Deed-Restricted DB
Deed-restricted affordable for-sale housing — an unobserved asset class sitting inside the most instrumented housing market in the world.
Every parcel around it 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 first six San Diego listings observed, list price equals original price on every one — including units that sat 317 days and 298 days. Zero price reductions, because the price is a formula output rather than an offer. A market where nothing ever gets marked down is not a market with confident sellers. It is a market where the number is not being negotiated.
The stock is not small, and the agency that administers it cannot see it either. The City of San Diego held 23,440 deed-restricted units as of May 2020, roughly 14% of its multifamily rental stock, with roughly 4,200 covenants expiring between 2020 and 2040. Those figures exist only because the City paid a consultant to go and count. The question could not be answered from standing systems.
City of San Diego, commissioned consultant study, as of May 2020Three layers, built in reverse order of glamour
- The rulebook. Program guidelines normalized to machine-readable form. Published in full, with quotes and sources.
- The covenant index. Recorded documents, APN-keyed, durable 45 to 55 years. Whether a parcel carries a restriction is the public good; the terms and the expiration date are the product.
- The events. Listings, sales, days on market. Worthless without the first two, which is why they are built last.