Several home shoppers quickly made an unhappy discovery.

An 82-unit, government-financed condominium project for low- and moderate-income buyers went on the market in Reseda over the weekend, with its walls still consisting of bare studs.

The project is being built where three houses used to stand on Sherman Way, just west of Vanalden Street. It’s the one with the large red-and-white banners advertising: “From $69,950” and “2 BDRM. 2 BATH As Little as $692 per month.”

It is called Park Avenue East.

If that geographically nonsensical name would seem to imply a comical counterpoint to the theme of low- and moderate-income, government-financed housing, that fact merely illustrates how economic stereotypes grow tattered in inflationary times.

The term low- and moderate- income, in this case, refers to a statistical definition based on the median income in Los Angeles County. It includes people who make as much as $39,960 a year.

Without assistance it is now almost impossible for people in that income category to buy their first homes, because banks won’t lend them the money it takes to buy at conventional interest rates, Ed Rosenblum, the sales agent, said.

“All of a sudden, somebody who thinks he’s doing pretty good goes to the bank and has to walk out with his tail between his legs,” Rosenblum said. “Even with good character, and if you tell the lender you’ll eat macaroni and cheese every day, and you won’t go to the movies, and you’ve been at the same job for 10 years, unfortunately what it boils down to is the numbers.”

The city’s bond-financing program works by selling tax-free bonds and loaning the proceeds to the developer to help him build the project cheaply. The developer can sell the units at market prices but must offer low interest and easy terms.

That way the low- and moderate-income buyer benefits, and the wealthy person who needs a tax break benefits. The only loser is the Internal Revenue Service, Rosenblum said.

This all sounds so good to some people that, on occasion, buyers have lined up for hours, even butting in and pushing in line to get a good position when such projects go on sale, Rosenblum said.

It didn’t get that frenzied when Park Avenue East opened sales Saturday, a cold, blustery day.

About a dozen young couples, several single women and two elderly women who brought friends along to advise them assembled at 8 a.m. on a concrete floor that will be the lobby and a weightlifting room when the building is finished.

Rosenblum and another sales agent handed each visitor a color-coded guide to the building’s 11 floor plans.

Then the architect, Joseph Mark, said a few enthusiastic words about his design and led the group past an empty elevator shaft and up a wooden staircase.

“You can just walk around,” he said. “But please be careful.”

The group quickly dispersed into the dark and chilly interior, walking through walls studs from one unit to the next.

Mark moved among them, answering questions, pointing out what he considered the finer points of his work and occasionally snapping instructions to the workmen, who were scraping and sweeping away the debris of the previous week’s construction.

“Hey, Jose. Do a good job,” he told one man with a shovel. “Clean it up. Take this litter out of here too, please.”

“Yeah,” Jose answered. “Everything.”

By checking their floor plans against a price list, several home shoppers quickly made an unhappy discovery.

The “K” Plan condominium, which was advertised at $69,950, had only one bedroom, quite a small one too, and just 650 square feet of interior space. On top of that, there were only two of them, and the second, on the top floor, was more expensive.

The next larger unit was priced at $79,950, and the smallest two-bedroom was $99,950.

Many of the shoppers thought that was silly.

“We saw that sign out there and it said, ‘$69,000,’ ” said Paul Kosciuk, who was checking out the units with his friend Leilani Yee-Loy. “You come in and it’s nothing like it. It’s a bit of a come-on, in my opinion.”

They had compared sizes and prices with what they had seen elsewhere and decided not to buy, not only in the building but anywhere in the Valley.

“Our best bet is still what we talked about earlier, moving down to North County in San Diego and building a house,” Kosciuk said.

His friend Yee-Loy nodded in agreement.

“You would rather pay a little bit more and get something you might get a good deal on when you sold,” she said.

Tom Larman and Jodi Missman, apartment dwellers from just across the street, had reached the same conclusion about the project. They said they planned to keep looking around.

Almost as quickly, though, several people made up their minds to buy and wrote out $1,000 checks as deposits.

Among them was Dorothy Schumann, 73. She said that she had just sold her one-acre home in Canoga Park to her church and was looking for something smaller.

She didn’t want the low-interest loan. She was paying in cash.

“We still take cash, yeah,” Rosenblum said, a bit surprised.

A young man named Larry Weber signed up for an upstairs two-bedroom unit going for $99,950.

Weber made a perfect fit in the new image of the low- and moderate-income buyer.

He was young, handsome and trendy-looking, wearing a styled jogging suit.

He said his tastes were in the $100,000 range but his income was only in the $80,000 range.

After writing his $1,000 check, Weber left with his tail wagging high.

“Tell them I’m single and I’m looking for a good-looking blonde,” he said.