Tree house square footage not included--3246 Garfield Ave, Alameda, CA

Saturday is a big catch-up-on-the-market day at the Opine compound, and today is keeping me very busy. Relists abound, and failed bubble purchases are coming back to the market in droves. Today's property at 3246 Garfield Avenue provides still more confirmation that overpaying for a house is rarely a good idea. It also provides a rare counterexample to the notion that the East End is completely immune to real-world economic pressures. Sure, the East End tends to fetch silly prices and hold value better than most other neighborhoods in town, but when everything drops everywhere, thinking your 3 square miles are magically insulated is just voodoo thinking.

3246 Garfield Ave has the following specs:

3 bedrooms, 1 1/2 bathrooms, 1,624 sqft, 4,370-sqft lot, MLS(r) #40429569, $589,900 ($363 / sqft)

Charming Alameda East End Bungalow. It is Light Filled and Spacious with Hardwood Flooring through out. [...] 1624 SQFT not including children tree house spaces in the back yard. Need your TLC to make me beautiful again!

The property looks nice, and it's very close to the bay on the east side, so it should sell pretty quickly, even though it needs some undefined amount of work  That's not to say paying close to $600,000 for a not-exactly-turnkey 1,624-sqft house on a smallish lot is reasonable, as the sale history indicates, but given the irrational behavior buyers exhibit when it comes to the east end, I wouldn't be surprised if it was gone in a couple of weeks.

Date	Event	Price
Sep 16, 2009	Listed	$589,900
Jul 24, 2009	Sold	$495,753
Jun 23, 2004	Sold	$602,000