Palo Alto home price drops 16%.
KINGSLEY Ave Palo Alto, CA 94301
Price: $10,500,000
Beds: 4
Baths: 4
Sq. Ft.: 5,025
$/Sq. Ft.: $2,090
Lot Size: 0.74 Acres
Age (Years): 85
Year Built: 1923
Type: Detached Single Family
Style: Mediterranean
Stories: 2 Stories
View(s): Neighborhood
Neighborhood: Professorville
County: Santa Clara
MLS#: 763160
Source: MLSListings
Status: Active
On Redfin: 175 days
Unsold in 90+ days
Expanded, remodeled, restored 2006.Traditional floor plan. Grt for entertaining. All bedrooms w/ baths. Second family room upstairs. Professorville Estate on nrly 3/4 acre w/ detach garage w/ space for carriage house. Wide terraces to terrific grounds. Grand kit/fam rm. Banquet size dining room. Study w/ FP. Master suite w/ sitting room w/ tree top views. Attic and basement. Oak floors. 9′ celings. Elegant !
Burbed reader Madhaus suggested I post this. I hemmed and hawed. Indeed the price has fallen:
Listing Price History
Date Price
Nov 15, 2007 $12,500,000
Jan 21, 2008 $11,500,000
Mar 04, 2008 $10,500,000
I couldn’t decide whether to feature this or not. You see, featuring price drops like this is sort of like talking about suicides on the Golden Gate Bridge, or showing Bin Laden videos – you’re just encouraging copy cats and terrorists. Do you really want others to think that it is ok to drop your offering price? Do you really want to showcase people who drop their offering price? Is this at all ethical?
I’m not sure. I leave it to you readers – is the owner of this house committing insane fiscal terrorism upon Palo Alto? What should we as Bay Area citizens do to him/her?
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:47 am
Buy now or be priced out forever!!
RealEstater, this is such a bargain. You should jump in!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Did i use enough exclamation points?)
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:18 am
Well, burbed, clearly this is just wrong, because, as Realestater will tell you, people who buy houses like this don’t use mortgages, they just cash out some stock options and plunk down a duffel bag full of hundies. In fact, I’ll bet some tech guy buys this place at the old price, just ’cause he can.
And if this guy doesn’t buy it, some other Google trillionaire will. I mean, there’s no chance that companies like Google will contract. Ever. Their business model doesn’t depend on ad revenue, right? There’s no chance that they could be impacted by home builders, banks and lenders drastically cutting back on placing ads. I can’t imagine Google’s stock dropping like a rock. It happened to the NY Times, but that’s an old, crusty business model. Go Google!
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:19 am
How come every house featured here is pulled off the market within an hour or two?
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:49 am
Confession: Some posts are written up 1 day before, some are 1 week before, some are 2 weeks before.
It just depends on my mood and how I feel about things.
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:50 am
Possible reasons for drop:
1. This house has “issues”. It is 85 years old.
2. This house is not “desirable”. Probably The Ghost of Professorville is living inside the house.
3. This MSL listing is fake. There is no exact address. Most likely it is a setup by Madhaus to prove his point.
4. Owner is giving up this property. After all he is a rich guy. One or two million is nothing for him. That’s why he does not mind to sell it for less. Energy cost is high nowadays. And this house is big. The owner is giving a few million dollars discount to offset energy cost. He is such a nice guy!
5. That block of Palo Alto near Embarcadero Ave is not part of RBA.
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:52 am
http://www.burbed.com/2008/03/19/who-lives-here-in-willow-glen-the-pope/#comment-14515
It’s probably fake marble, hence the price drop.
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:59 am
The address is 490 Kingsley Ave by the way.
(+5 Informative)
I decided to give myself karma points
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:05 am
Guys,
The marketing strategy of homes in this league is different from homes in Madhaus’ neighborhood. It’s not unusual to price a home super high to see if a billionaire will bite, and then adjust it according to market response. I’ve seen cases where a property not only sells, it sells above the super high price.
At $2090/sq. ft., this house is still priced above market, even for Palo Alto. If you check the records, you’ll find that this house last sold for around $5M less than 5 years ago.
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:18 am
“you’ll find that this house last sold for around $5M less than 5 years ago.”
Well, now we know it’s future price.
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:26 am
5 million 5 years ago is right. The crazy thing abou t these realtors who are still telling us that the market remains strong in Palo Alto, is that they think we havent read the foreclosure notices which are creeping over 101 from East Palo Alto, and now settling into blue ribbon Palo Alto, that we havent read how its not just a credit crunch but a venture capital crunch which comes from reduces IPO’s and the general poor performance of the investments into which VC firms had their equity.
Palo Alto is still a vastly over inflated suburb with schools that are good by national standards but poor by international standards, sits in an earthquake zone, in a country with a poor economic future, and the highest hospitalization for asthma in the country!
And you want to pay a lot of money for a plasterboard clad house next to a busy street!
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:35 am
So what, this must be selling for 8 million in ‘99. Didn’t Stevo show us the graph of the high end bombed in 01-02?
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:13 am
This is nowhere any near any kind of a busy street, but when you have three-quarters of an acre, does it matter? If I ever get super rich I’d like to buy a large section 8 apartment complex on Middlefield Road in Redwood City, evict all the tenants, tear it down, and build a huge mansion in its place. So there, renters!
