Results tagged “Alameda” from Knife Catchers

Guess who's back? Our old friend the unsellable 1626 Alameda Avenue! It now sports a shiny new lower price ($925,000) to go with its new MLS(r) ID (40453300) and its new agent (Andrea Gordon, picking up after Carol Burnett; whose site is down; here's a cached copy).

Please refer to the original post for details, or Chez Neumansky's detailed tour summary for a first-hand account of the place.

There's been a fair amount of activity lately, what with the renewal of the irresponsible tax credit and idiot agents cheering for the second coming. Here's a messy summary of interesting happenings in our little town.

• 452 Santa Clara: here's a bank that's not messing around. 31 photos, nice property, 2,800+sqft Victorian fourplex, REO, listed super aggressively for $400,000. It'll be gone for way over asking in just a few days.
• 2267 Clinton is back, yet again, with a puny price drop (now down to $1,369,000). The idiot perma-sellers will never get their asking price and are wasting everybody's time. Remember this is the listing that claimed rents were rising just a year ago in spite of a mountain of evidence to the contrary.
• 3246 Liberty is a very pretty, large bungalow in a part of town that has people go ga-ga and overpay on a regular basis. This is one of the larger houses on that block, and it's priced comparably to what smaller bungalows were listed for this year ($599,000). Still too much, but some idiot buyer will probably pay that much.
• 1312 San Antonio is an expensive Tudor on a tiny lot in an excellent Gold Coast location. A short sale at $819,000 (previous transaction $869,000 in late 2005), it's unlikely to sell for over $800,000.
  
• A cute little Victorian 891 Oak Street just dropped its price from $575,000 to $475,000 in one fell swoop after remaining unsold for over a year. It's now a short sale.
  
• The unsellable duplex at 1626 Alameda Avenue dropped its price by a whole $1,000, to $942,000. Lovely price history:

03/24/09 -- $1,145,000 to $1,095,000
05/12/09 -- $1,095,000 to $1,049,000
06/23/09 -- $1,049,000 to $999,000
07/23/09 -- $999,000 to $950,000
08/25/09 -- $950,000 to $945,000
09/21/09 -- $945,000 to $943,000
10/25/09 -- $943,000 to $942,000

• 1304 Morton is finally pending! What price did the stubborn kitchen-pimping sellers accept? We shall see.
  

A glance at Zip Realty will indicate the market is still littered with listings in various stages of foreclosures, and the market appears to be poised for a second wild ride starting early next year with tens of billions of dollars in bad loans coming home to roost (notice the inverse shape of the graph below and the Case-Shiller home price index):



Yes, I did use the word "idiot" an inordinate number of times in this post.

Some sellers don't mess around when it comes to pricing their properties aggressively. Not enough of them, mind you, but the new listing at 2151 Alameda Avenue gets points for trying extra hard. The property has the following specs:

3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, 1,596 sqft, MLS(r) #40431652, $300,000 ($188 / sqft)

[...] Contractors Special. Great Alameda Location with Living Room & Fireplace, Family Room, Victorian Style Home, Close to Town!!

You read right; this property is listed for $300,000. Of course there are no interior pictures in the MLS(r) listing, so who knows what condition it's in and how much work it needs. But considering its previous sale price, this certainly qualifies as an almost bargain, at 57% off:

Date	Event	Price
Sep 29, 2009	Listed	$300,000
Aug 22, 2005	Sold	$705,000

Of course we'll have a feeding frenzy and this property will sell for way over asking, which will prompt enlightened local real estate agents, buoyed by the recent increase in the Case-Shiller index (full data set in Excel format), to call the bottom of the market and a return to good times.

My oh my, prices have been busy dropping left and right while I wasn't paying attention writing about them. Here's a selective summary.

• The ugly custom Scarface house at 514 Westline Drive dropped its price multiple times. It's now a new (hah) listing with MLS(r) #40421430, priced at $1,098,000, and a short sale. Its last sale date when it was brand new just three years ago was $1,488,000. I guess that wasn't one of those lucky 8s. Assuming it sells for the current list price, that's a 26% loss, in case your calculator is broken.
  

• A newish listing at 1221 Sherman St, huge and overrun by expensive clutter inside and out, was initially listed for a hilarious $2,488,905 (note the extra five bucks tacked on at the end there) with MLS(r) 40418269 and dropped its price by almost a million all at once in mid July, to a still-too-high $1,569,000. The description is amusing as well:

[...] Lots of living space; great for entertaining: wedding, tea party, wine tasting... [...]

