Condo Developers in Fort Worth hope to prove the truth of the old axiom about the bigger they are, the harder they fall, by not being big. Hoping to avoid a crash like the real estate bust of the 1980's, condo developers have scaled back several projects and have tailored others to niche markets which might not be as impacted by an overall downturn in the market. "Condos generally carry more risk for developers because so many units are completed at the same time. If pre-sales are lower than projected, it's easy for a community to get stuck with a lot of inventory, which scares off builders and buyers. Las Vegas got so overheated in the past two years that developers planned 90,000 condos -- in a market that had 2,000 units." ... "In Fort Worth, a number of condo proposals was floated, only to be scrapped or replaced with new strategies. A 60-story tower was touted as an office-condo mix at Seventh and Calhoun streets. The Transport Life building downtown was also supposed to have condos. Now both will have office space only, with the 60-story tower trimmed to half that size. But that isn't an indictment of condos' popularity; it just means that office space is a better, safer bet. Fort Worth has some of the lowest vacancy rates of any downtown, and skyscraper rehabs and new construction are easier for office tenants. The upside of the trend is that we don't have to worry about a single large project distorting the marketplace. There are no market makers or market breakers because the developments are simply not large enough to tilt the downtown universe." Here is a link to the whole article from the local paper the FW Star Telegram: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/business/15396613.htm Mike Copyright © All Rights Reserved