment to rent.
If you live in a newer tract home built in Manteca with a two-car garage during the past 30 years you typically have 500 or so square feet designed to park cars and store stuff. A typical three-car garage is roughly 600 square feet.
Now imagine paying up to $350,000 for a house the size of that space or paying $1,915 a month for a studio apartment that size. Those are prices not for the Bay Area but for Manteca.
It underscores why some in the building community as well as real estate sales view as Manteca’s long talked approach but never implemented strategies to try and slay the affordable housing dragon as channeling Don Quixote when it comes to many people being able to put a roof over their heads in the strength of a household depending on most typical paychecks earned on this side of the Altamont Pass.
Believe cookie cutter
affordable housing
plan won’t be effective
Since the Manteca City Council in February pushed municipal staff to work toward an attainable housing strategy the rent for what could be described as “A” grade studios — those within newer and well-kept complexes — have gone up an average of $40 a month.
Developers and even several council members believe adding affordable housing fees on new construction will do little to increase the stock of affordable housing. They also believe the fees in raising the price of new homes will reduce the number of people that can buy them.
They are equally skeptical of the impact inclusionary housing — requiring a percentage of homes in new subdivisions to have smaller square footage. That’s based on ever rising construction costs as well as growth fees the city collects.
Infill projects where vacant parcels or older existing homes on large lots that are adjacent to each other where house can be torn down and replaced attached townhome style housing or a larger number of detached homes is seen by some as the best “new housing” approach to affordability.
The other is the city making the process of full garage conversions into studio apartments or the adding of additional dwelling units — ADUs or granny flats — as easy as feasible and adjusting or eliminating growth fees that can be justified for such units.
At any rate, Community Development Services Director Chris Erias has indicate the city can’t develop an affordable housing plan until after the updated general plan with a new housing element is completed.
That means the earliest Manteca is likely to get around to try and tackle an affordable housing policy is 2023.
Studio apartments
now renting for $1,915
Meanwhile rental units — the most affordable housing — continues to see rents climb.
The Atherton with 21 studio units had one available Friday that will cost you $1,915 a month for 515 square feet. Developers are now building the second half of the 428-unit apartment complex just to the east of Bass Pro Shops on Atherton Drive. It will include another 21 studios.
Across town within two blocks of the Manteca Civic Center in the 40-year-old plus Westwood Village there was a rare find on Friday.
The complex a studio apartment available for $1,140.
And it’s not just studios commanding increased rents. The one bedroom one bathroom floor plan at The Atherton is now up to $2,145. That reflects a $90 increase since February. The largest offering — a three bedroom, two bathroom unit with 1,292 square feet is now fetching $2,745 a month, a $250 jump from the $2,595 cost in February.
The larger apartments typically target a transitional market of professionals. But more often than not, according to real estate agents and new home sellers, they are people caught up in a red hot housing market that are snapping up full price all cash offers for their larger tract homes typically built five years ago. Many are opting to move into smaller new homes in new Manteca neighborhoods but have to wait until their homes are built. The wait is worth it as the bottom line will be a new home with a slightly smaller footprint for less money per month.
Based on market trends cited by apartment construction lenders such as Wells Fargo, a weathervane of the affordable market for renting are what two bedroom and two bathroom apartments are commanding.
They typically advise developer clients in the region to up their mix of two bedroom and two bathroom units due to a steady and growing trend they’ve detected of increased demand from two unrelated households — singles, couples, or a single person and a couple — to go to together and lease such a floorplan to attain housing in their price range.
The 2-2 at The Atherton with 1,105 square feet is now leasing for $2,475 a month.
The most attainable standalone homes available to buyers that want to occupy them that aren’t in mobile home parks are older, pre-1960 homes.
In the past two weeks two homes in west-central Manteca that would fit into the footprint of a newer tract home garage have gone pending.
One is a 552 square foot home built in 1939 in the 600 block of Edythe with one bedroom and one bathroom that sold for $289,999. The home last sold for $215,000 in September of 2019.
A 684-square-foot home with one bedroom and one bathroom built in 1930 in the 100 block of Jesse is selling for $330,000. That is more than six times higher than what it sold for in 2015 when it closed escrow at $48,500.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
