Yet another pink house in San Mateo: San Carlos
1332 Rosewood Ave, San Carlos 94070
$739,000
* Status: Active
* Bedroom: 2
* Bathroom: 1
* Year Built: 1948
* Lot Size: 4920
* Square Footage: 1040
* List Date: 5/23/2008
* Garage Spaces: 1
* MLS#: 810615Not on the market for over 50 years! Hardwood floors throughout most of the home. Eat in kitchen and dining room. Master bedroom has an additional extra large closet. Nice sized yard with pool with solar heating. No showing until 5/27/08. Great street.
Thanks to an anonymous Burbed reader for this find. Frankly, I’m not sure why there are so many pink houses in San Mateo County. There seems to be a bunch in Redwood City and San Carlos.
Nonetheless, my favorite part of this house is that it hasn’t been on the market for 50 years. Yep, that means the current owner is paying $510 a year in property tax. You? You’ll be paying ~$7390 – about 1300% more. But that’s fair because you’ll be consuming more services than the current owner.
Another aspect is that this house hasn’t been on the market for 50 years. Like a fine wine, this house has clearly gotten more graceful and fine with age. Personally I would buy this house, seal it for another 50 years, and then have a smashing uncorking party. By then, this house will be amazing. In fact, by then, all the items you see in the house will be historic – more instant equity. Just think, you could even charge admission for touring the house!
So be like the Smithsonian and buy this classic house before it’s too late!
July 1st, 2008 at 7:03 am
RBA home owners aren’t dying fast enough, there is just crappy selection of houses on the market right now. Ideas on what we can do to increase inventory
July 1st, 2008 at 7:23 am
MLS obviously has their zipcode-neighborhood mapping table all screwed up. This is not Berryessa, and that last San Mateo house was not blossom valley.
July 1st, 2008 at 8:08 am
HELLO!!! This is the Rainbow country, of course there more pink than any other place.
July 1st, 2008 at 8:36 am
Yet another case where either the old farts that own this place will clearly make out like bandits and move to Phoenix, Florida,Oregon, or some other equity-locust attracting area. Either that or their kiddies inherited after dear old mom and dad died, thus they FINALLY got their golden ticket: now they have a plan to buy a house, thanks to their parents untimely passing.
Of course they probably won’t budge on the price even though its all profit.
July 1st, 2008 at 8:55 am
No bob, they want to stay in the neighborhood, it is their right! Otherwise what’s the point about paying all the low property taxes?
July 1st, 2008 at 9:04 am
Thanks to an anonymous Burbed reader for this find. Frankly, I’m not sure why there are so many pink houses in San Mateo County. There seems to be a bunch in Redwood City and San Carlos.
The peninsula is the Florida of the west?
July 1st, 2008 at 9:21 am
“It’s sixty years old, but that’s not a bug–it’s a feature!”
Incidentally, why would they advertise that? It just makes people think “oh, well then I can bargain them WAY down from their asking price!” I mean, sure, everyone can look up sales records, but to put it right out front like that?
July 1st, 2008 at 9:22 am
“RBA home owners aren’t dying fast enough, there is just crappy selection of houses on the market right now. Ideas on what we can do to increase inventory”
As someone who rides the 390 bus on a daily basis, I suggest poison gas.
July 1st, 2008 at 12:00 pm
that house makes me proud to be an american.
http://img397.imageshack.us/img397/2211/gwbushsancarloskp9.jpg
July 1st, 2008 at 3:01 pm
that house makes me proud to be an american.
Oh no, Bush says pink houses, especially pink houses in liberal, liberal, liberal California, can go fuschia.
July 1st, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Well, it’s on Rosewood, so the wood has to be painted pink! Okay that sounded stupid, but yeah I notice a lot of pink houses, too.
July 1st, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Just like a rare one-of-a-kind antique, this house is difficult to set a price on. Let’s see how the various estimates come in on this place.
