Price for quick sale--1810 Hibbard St, Alameda, CA

Today's Craigslist post had me in stitches (almost). Here goes, in its entirety, with some highlighting for emphasis.

$485000 / 2br - Sweet and Charming Home with lots of Character! (alameda) (map)

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Reply to: hous-1055041452@craigslist.org ^{[Errors when replying to ads?]}
Date: 2009-02-28, 8:17PM PST


Two bedrooms, one bathroom.
Charming home with lots of character. Built in 1912.
Beautiful refinished wood floor throught the home.
New roof!
New foundation!
Fresh paint!
Great central location in Alameda.
Quiet neighborhood of expensive homes.

*Price for quick sale before listing on MLS.
If interested call Moti at 415-850-4841

The backyard and Home Depot special granite and short backsplash in the kitchen look especially appealing.

If you don't know where 1810 Hibbard is, here's a map with a street view. It looks like a bunch of super classy new construction homes on the west side with three five times as many pickup trucks than cars parked outside of them (I counted them), a big empty lot to the south of this property, and the striking modern sculpture below at the north end of the block:

But that's not what amused me most. This is:

2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, 744 sqft, 3,564-sqft lot, $485,000

You read right. 744 square feet for $485,000 ($652 / sqft) is "Price[d] for quick sale before listing on MLS."

Maybe whatever is stored in those silos has been wafting down the street and eating away at the owner's brain cells. Or maybe they didn't have enough room for a TV, radio, computer, or newspaper mailbox in their subcompact bungalow to be informed that there are no quick sales anymore (with the occasional exception, and both of those occurred before unemployment hit double digits in California and the S&P 500 hit an 11-year low), and that the kinds of price per sqft that actually sell in Alameda are less than half of their demented asking price.

  

It shouldn't come as much of a surprise that the owners are not quite there. You may remember this property from last year, when it was on the market with a rather colorful description courtesy of Ms. "Sam" McDowell:


If you can't quite make out the description, here's what it says:

Its craftsman architectural integrity has been effectively exploited into a wreck created by the ravage of passing time or human beings????

Sure makes you want to move right in, doesn't it? Yet the current owners did pay $300,000 for it last April:

Last sale and tax info

Sold 04/30/2008: $300,000

2008 Property Tax: $2,099

In other words, this house is probably an attempt at a quick flip that's almost guaranteed to end poorly for the idiot flippers. Assuming they did things right, not luxuriously, and that the Craiglist post is factually accurate (i.e. the "new foundation" is a new foundation, not a cheap perimeter job, and the "new roof" really is a full roof replacement), we're probably looking at $60,000 worth of work given the condition the house appeared to be in.

That said, if the new roof, new foundation, and full rehab listed in the Craigslist post are their work, and if they're done properly (I have my doubts based on the cheap kitchen do-over and what looks like just a coat of paint on the windows, rather than a replacement), I must commend them for restoring what looked like a complete disaster. I'm almost tempted to wish them a break-even sale so they don't get completely turned off from rehabbing old houses in Alameda. It's an expensive hobby in this market, but I can think of much more destructive ways of killing time.

Update 3/9/09: On the MLS(r) as #4039891, same price.

Update 3/10/09: Reader Alyssa (yabbadabba) was kind enough to provide photos of the house taken when it was on the market last year, pre-renovation. Alyssa says:

I had a feeling this house would be flipped.  These are some before photos which show the sad state that the house was in; these photos are from February 2008.  The house looks better now from the photos.

Behold:



Could be worse. Like, say, the side of the house: