After owning it for 28 years, the unidentified owner of the large apartment complex in the heart of Ocean Beach has decided to put the 22-unit complex up for sale. The apartments are prominently located at the corner of Bacon Street and Cape May Avenue, at 2051-59 Bacon Street. It’s on the market for a mere $4,199,000.
It’s an “old-school” 2-story type of apartment complex, as it’s been around for decades, and was always known as one of the inexpensive rental apartment buildings in that neck of the woods in OB.
It has a courtyard with plenty of landscaping, an on-site parking lot that takes up much of the corner, and it has on-site laundry. The units are furnished, currently managed as a weekly rental complex. We don’t have a breakdown in terms of the individual units.
A less flattering view of the complex at 5021-29 Bacon Street.
The building is 6,600 square feet and the lot itself stands at 10,500 square feet.
One online realty company advertises it as “situated in the heart of Ocean Beach 1.5 blocks to the ocean.” It also claims that:
“the current owner has operated as weekly rentals for 28 years and has management in place. Rents average at $350 per week and in 2014 the property operated at a 7% vacancy rate.”
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
I wish I could buy this place and bulldoze it. I’ve lived next door to this hell hole for 5 years and it’s been a constant battle with some occupants. The smell of meth and crack, the almost daily domestic disturbances, the mentally unstable people they rent to, the US Marshalls who show up looking for temporary residents, the trash all over the alley.. the list goes on. Just ask a local beat cop about he Royal Apartments, they’ll give you an eye roll and proceed to tell you a few stories…..
Thanks Tyler for giving us some frank context about your experiences with the place.
No problem. I wish it was hyperbole, but everything typed above has happened – some far more frequent from others. I hope the new owner can figure out a way to end the transient nature of the property and find a way to be profitable while renting to residents who intend to actually be a part of the community. Not saying the entire complex is void of this but I’ve seen dozens come and go from there with nothing but take take take from OB and then leaving 2 months later.
At least the property owner and manager have done a good job of keeping the property looking well-kept. Have to give credit there.
When my wife and I moved to OB eight years back, we had a list of about ten different apartments off of craigslist to look at, and somehow, one of those apartments was on it. We go in to look at the place, and there was like two feet of trash all over the floor, some drug paraphernalia and a couple of tweakers sitting against the wall and staring at the floor in a bedroom with no furniture.
They looked at me and my 8-month pregnant wife and said, “We would make sure they clean the rest of this up before you move in.”
I think we were in there for a total of 15 seconds, lol.
Tip of the hat to Debbie.
This building has been on the market for years without generating any interest – perhaps the $190,000-per-door asking price seems like a bit much for some 300-square-foot studios (they’re all studios, BTW, not that you could do much else with an average size of 300 square feet).
The asking price was as low as $3.6 million back in 2009, though it’s also been as high as $4.3 million – seems like it did go into escrow briefly last year before the buyers backed out. The last time it appears to have actually sold was in 1978, for $450,000.
I lived here on-and-off between October 2008- March 2011 until I moved into a larger apartment on Santa Cruz. I paid $220 a week, $880 a month for one of the nicer units. If you moved in when rates were low, and you ended up staying, you were grandfathered in. There were tenants who had moved in when rates were $320 a week (during summer), and paid that all the time. Kinda felt bad for them.
It honestly wasn’t all that bad. I had good neighbors, and there a few long-term tenants, but the majority of them were only there for a month or two, and then would leave. The old manager was a real cool guy. A little kooky at times, but a nice guy, and he’d often smoke me out.
They are older (the middle building was built in the 70s, while the other two were built in 1956), but not the worst place ever.
But as Tyler said, there are problems there. They will rent to pretty much anyone. There were tenants filming porn in one of the units during the summer of 2009. There was a mentally disturbed cross-dresser living in one unit that would yell out his window at people walking on the street. And another tenant selling crack.
Kinda miss the place at times, but you couldn’t pay me to move back there.
I recall there was a death, probably a murder of a woman there like 2 years ago. Perhaps more in the past.
I lived there in Spring 2010 for about 4 months. I was a young naval officer getting paid enough to afford a nice place live…if only I hadn’t spent so much money with credit cards in college and had some debt to work off. Living here helped me pay me debts off … plus so was in love with OB. Living there made me happy.
It wasn’t bad. I never felt unsafe, but I worked a lot and was rarely home. I kept my bike in the courtyard and it never got stolen. However, my bras and panties DID get stolen from the community washer. Dave the manager told me he was a navy SEAL and kicked all the riff raff out. Not sure if that was true, but he did watch my cat for me from time to time.
I remember you, you lived two doors down from me.
Manager’s name was Larry, and I’m pretty sure he was full of shit about being a SEAL. He got fired a few months after you left, and I moved out in March of 2011.
Purchase price feels about right. On a weekly rental basis, the price equates to a 6.48% cap rate on $350/wk/unit and 15% vacancy with a 20% expense ratio.
Place is crazy. Lots of yelling. Police. An apartment fire. There was one sheriff’s raid. The people tend to be a bit rough as well. A few ex gang banger types.
The apartment manager is great and they upkeep everything and the studio is pretty nice, so if you can deal with it, then you are good.
Ocean Beach can be a bit of an odd community. They are not very sophisticated. My boyfriend thinks we should leave. We’ll see.