Zillow: $770K, range of $669-816K Not too out of line with the asking price
eppraisal: $663K, range of $563-762K They say it’s overpriced, I agree, it’s a 2/1 on less than 5000 sf!
CyberHomes: $878K, range of $790-$1,010K WTF? For San Carlos west of Flea Street!
Oh this is even better. I clicked the Cyberhomes link and it says this house is down $164,736 from last month. In May, Cyberhomes thinks this house was worth $1.04 million. In April? $1.15 mil. Wow, talk about your instant equity!
I don’t believe I’ve ever seen these three services so out of whack with each other on one fairly nondescript house. So for grins, I plugged in MY HOUSE to see what the three of them would say. Are they this out of synch all the time?
Zillow says my house is up 1.6% from last month. Whoopee! Almost $1.1 mil, range +-11%. Also says my Zestimate is up 10% from last year. Too bad I have to sell my house for what the market says, not what Zmarket says.
eppraisal says NOT SO FAST! My house is barely worth a mil there, with a range +- 15%. Well, I already see a problem, 2 of the comps it pulled up are in Fremont HSD, one isn’t even in Cupertino dist.
Oh boy, so Cyberhomes must think my house is worth a pile, right? Wrong. It’s not even a mil over there. Not only that, every house on the street but mine IS worth a mil, even the rental next door! Range +-11%. And it’s up 22K from last month. Whoa, they have my lot size wrong. Where are they getting this data? The other 2 sites had this correct. Okay, Cyberhomes says my house was worth over a mil in Feb ‘08 but dropped $50K in March ‘08. Gotcha.
I still can’t figure out why the rental is valued more than my house, they have that lot even smaller (they’re pretty much identical). You can refine the property value so I added to the lot size. Guess what, didn’t change the value, but adding various home improvements did.
Well, these home valuations are about as much use as the Magic 8 ball.
July 1st, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Ha, madhaus,
That is for your foul mouth about the housing market, no mil for you!
July 1st, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Does anyone else here find Madhaus to be rather annoying? Here’s a guy obsessed with comps. He checks the data literally every hour. The most exciting time of the week for him is when the Mercury News releases the latest sales figures by zip. The more he looks at it, the more he’s convinced the market will fall. The market must fall! Why? Because that’s what he needs to move up. The crowning achievement of his life is his purchase of “the shack” in 94087. For the rest of you, the market will fall, so don’t buy before he upgrades!
July 1st, 2008 at 11:33 pm
rick,
What, you don’t like fuschia? What is it with guys’ hatred of pinks and purples?
RE,
You need to do something about your projection issues.
July 1st, 2008 at 11:52 pm
C’mon madhouse, checking data is bad. Leave that to the pros. Don’t you trust them?
“All of the doom and gloom forecasts of a housing debacle are not only irresponsible, but also downright wrong.” – David Lereah, National Association of Realtors, August 2005
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:44 am
RE, seems like nobody else finds madhaus to be annoying. Maybe they agree with his compulsive scepticism and they like his personalized reports. Hmm. Guess madhaus must be a tech guy (with a literary streak).
Honest question: do you find your own tech people sometimes annoying? Just curious…
July 2nd, 2008 at 6:43 am
“All of the doom and gloom forecasts of a housing debacle are not only irresponsible, but also downright wrong.” – David Lereah, National Association of Realtors, August 2005
Aaah hahahaha!
The housing market cannot fall. It’s our god given right to have appreciation always, zillow numbers hint at this, especially for the RBA.
July 2nd, 2008 at 7:00 am
The market must fall! Why? Because that’s what he needs to move up.
————
Another logic problem for so-called “tech guy”. Market will correct irrespective of what Madhaus wants. It’s not the other way around.
RealEstater, I can sense your frustration about market. I guess that’s what brings you in this blog – to vent your frustration and blame “doom and gloom” people.
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:22 am
In a battle of real estate predictions against NAR, monkeys flinging poo at a wall are bound to look good.
