12-story condo tower planned at Marina San Pablo

[Captain Zissou]

Now Saudi Arabia is claiming the honor with the Jeddah Tower:

That was the previous proposed record.  The Bride in Iraq is supposed to be taller.

Jeddah Tower (or Kingdom Tower) is expected to reach 3,280-ft — or 1 kilometer — into the air. That'll dwarf the current tallest building in the world, Dubai's Burj Khalifa, which was opened in 2010 and reaches "only" 2,716 ft.

This enormous project comes during a global construction boom. There are at least 27 other huge skyscraper projects being planned right now in various places like New York, Russia, China, and Dubai.

And on top of that, Iraq wants to build a brand new tower called "The Bride," which will reportedly reach 3,780 ft into the sky — making it 500 ft. higher than the Kingdom Tower.

http://www.businessinsider.com/jeddah-kingdom-tower-triggers-skyscraper-indicator-2015-12
http://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-tallest-building-rises-in-iraq-2015-11

[downtownbrown]

These were high end condo developments (look at the pricing for Jax).  These were not FHA buyers or marketed to those with bad credit or little liquidity.  They were no marketed to school teachers or fire fighters or even young professionals.  They were marketed to 40-50+, likely more like 60+, people looking to downsize into a condo.  Retirees, etc.

There is also not a lot of supply of condo resales on the market.  Condos don't come on the market that frequently in Jax (there aren't even that many condos at all, period - very few actually for a market Jacksonville's size in Jacksonville's location/climate on the water).  If you really want to downsize into a high rise condo, you only have a few buildings to choose from.  Many if not most have waiting lists to get in.

Oddly enough, what you don't have in Jax is a pool of buyers willing to pay for a new product.  Villa Riva and the Peninsula were the last, before the Recession.  Not sure about Peninsula, but finding your dream condo in Villa Riva is tough since few ever come to market.  Other buildings in the area (Ortega Yacht Club condos and Beau Rivage for instance) have "effective" waiting lists.  And these are riverfront, mainly catering to in town wealthy who wish to downsize - all of these buildings are almost exclusively locals, and grandparents at that.

One would think that transplants/snowbirds would be interested in Intracoastal or beachfront high rise condos.  Either the product was terribly off, and I heard it was with Beacon (but only from one source), or there is simply no such market in Jax, which I find disturbingly odd considering the times, the kind of financing you can get, the fact that there are enough people who can pay cash in Jax for 1-2 smallish condo projects, and the fact that this is a waterfront/oceanfront metro in Florida.

Clearly there are some market specific nuances at play here.

Not a great analogue, but remember that the city turned down a request for $5m by a developer to complete Berkman 2.  Chump change.