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:32 am
When I am super rich, I am buying up most of EPA. I am then going to tear it all down, build luxery condos, rename it Palo Alto Shores, and go from super rich to super obscenely rich.
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:33 am
This is feudal baron stuff! How dare anyone believe he/she is entitled to such extravagance! These people need to sell and sell now and donate ALL their profit to Gov. Schnitzelnegger to help solve this state’s budget crisis. Then the state can turn this palace of pomposity into a museum dedicated to all the gamblers subsidizing The Governator’s fiscal imprudence. Arnold LOVES gamblers (and apparently so do Californians).
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:37 pm
buckborden,
This is the USA, not Cuba.
May 23rd, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Jimmy_noh I would love to see you back up those facts you posted about Palo Alto. Also, FYI, you can have an earthquake anywhere anytime, so I am not sure why you added that to your post? I would rather experience an earthquake in Palo Alto than a lot of other places which are not prepared for earthquakes and therefore have less stringent building codes.
I’m not sure that this 16% price drop on this particular house means that the high end market is currently in trouble. I’ll wait until inventory grows and we see prices drops across the board. I think the Palo Alto market will be effected, however, I am not sure that it is happening right now. I think we will have a better feel for what is to come in the high end “RBA” market after summer. heading into fall.
May 23rd, 2008 at 1:37 pm
wow. just found this site. very interesting. i especially enjoy the concept of a “real bay area” that doesnt include the east bay. what a load of crap!
and yes these luxury homes are losing value – they were overpriced to begin. energy and other concerns are hopefully making people think on a smaller, less obnoxious scale.
May 23rd, 2008 at 2:00 pm
With the scarcity of land in the real Bay Area, you want to build a large a home as allowed by the local zoning law, including a full basement if possible. For every square foot that you don’t build, you are short-changed by $1000.
May 23rd, 2008 at 2:00 pm
With the scarcity of land in the real Bay Area, you want to build as large a home as allowed by the local zoning law, including a full basement if possible. For every square foot that you don’t build, you are short-changed by $1000.
May 23rd, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Cool, I just posted a bunch of these million dollar price drops in San Mateo last night. Check it out:
Homes with Million Dollar Price Reductions
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Yeah, I sent this one in a while ago, and I also sent burbed the Google Streetview coordinates proving where it really was.
?er, the Real Bay Area not only doesn’t include the East Bay, it also doesn’t include much of anywhere on the Peninsula either. If the prices are dropping, then the RBA tag you’re stopping.
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:45 pm
The Zillow estimate is only $4,740,000, although the county assessed value is $5,510,364.
Every time it shaves off $1M, Santa Clara County cries. That’s about $11,000 less in property tax revenue when it sells. If they get the asking price, the annual tax bill on that place will be about $115,000.
Last year, the current owners paid $61,346 in property taxes- although in many other states with a 4% tax rate, a $5M place would run about $200000 a year.
Prop 13: “Keeping house prices artificially high since 1978″.
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:16 pm
If I had that amount of money, I would rather buy the one in Portola Valley (5070 Alpine Rd): 7,800 sq ft on 8.5 acres (for $8.4M)
http://tours.tourfactory.com/tours/tour.asp?t=403696&sreferer=www.burbed.com
Real Estater is right though: the marketing strategy for these houses is different. One thing that’s a bit strange on that Palo Alto house is that they lowered the price pretty quickly. This house is not unique enough to justify such a high price anyway.
The house in Portola Valley on the other hand has been on the market for a very long time, but I can imagine someone just buying it at that price because there is simply no other house like it.
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:35 pm
I don’t know if I’d spend in the millions for any house that didn’t come with a bunch of land. But I’d really prefer to live in walkable suburbs with a Safeway, a library, and yes, a Starbucks, than some estate town with no sidewalks…
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:40 pm
To burbed’s question… “What should we as Bay Area citizens do to him/her?”
I think most of us burbed dwellers are denizens rather than citizens…
The concept of fiscal terrorism as a crime sounds oddly appealing though. I vote that after two unsuccessful 15% decreases, the seller loses his/her turn and goes straight to jail without collecting $200.
May 24th, 2008 at 9:25 am
This house is SOLD! The owner doubled his money in 5 years, ahead of schedule. The “price reduction” strategy works magic again!
May 24th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Smart to get out when he did. However, the new owner is about to lose a couple mill in equity in a year. Money and brains don’t always go together.
May 25th, 2008 at 12:52 am
Smart to get out when he did.
———-
How many high-end homes in PA sold over or on listed price in recent months? Considering the fact this home was on market over 175 days and the last price reduction was done about 2.5 months back (March 04), I have no reason to assume that suddenly a buyer appeared in market and made an offer with listed price.
May 25th, 2008 at 8:38 am
Good point, Pralay. Whatever the buyer paid, he probably didn’t get this message from Warren Buffet: “The recession will be deeper and last longer than most people think.” As snarky as many of my comments are, messages like this scare me. My job’s pretty secure, but I have so many friends who will be impacted by the upcoming slowdown. Housing prices will be the last thing people worry about a couple of years from now.