Deed-Restricted DB
The price nobody publishes.
- The business
- Our own build rather than a client's, and the argument in its purest form: a record of deed-restricted affordable for-sale housing in San Diego — which parcels carry a restriction, on what terms, and when it expires.
- The leverage found
- An entire class of homes priced administratively, by formula, inside a market that publishes everything else continuously. The pricing rule is not published, and no standing system can answer what a restricted unit is actually allowed to sell for.
- What it produced
- Program guidelines normalised to machine-readable form, a covenant index keyed to parcel, and a listings record that only means anything once those two exist.
- City of San Diego 23,440 deed-restricted units, May 2020
- Expiring 2020-2040 ~4,200 covenants
- Longest observed listing 317 days zero price reductions
This one is ours rather than a client’s, and it is here because it is the argument in its purest form.
Every parcel around these is priced in public, continuously, by three national portals. These are not. Price is set administratively by a housing agency and the pricing rule is not published.
The effect shows up in the listings: across the San Diego listings observed so far, list price equals original price on every one, including a unit that sat 317 days without a single reduction. A market where nothing is ever marked down is not a market with patient sellers.
The City held 23,440 deed-restricted units as of May 2020, with roughly 4,200 covenants expiring between 2020 and 2040. Those figures exist because the City paid a consultant to count.
What we own as a result is the thing we build for clients: a record that accumulates, that nobody else holds, and that gets more valuable the longer it runs.