OMG - Atherton High house in Menlo Park for just $599,000!!
923 Marsh Rd, Menlo Park, CA 94025 MLS# 768984 - Property Details - Movoto
$599,000
* Status: Pending Release
* Bedroom: 3
* Bathroom: 1
* Year Built: 1950
* Lot Size: 5000
* Square Footage: 1070
* List Date: 12/21/2007
* Garage Spaces: 1
* MLS#: 768984$100,000 PRICE REDUCTION! VERY CUTE! BEST VLAUE FOR THREE BEDROOM HOME WITH MENLO ATHERTON HIGH SCHOOL!Adorable home with lots of charm and light. Very sunny, private backyard, nice sized bedrooms, hardwood floors, fireplace, newer applicances, nice bathroom. very good quiet. Menlo Atherton High School. Go Direct or call Listing Agent. Back on the market, loan fell through, no fault of the home.
I love decorations in this home - very timely.
Wait a minute… why does this seem so familiar?
Free child included with Menlo Park home? [Burbed.com]
Oh right. This was featured in February. Doh!
Well, the deal fell through and it was no fault of the home. So that makes this an incredible steal. The photos seem to indicate that the child still comes with the house, so that could be some additional income too.
This house is going to be scooped up in just a few days… you just watch!
July 18th, 2008 at 7:18 am
Ya know, loans can fall through because the bank decides the house isn’t good enough collateral. Just saying.
July 18th, 2008 at 7:56 am
How do you get additional income from a child?
Child labor is only legal in Asia.
July 18th, 2008 at 8:18 am
It’s only illegal if you get caught.
July 18th, 2008 at 9:48 am
I wouldn’t use the child for labor. I’d sell the little dickens and get all my cash up front, then it’s someone else’s problem. I bet that would knock at least $10K off the price of this house.
Oh wait, I don’t want the house after all. It’s in the Flood Park Area. I want to buy where the elevation is above sea level.
July 18th, 2008 at 10:31 am
looks like it is sold again. The low end properties are really moving now. It could have fallen out of escrow for any reason, for example anybody using indymac for a mortgage (and they were a HUGE mortgage lender) just went SOL.
July 18th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Yup- those low-end houses sure are a-movin’ now aren’t they? Better go out and buy some of em’ before the lose more value! Hurry!
July 18th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Low end house on a very good neighborhood maybe. WG, I would be surprised that you’ve never checked out the list for east bay.
Waiting_for_the_fall, no child labor is not legal in Asia, please provide some example. And may I suggest South America and Africa? It is just a visible divide between rich and poor. I think the older generation will still remember New York city paper boy (I was surprised that there is a musical movie for it) and such, and no they were not simply doing it to get a few more bucks to spend.
July 18th, 2008 at 11:50 am
Menlo-Atherton High is not a great school because it’s also “East Palo Alto-East Menlo High”. Many Menlo Park and Atherton residents send their kids to one of the private schools nearby, so it does not matter to them.
July 18th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Menlo-Atherton High is not a great school because it’s also “East Palo Alto-East Menlo High”.
Good god some of you folks are snobs. I wouldn’t want to send my kids to private schools or any of the “good” schools because if that’s the attitude parents have, I don’t want it rubbing off on my kids either.
July 18th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Affluent areas such as Marin County and San Francisco, which until now had resisted most price erosion, saw existing single-family home median prices fall by about 11 percent. Including new homes and condos, the Marin County and San Francisco medians fell about 12 percent to $846,000 and $726,750, respectively.
“This is pretty grim; double digits across the board,” said Christopher Thornberg, principal at Los Angeles’ Beacon Economics. “It was eminently predictable if you had a realistic view of the world. I heard a lot of people say the Bay Area was never going to see prices fall, San Francisco was untouchable; in San Mateo, it was impossible; San Jose, not with all the tech money, blah, blah, blah. But prices at the peak relative to people’s incomes never made any sense.”
July 18th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Exactly my point on another thread, RealEstater. Schools matter to the midrange properties more than the high end. For years Hillsborough and most of San Mateo including Burlingame had bad schools. Didn’t matter. But as to this house, maybe for a 600K house Menlo Atherton is a bene.
rick- no I don’t do anything in East Bay. I really stick mostly with Santa Clara county and that has as much as anyone can keep up with- an entire microcosm. I happen to know San Mateo county because I rented there in San Carlos and San Mateo for about 8 years in the 90s. As to low end properties only moving in the good areas… not true at least not what I am seeing. the 500Ks are moving fast and hard now. We have peaked in the low end inventory and my opinion is that the investors saw the peak and moved in. Just taking the worst hit zipcode Alum Rock, here are some recent sales- these things were NOT MOVING until very recently, in fact these have been on the market for a long time.
