Vulcan pushes back Rollin Street close date; scrambling

Last week we gave an account of a group of Rollin Street buyers who were worried about closing on their units and have been largely kept in the dark leading up to their March 15th close date. 

Today, we obtained a letter from a Vulcan representative to buyers at Rollin Street (see below). It appears Vulcan has been forced to address the issue of their buyers' lack of financing due to the possibility of a new Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac rule that would make it even harder (read near impossible) for buyers to obtain financing.

As a result of the new rule, Vulcan has pushed back the close date one month to April 15th, and are scrambling to find a workable solution within the next 2-3 weeks. I am hearing more and more from interested observers that this project could end up going luxury apartments, but it's still hearsay at this point. It certainly will be interesting to see how this all shakes out.

With the completion of Rollin Street quickly approaching, we wanted to give you an update on the project's status.

As you may know, new restrictions to pre-sale requirements being imposed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are affecting condominium buyers and developers all over the country.

Specifically, regulatory changes being implemented on March 1st may require a condominium project to be 70% pre-sold before buyers are able to close with traditional financing. Rollin Street is not 70% pre-sold, nor will it be by our originally projected closing dates.

We are in the process of considering the full effect of these regulatory changes. Unfortunately, we have enough information to announce that closings at Rollin Street will be postponed until at least April 15, 2009.

We are working through the challenges posed by these regulatory changes and will be sending an update on our progress and a course of action in approximately 2-3 weeks.