“We can expect a historically strong housing market moving forward, earmarked by generally balanced conditions across the country and fairly stable levels of home sales with some month-to-month fluctuations.” – NAR, April 2006
“The worst is behind us, as far as a market correction – this is likely the trough for sales. When consumers recognize that home sales are stabilizing, we’ll see the buyers who’ve been on the sidelines get back into the market.” – NAR, October 2006
“At least the bottom appears to have already occurred. It looks like figures will be improving.” – NAR, February 2007
“The speculative excesses have been removed from the market and home sales are returning to fundamentally healthy levels…” – NAR, October 2007
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:05 am
While NAR keeps revising their prediction, 94301 zipcoder can’t sell his home after 55 days and lowering his price.
Listing Price History
Date Price
May 08, 2008 $1,850,000
May 28, 2008 $1,775,000
I guess foreigners are stuck in baggage checkin in airport, because airlines started charging fees per checkin bag.
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:10 am
don’t forget, those baggages stuck in checkin are filled with loads of RMB, Rupees, Swiss Francs, Euro, and Yen. we are doomed!
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:12 am
You cannot stop emigration Pralay, the tidal wave forces behind it are too great for “fundamentals” to matter. We’ll worry about how they will afford all this “pricey” RE once they finally get here
.
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:38 am
Don’t worry about all those foreigners stuck at the airport with no money to pay the per bag fee, seat reservation fee, or avgas premium. I hear Facebook employees will buy up the entire city any day now. And if not, there are thousands of Google millionaires who didn’t bother buying a house in the last three years.
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:39 am
don’t forget, those baggages stuck in checkin are filled with loads of RMB, Rupees, Swiss Francs, Euro, and Yen. we are doomed!
———–
Shhhhhhhh! Don’t tell this to airlines. Otherwise they will demand “Whatever you have inside, 6% is ours.” Let those foreigners save that 6% for Realtors.
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:40 am
I like madhaus but I find him a little annoying. He is convinced real estate will fall further and plans to buy at some future date. The problem is he accuses others of bias, in my case regarding my recent house purchase- while not recognizing his own, SIGNIFICANT bias. There are situations every day in RE where the median price of homes may be falling, but a specific house is worth purchasing. I posted the closest thing I could come up with from redfin to approximate the house I just purchased – madhaus’ reaction was really surprising. The house we used to approximate mine was (imho) not as desirable as mine- and yet, it sold in ONE DAY. It was here, and gone. The market is the final arbiter of what is a good investment in real estate.
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:42 am
Pralay, I think burbed should feature that property. For $1.75 million, you actually get two houses on one undersized lot. True, neither is big enough for a family, but what the heck do you want? This is 94301, you ought to pay extra just to be allowed to sniff the air in that zipcode.
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:50 am
WillowGlenner I will do my best to be more annoying since I’m clearly not succeeding with you. Why I have RealEstater ready for the funny farm, or at least the wigmaker.
I am bearish on Real Estate now. Are there deals out there? Yes, relative to other properties there are. But does that mean you should buy them? I still think you’re catching dropped knives. You think you made the right decision. Again, we shall see who is right in the next couple of years.
Must say, can’t figure out why bias in me (toward seeing negative signs in the market) is worse than bias in a real estate bull. At least I don’t go around saying this is an awful place to live. I like it just fine here and I’m getting tired of hearing the whole region’s a sh__hole. If you don’t like it, there’s plenty other places to live! Yeah it’s too expensive, I don’t mind those complaints, but the others are just too much.
austindweller made the right choice for his/her family, either follow that example or drop it already.
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:54 am
Don’t worry about all those foreigners ……there are thousands of Google millionaires who didn’t bother buying a house in the last three years
——–
Don’t be so silly Madhaus. Foreigners, Google – these are all intertwined. Don’t you think these Indian Googlers need their crash pads at Palo Alto for their business trip to their head-office at RBA?