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Jose/19-KIRK-Ave-95127/home/1107259
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Jose/116-FLEMING-Ave-95127/home/615549
HERES ONE FOR BURBED
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Jose/10286-EARLANDER-St-95127/home/946689
July 18th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
WG,
Hillsbourough actually has very high performing elementary schools and middle schools these days. Just pick a random house on the market and look at the scores: http://www.movoto.com/real-estate/homes-for-sale/CA/Hillsborough/660-W-Santa-Inez-Ave-100_80779776.htm
The issue is that Hillsborough does not have its own high school. The high school is shared with either San Mateo or Burlingame, and the quality drops off there.
Palo Alto, on the other hand, has its own school system all the way up to high school. That aspect makes Palo Alto more “special”.
July 18th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Looks like only one Starbucks will close in SC county. Only one place where Starbucks wasn’t good enough for the local residents! Exactly one single spot where the independent coffee shop across with the pacman machine managed to survive and even bury Starbucks.
I suggest we not only include WG’s neighborhood back into the RBA, but also add Cognac-style tags to our denominations. While Hillsborough and Atherton would be XO, WG would be VS.
July 18th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
WOOHOO!!!!! Thanks for bringing this to my attention DreamT! Lincoln Avenue YEAH! We already have the GREAT willow glen coffee roasters on Lincoln, plus a PEETS for crissakes! And its not like WG isn’t already full of starbucks just like everywhere else- there are TEN, yes TEN starbucks in the very immediate area around me- so now without the Lincoln store that makes 9, and its so obtrusive that you literally have a starbucks on the corner of Meridian and Hamilton, and then you turn the corner on Hamilton and without about 1/2 block there is yet ANOTHER starbucks, and these are just the standalone stores, I am not including the ones in the safeways.
July 18th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
The real bay area is doomed. Only folks who bought when prices were sane think everything is ok.
All others recently invested in the market are dropping turds in their pants.
Countrywide…GONE!
IndyMac…GONE!
Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac…on life support.
Who’s going to be able to qualify for a loan for million dollar fixer upper. No one.
This blog is probably getting easier and easier to write every day.
July 18th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Bad neighborhood schools make it so much easier to dress your kids - Just buy several uniforms. As a kid who grew up in a bad neighborhood, yes, I gladly pay more to raise my child in a better neighborhood because neighborhood violence is a real problem, not an urban legend invented by snobbish bloggers.
July 19th, 2008 at 1:32 am
“Who’s going to be able to qualify for a loan for million dollar fixer upper. No one.”
LOl! not only that, who would *WANT* to qualify for a loan where you actually expect to buy the house for a million dollars!?
To everyone who bought in the past 2 years: I hope you LOVE your property, cuz you’re going to be in it for a while!!!
July 19th, 2008 at 2:19 am
I regularly read posters who confuse house sale price and loan amount. Hello! Most people nowadays buy and obviously upgrade with substantial money down. Los Altos, Palo Alto are pretty much only upgrades so if it’s not all cash there’s at least good equity from a previous house. Get a clue please.
July 19th, 2008 at 9:02 am
I regularly read posters who confuse house sale price and loan amount. Hello! Most people nowadays buy and obviously upgrade with substantial money down. Los Altos, Palo Alto are pretty much only upgrades so if it’s not all cash there’s at least good equity from a previous house. Get a clue please.
Exactly. And first-time buyers, even a young couple with, say, two $40K salaries, can buy a small condo in San Jose or San Francisco, or a house in the East Bay, and trade up later when they have some equity and a larger income. Almost everybody was priced out in 2007, but now I see a fountain of opportunity. How far have we climbed up the ol’ affordability ladder?
July 19th, 2008 at 10:17 am
DreamT,
You think this is an upgrade? Where you think the buyer has equity? An 800 sqf condo?
The thing is, most of those houses posted are pretty much for first time buyers, or else they are called “downgrade”.