Given how often people tend to have weddings, it makes you wonder if the agent is suggesting a side business for the would-be owners to help pay the oversized mortgage. Dan and Irene have a writeup on their blog that seems to agree with my horror at the clutter oozing from the MLS(r) photos. Packing and moving all that stuff out is going to cost a fortune. And as for the initial $2.5M price tag, perhaps the owners and the agent realized that of those few people who can drop that kind of money on a house, not a whole lot of 'em decide to live in our little town. The highest-priced sales I can remember are the enormous bocce ball court on St Charles and the gigantic, fantastically laid-out Victorian compound at 1723-1725 Central, and those were only about $2M (each, sadly). Update: a short sale (?!?).

• The apparently unsellable "mansion" at 1626 Alameda Avenue miraculously dropped its price and now stands unsold at $950,000. Dan and Irene have a writeup on this one as well that points out some serious potential issues with the property's permit history, among other things.

• The super-classy trailer park Victorian at 1609 Lincoln (the one with the coin-op laundry facilities) has dropped to $899,000. It's been on the market for ages now. $899,000 is only $9,000 over the last purchase price back in 2005. 

• The oddly-shaped 709 Haight Avenue is sticking to its highly-successful strategy of multiple, itty-bitty price drops:

07/21/09: $419,900 to $414,900
07/21/09: $414,900 to $399,000
07/29/09: $399,000 to $389,000

We know how well that worked out back when it was $624,900 $614,900 $609,900 $589,900 $569,900 $504,900.

• The giant red-tagged wreck at 855 Cedar Street dropped its price from $935,000 to $885,000. There is no chance in hell this is selling for a penny over $500K, and even that would be completely insane given how much work it will require. Check out the big photos on Zillow to get a sense of how ruined this property is. I walked by a few months ago and was struck by what looks like years, if not decades, of complete neglect and abandon, sealed by the red tags on the boarded-up front door. It's a real shame, because the woodwork in the interior photos looks as though the house could be truly magnificent (not to mention huge; 4,810 sqft of living space on a big lot). This one breaks my heart a little. Zillow has it listed at $790,000, so at this rate there's hope for a more reasonable price in 10-12 years or so.

There are more, of course, but more on that later.

Right down the street from a beautiful Victorian that just came on the market is a tiny little cottage with the following specs:

2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, 930 sqft, 2,303 sqft lot, MLS(r) #40373232

[...] edge of the Gold Coast charming craftsman bungalow, hardwood floors eat-in kitchen, fireplace. Sunny combination living room dinning room. [...] drip irrigation w/drought resistant plants, driveway can double as a patio.

And how much for that sub-1,000 sqft on a lot that's smaller than the house I just mentioned? No less than $550,000, or $591 / sqft. Never mind there are quite a few bigger bungalows in nice neighborhoods listed around the same price. Some of them might even allow you to sit on a patio that you don't park your car on, unlike...

Assuming the landscaping wasn't financed with a big fat HELOC, the owners should have some room to drop the price to where it should be (hint: it starts with a digit that looks a lot like a 3):

Last sale and tax info

Sold 08/30/2002: $380,000

2007 Property Tax: $5,294

Sorry, folks, if I'm going to spend over half a million dollars on a house, I don't want to serve dinner on my coffee table or have a tailgate party on my own patio. Have some dignity.

Update 11/14/08: Cute little price drop to $525,000. (New?) agent Kirk Knight has the unmitigated audacity to say the following:

$525000 Craftsman Thanksgiving Feast (alameda) (map)

---

Reply to: kirk@kirksells.com ^[?]
Date: 2008-11-14, 10:08PM PST


Just reduced! Craftsman Thanksgiving Feast

Room for dozens of friends and family to join you for a holiday feast this year and years to come.
Open Saturday & Sunday 2-4 PM or call 510-390-0840 for appointment.

Click image for larger display

Dozens of friends and family for a holiday feast in 930 sqft with only one bathroom. That sounds like loads of fun.

Update 1/22/09: Sold for a still-too-high $500,000.

One of four listings to hit the market all at once this week, 1724 Alameda Avenue is also the most interesting. I wasn't able to find any public domain pictures, so I'll probably shoot a couple this weekend and post. First, the specs:

4 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, 2 stories, unfinished basement, 2,652 sqft, 13,200-sqft lot, MLS(r) #40373116, $899,999

Sonoma in Alameda? [...] 4 bedroom Italianate style home [...] huge double lot with gardens, it also includes a spa like studio cottage. Main house needs cosmetics.[...]

You read right. 13,200-sqft lot, in a great location, where they truly aren't making any more land. Built in 1889, it's also been owned by the same folks for a long time, judging by the low property tax ($1,774) and absence of sale history on its Zillow page.

I took a look at this property; the lot is so big you can't really take good pictures of the building without trespassing, which I wasn't interested in doing, so here's what you can see from the street:

$339 / sqft for a big, beautiful house with bonus cottage on a giant lot in the Gold Coast means it's not going to last.