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:29 am
The problem is that you aren’t smart; you’re just a dick. It’s always easy for the permabears to be “right”; if prices are rising, well, it’s just a bubble. If prices are stable, well, it’s the top of the market. If prices are falling, then hey, we predicted this all along. If prices stop falling, then it’s just the spring bounce.
It becomes obvious after a while that you’re more invested in seeing other people fall on their face, than you are in actual discussion of the market and its issues. People like you are the reason that reality TV exists.
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:48 am
Lets discuss the issues. What do some of you “tech guys” think about this, courtesy of Minyanville;
“Think about who buys iPods, PCs and routers for a moment. On the corporate side, many of the largest buyers are those in the financial industry, the very ones that are being forced to raise capital just to stave off bankruptcy or the many smaller institutions that I fully expect to be merged into larger organizations in coming months and years. From the consumer side of the ledger, most consumers are stretched beyond their means. We also know that the majority of homes purchased with Alt-A and sub-prime mortgages now have negative equity. Not to mention the nearly $100 it costs to fill up a tank of gas.
Consumers are now officially tapped out and this helps explain why nearly 20% of all Americans have borrowed against their retirement accounts, a clear sign of financial stress.
Consumers have become so programmed that their assets will rise in price since the stock market bull market began in 1982 and the real estate bubble that began in 2003 they are used to borrowing against these assets. Now that debt has piled up, savings are depleted, and inflation in the “things that we need,” like gas and food, have exploded up into their own bubble you might say that the “Perfect Storm” has now formed for the median wage earner. Anecdotally, I sense that spending habits are changing for the upper class as well. As producers face higher price inputs, they then try to pass the costs along to consumers.
Retail sales numbers may have risen this past week, but most of it was as a result of more money spent on gasoline and higher prices paid per item purchased. This is not a harbinger for future growth; rather, it is a recipe for a deep and prolonged recession, which explains our caution.
So if you believe that technology companies are immune to the mess that began with banks and brokers, you may wish to re-consider.”
Well, is tech vulnerable? I only post b/c I’m in finance and my company just cancelled plans to upgrade computer systems(both hardware and software)and we have 2000 employees. If tech does get into trouble I don’t see how that helps put in a bottom for RBA prices?
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:53 am
Right you are, DensityDuck. I once heard the announcers on CNBC say that the most stable profession on Wall Street is a bearish analyst. A bearish analyst is never wrong, because they are not expected to be right in bull markets. They are there to provide a counterbalance to optimism and that is all. Bill Fleckenstein was wrong on the markets for 15 years. If he were a real market prognosticator, instead of the alternate role of unaccountable permabear, he would have been off CNBC years ago. Same with real estate. There is no sense posting *any* news that could be interpreted as supportive of a near bottom because that will immediately be dismissed,on the other hand completely unsupported claims that REO inventory is rising still, or that loans are impossible to get, or that a deep recession is looming are interpreted as facts.
We really won’t know the state of the real estate market is today, until next year at this time.
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:56 am
if prices are rising, well, it’s just a bubble.
If prices are rising based on the expectation of future value, as opposed to increased ability to pay, then it’s a bubble. Clearly when people were taking teaser rates and neg ams just to get through the front door, we were inflating a bubble.
The only way those buyers could survive would be to increase their household income by 50% or more within two years, refi using their bubble equity to make up for their inability to pay on the principal before the loan reset, or sell out at a profit and use the cash to buy into something they could actually afford.
Some bubble buyers fall into the third group, they actually made money and either returned to renting or bought something more affordable. It doesn’t mean they weren’t in a ponzi scheme. They simply got in and got out at the right time. Calling this particular cycle a bubble was not an excuse, it was the truth.
July 2nd, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Frank, the number of buyers that actually used those teaser rates in the real bay area is miniscule. That is the reason the RBA isn’t falling like everybody says it should, because the loan issue was more peripheral than these inland areas like stockton. Yes it helps that jumbo loans are easier to get on a 1.2mm house in Belmont, so there is some residual hit to the credit crunch but its hardly the implosion the bears are predicting. The real reason houses took off here is because the dollar crashed, people have a lot of money here and are trying to protect their assets. The bay area is not a debt driven housing bubble, really. Everybody completely cashed out of stocks and went elsewhere, the opposite of what happened last decade.