July 19th, 2008 at 11:17 am
sonarrat: “Almost everybody was priced out in 2007″ certainly not the people who bought that year and certainly not the huge majority of bay area homeowners who still have plenty of equity. Come on, priced out means UNABLE to purchase!
rick: Yes, a condo, upgrade to a 3 bedroom SFR. Talking from personal experience.
July 19th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
“Come on, priced out means UNABLE to purchase!”
I’d add… and unable to hold onto the property as prices decline and ARMs reset.
July 19th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
An addendum to my above comment, a real-life example of such idiocy —
ABC 7 News reports from California. “More than 1,600 foreclosure notices went out in the Bay Area in the first quarter of this year and a quarter of them came from Contra Costa County. That’s a 140 percent increase in foreclosure activity in just one year. Misery had a lot of company on a Friday night in Antioch, where homeowners tried to negotiate their way out of foreclosure and keep a roof over their heads.”
“‘So what I’m here to do is ask Washington Mutual to seek a return on my investment,’ said Gary Robinson, an Antioch Homeowner.
“A few years ago, Gary Robinson bought this home in Antioch for about $700,000 using an interest-only loan and an adjustable rate. ‘My mortgage is at $5,000 dollars. It went from $2,000 to $5,000 and the house is worth 60 to 50 percent less,’ said Robinson.”
July 19th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Lionel, exactly. By Gary Robinson’s logic, I can afford a Ferrari, a super-nice house, and vacations in France, all at the same time. BUT THAT LOGIC SUCKS.
I am writing this, incidentally, from Reston, VA. Population a little lower than ritzy Palo Alto. Family-friendliness extraordinarily higher. Here’s an example: you know how there’s only so many pools in PA, and Rinconada is always full by noon on a hot Saturday? Reston has 15 pools with wading areas for little kids. 15. It’s not even a little bit crowded. And the equipment is new. And that stuff applies across the board. They’re not running bake sales to pay the PE teacher! Even in the BAD school districts! The freakin’ pizza is bigger at Chuck E Cheese!
I’ve set a 2010 deadline for getting the hell out of the SF Bay area and I know now that I’m sticking with it. Screw this crap. Even with the house, we would never live as well as this!
July 19th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Renter4, I am moments away from taking my daughter for a splash in one of the many fabulous parks here in North Seattle. (Yes, burbed, there are days when it’s not raining here.)
July 19th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Lionel - the ARM reset means you’re now priced out of your own loan, not priced out of the real estate market. Of course if you cannot even pay off your own loan you’re not going to go and buy a house, but even if you weren’t priced out of your own loan you wouldn’t be likely a home buyer anytime soon.
So again I’m pointing out that for a large majority of people, these are two very different things - the mortgage you can afford and the house you can afford.
July 19th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
And you know what, I am not going to leave my increasingly irrelevant comments here any more because I now know with certainty that I DON’T CARE about Bay Area housing prices! I refuse to ever ever buy here, even on a New Canaanite salary. I have examined “flyover country” in close detail, and it’s totally frickin’ awesome! Wahoo! Buhbye, all!
July 19th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Did I mention that the hills aren’t ON FIRE out here? They’re totally not! What a concept!
July 19th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Wow, somebody’s been pricing way too many crapboxes and is mad as hell and won’t take it any more.
The only way you’ll pry me out of the Bay Area will be with a 7.5 under my house. At least I won’t have to bother packing up anything.
July 19th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
I’m actually not mad at all. I don’t look at prices any more around the BA because I know I won’t pay them. But I’m here visiting family, and it’s SO NICE and so ethnically diverse, and the food is awfully good, and, you know, do I want my eyes to be stinging each summer with the fumes of Brisbane burning? Or with chlorine from one of 15 (fifteen!) nice public pools? The school district here mandates a dedicated Special Ed teacher for each grade level, did you know that? It doesn’t affect us directly, but I believe strongly in equal education, and I’ve never even heard of such a ratio in California.
July 19th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Renter4, you’re probably right to be enthusiastic about that other place. Still, a good thing to keep in mind: http://www.stmnetwork.ca/helping_you_go/documents/dealing_with_culture_stress.pdf
You sound very much like you’re in phase 1. Beware phase 2!
July 20th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Well, I have 18 months to get over it… The people actually seem about the same only not so tech-enabled; it’s all their luxury I’m really digging.