Icon located in the East Village/Ballpark District lead strong with twenty Developer sales during the first quarter of 2009 compared to Alta that had six and The Legend that had five of them.

Two short sales went to Element and one each for Lofts@777, Metrome, Park Boulevard West, Park Terrace and Union Square.

M2i had three resales, Metrome had two and Icon, Lofts @777, Park Terrace, The Legend and Union Square had one each.

There was a total of 14 REO sales with Metrome and Union Square leading the way with three of them. Park Terrace, Park Boulevard East and M2i had two and one each for Icon and Lofts@777.

Aria located in the Cortez Hill District in Downtown San Diego had six developer sales during January through March 2009.

Discovery at Cortez and Palermo had three REO sales. El Cortez had one REO Sale and Cortez Blu and The Mills at Cortez Hill had one each.

The following complexes had one resale each, Cortez Blu, Discovery at Cortez, Palermo and The Mills at Cortez Hill.

Only two shortsales, one for Discovery at Cortez and one at The Mills at Cortez Hill.

This is the sold by type of sale statistic for the Marina District in Downtown San Diego from January to March 2009.

Atria, Horizons, Meridian and Renaissance all had two REO sales. Cityfront Terrace, Columbia Place and Marina Park had one each. Harbor Club, Pinnacle and Renaissance had three resales and Cityfront Terrace, Park Place had two each. Pinnacle had the only resale in the Marina District.

Aria provides welcoming comfortable Condominium Homes conveniently located in a quiet residential neighborhood at the top of Cortez Hill and is now offering VA/FHA financing.  With magnificent views from Balboa Park to San Diego Bay and the amazing views of Downtown below, life at Aria reaches new heights.

To find out what is available visit 92101 Urban Living, The 92101 Downtown San Diego Specialist here. For more information about Aria visit Aria-SanDiego.com

From January to March 2009, Electra located in the Columbia District in Downtown San Diego lead the way with six developer sales and Sapphire Tower had two.

The Grande North had four resales closely followed by The Grande South with three resales.

Electra, Treo and Sapphire Tower each had two. Treo had three REO sales and The Grande South had two REO sales and one short sale.

Does the sound of train horns wake you up in the middle of the night?

Concerned Downtown San Diego residents have joined together and started the website “San Diego Quiet Zone Project” to provide residents with information, links and contacts to help improve the quality of the Urban Living of Downtown San Diego.

Federal regulations require engineers to blow the horn no fewer than 15 seconds before they enter a crossing – two long bursts and a short one, then a last long blast until the train enters the crossing. With 13 crossings from the Little Italy District around the Southern edge of Downtown San Diego, the additional noise has stirred residents to seek some relief.

See and hear a BNSF engineer excessively blowing train horn at 3:20 am on March 4 2007, awakening residents not only all over Downtown but as far away as Coronado and Point Loma. Please click here to see the video.

After the merge of ATSF and BN, BNSF Railroad got rid of the old small eight axle diesels with the horn mounted over the cab and not much louder than a Semi and brought in monster 12 axles into Downtown San Diego. The trains were designed to go 70 miles per hour over the great plains and the horns were designed to reach out ahead of them in areas with no guarded crossings. The horns are so loud that the engineers required them to be mounted back in the middle of the engine so they would not become death.

San Diego Quiet Zone contacted City Hall and after a few months they got an ordinance to pass preventing, except in the case of emergency, the blowing of horns between 7 PM and 7 AM. When they tried to enforce it, the BNSF, backed up by the PUC, said only the Federal Railway Administration could make rules.

The Federal Railroad Administration say the horn blowing is for safety and that engineers are “not out there to wake you up.” For more information about the San Diego Quiet Zone visit their website here.

The Little Italy District in Downtown San Diego had some action during January to March 2009.

350 W. Ash lead the way with six REO sales, Acqua Vista with five and Porto D’Italia with three.

Breeza had four Developer sales and Aperture had two. 

La Vita had 5 resales compared to 350 W. Ash, Hawthorn Place and Porto D’Italia that only had one. 

AcquaVista had three short sales compared to Portico that had only one.

Gaslamp City Square in the Gaslamp District had six REO’s, one Resale and one short sale from January to March 2009.

There was seven sales from January to March 2009 for Downtown San Diego. Seven Developer sales, one REO and one short sale.

                                                                                                                                                     Buyers of Downtown San Diego’s biggest condo building Vantage Pointe located in the East Village District are getting their money back. Buyers were informed via e-mail that they soon would receive cancellations of their contracts and that their deposits would be returned. Over 70 buyers were supposed to close escrow last weekend and another 125 were to close later this month.

For some buyers this news comes as a good one because they had been anxiously eying their closing dates and reconsidering their decisions in 2004 and 2005 to buy homes in the building. Many buyers had hoped for discounts and other assurances from the builder and in recent weeks the relationship between developers and buyers was getting increasingly ugly.

Some say that this relationship had more to do with their reticence to go through with their purchase than the declining Downtown San Diego real estate market.

For more information visit Voice of San Diego