July 2nd, 2008 at 12:09 pm
if prices are rising, well, it’s just a bubble. If prices are stable, well, it’s the top of the market. If prices are falling, then hey, we predicted this all along. If prices stop falling, then it’s just the spring bounce.
————
Damn! I just thought you are talking about NAR quoted by Frank Jewett in post #20.
If prices are rising…..NAR says: “We can expect a historically strong housing market moving forward…..“.
If prices are stable…..NAR says: “The worst is behind us, as far as a market correction…...
If prices are falling…..NAR says: “At least the bottom appears to have already occurred. It looks like figures will be improving“.
If prices stop falling….NAR says: “The speculative excesses have been removed from the market and home sales are returning to fundamentally healthy levels…“.
Did I miss any quote from post #20?
July 2nd, 2008 at 12:27 pm
NAR is full of a bunch of idiots, I think we can all agree on that. RE and Pralay even.
July 2nd, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Is world peace at hand?
July 2nd, 2008 at 12:49 pm
I think we’ve found the one universal truth: the NAR is bunk.
July 2nd, 2008 at 12:53 pm
NAR is full of a bunch of idiots, I think we can all agree on that. RE and Pralay even.
———-
Me, yes. But I have doubt about RealEstater. He can clarify it.
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:16 pm
I have serious doubt there Pralay. This is the quote you link to:
If you don’t trust realtors, go talk to some VCs. Silicon Valley is benefiting from another tech boom. IBM and Itel both reported strong earnings, and more will follow.
In case you haven’t been following the VC world, no IPOs in the last 3 months. Furthermore, previous quarter almost as bad:
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Well madhaus, the ability to cash out with IPOs is definitely suppressed, but the willingness of private capital to fund startup ventures is more significant to us, and that is not in a crisis at all. That story in the Merc about Jatxr getting 20 million unsolicited reminds me of the 90s. And the reason the tech companies are not hurting too badly in this recession is that most of them are offsetting the weakness in US with the emerging markets. Dubai for example.
July 2nd, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Hellboy, I’m of 2 minds on that article you posted. I do see corporate tech purchases getting slowed down, but I also see consumer tech actually going up. It’s a slightly bigger version of the Starbucks paradox, well, if I can’t afford a fancy car or a big house, then at least I can have a fancy coffee drink. Only in this case its an iPhone or some game software.
WillowGlenner mentioned an increase in purchases from Dubai. I don’t see that as a big enough market to make up for the US; yeah they have money to burn, but there aren’t that many people living or even visiting there. And going back to the VC talk, early funding means there are jobs, but it’s IPOs that generate down payments.
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:32 pm
As someone who grew up in Dubai, and has family there now, I sure hope that the RBA has more propping it up than Dubai.
The crazy excess that is going on there is insane. Either the 2.5M dirt poor subcontinental construction workers who live there need to start being able to afford $1.5M condos, or 2.5M rich people from the rest of the world need to move there in the next 24 months.
-zanon
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:53 pm
The problem is that you aren’t smart; you’re just a dick.
Frowns.
To all,
Can we please increase the civility of tone around here.
Thank you.
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:12 pm
hey burbed, why no new article today?
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Burbed – Yes, let’s stay civil. I’ve got an upbeat one: Happy Birthday to all people born in July!
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:34 pm
hey burbed, why no new article today?
Because I hit “draft” instead of “publish”.
Fixed.
July 2nd, 2008 at 6:03 pm
This house makes me feel patriotic, with the flag flying out front. Everyone have a Happy Fourth of July!! Burbed, you are a true American, please continue to exercise your rights to free speech!!!
July 4th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Pralay,
A person who does not have a job is not priced out, he’s just “out”.
July 7th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
RealEstater,
Where did I say that I don’t have an income?