Let’s play fill in the footnote!
2105 Main St, Santa Clara, CA 95050 Santa Clara MLS# 80817070 - Property Details
$384,900
* Status: Active
* Bedroom: 3
* Bathroom: 1
* Year Built: 1954
* Lot Size: 5000
* Square Footage: 985
* List Date: 6/22/2008
* Garage Spaces: 1
* MLS#: 80817070Fixer upper as reflected in this great price. Home has some nice features: Pergo floors, beamed ceilings, double paned windows, gas stove. Bonus room also. Upgraded bathroom with tile floors and shower walls. Prime Santa Clara Location*
Thanks to Burbed reader sonarrat for this find! I think it’s time to play “Fill in the footnote”!
*if you like airports
*if you like railroads
*if you like airports and railroads
*if you’re looking for a quick getaway
*_______________
sonarrat also wanted to call out picture 9, so let’s go to that:
Wow. That’s. Um. Yeah.
Well, for the price though, this can’t be beat. Easy access to an international airport? Come on! If this isn’t a sign that we’ve hit rock bottom in prices, I don’t know what is.
And guess what, when the new Terminal A is built and retailers like Armani, D&G, Chanel, and French Laundry: San Jose populate it, this neighborhood will be changed forever. Better buy now before you are priced out forever!
August 11th, 2008 at 7:18 am
WHAT? I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!
..and let’s not forget about automobiles. Monroe is not exactly a quiet street either.
August 11th, 2008 at 7:51 am
Ah yes… another tool shed sized house at more than double the price over a house double the size in a nicer neighborhood just about anywhere else in the USA ( Minus NYC of course).But that’s OK because its in the Bay Area, and as we all know, there’s an invisible force field around it that makes it completely special.
Moving on,If you’ve ever spent time walking from an Airport parking lot to the airport, you already know that jet fuel smells foul. Just imagine living in this thing where not only can you smell jet fuel, but the diesel fumes from the trains as well.On top of that, the non-stop noise.
To me, it would be much more effective if the ad mentioned that:
“For those select few who have lost their sense of smell and hearing, you’ll find this home to be of utmost value. Perhaps being blind as well would be even better.“
August 11th, 2008 at 8:30 am
I live under the SFO flightpath, so I know exactly what it’s like. The air isn’t so bad there (probably because of the steady breeze from the Pacific), but the planes leave a fine layer of toxic dust on everything you own. Wash your car and it’ll be dirty again the next day.
I’ve never lived in a spot where I had airport noise AND train noise AND road noise, however - only one of the three at a time. This would be like living in a war zone.
And what the hell is that in picture 9 anyway? It looks like an artfully done boarding-up of a garage door’s window, but the garage door doesn’t have a window.
August 11th, 2008 at 8:35 am
I wonder about this though. One thing about flight paths and airports, you never know where the sound will show up. It is well known (according to RE agents anyway) that this area called ROSEMARY GARDENS in San Jose is the worst airplane noise from the airport. The streets there are Keoncrest and Rosemary. Those are on the other side of this house. I once lived in Sunnyvale in apts near Sunken Gardens- I don’t even remember where that was but I THINK it was El Camino and Mathilda? But anyway, there was *massive* flight plan noise there. To look on a map you would have never known. This house definitely has train, which is worse than flight plan because it shakes.
August 11th, 2008 at 8:47 am
People adapt to noises. I grew up half a mile from a freight line that ran in the top of a ridge across the valley I lived in. The train came by once a night and a few times in the day. As a result, I actually like the sound of trains because it reminds me of being a kid. It doesn’t bother me at all.
I did live right next to the train line in Boston. That was awful because the train came all the time, and it vibrated the ground. But what bothers me more than anything is lights. I still can’t stand them. It was pitch-black dark back home. Out here, it never gets night:The entire sky is lit up. Still haven’t gotten used to that.
August 11th, 2008 at 8:49 am
My house had train once, but I got a workman in and he took care of it.
Oh, what does the asterisk mean? It means that it was the first year of the longer playing season.
August 11th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Live near a train track once, boy the excitement about waking up at night. I was young and could have deep sleep, nowadays I get wake up if there is a gust of wind blown on the trees outside in the summer. I think the suicide rate is much higher in this neighborhood.
August 11th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
As Jake and Elroy said in The Blues Brothers, as they enter their apartment five feet from an “L” track:
“How often does the train go by?”
“Often enough so’s you won’t notice.”
August 11th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
I once lived in Sunnyvale in apts near Sunken Gardens- I don’t even remember where that was but I THINK it was El Camino and Mathilda?
———–
I think that’s due to Palo Alto Municipal Airport. Lots of flight lesson and pilot license test flights there - some of them fly right over Mountain View and Sunnyvale.
August 11th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Oh, the agent did not mention that this home is great for making your kid a chess champion. You can teach your kid playing chess on whole chequered living area (pic#3). Missing chess pieces? Santana Row is not far. Just go there at midnight and steal all the pieces from there.
August 11th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
i think the noise is from moffett. my coworker who was born here said they used to have many many flights a day from there. now they just have that big green plane that is so loud.
August 11th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
WG - if it was Mathilda & El Camino, things must’ve changed since then. I used to live there and never noticed any planes, except in the summer when they’d fly into Moffett for the big air show.
August 11th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
hmm, smells like fraud:
Sales History Property Tax
Date Price Appreciation
Jun 28, 1993 $183,000 —
Sep 01, 2004 $483,000 9.1%/yr
Feb 01, 2007 $864,000 27.2%/yr
Jan 28, 2008 $472,949 -45.6%/yr
$864k? No way. Not even during the bubble. Unless the appraiser was on crack.
August 11th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
lol 864k! I think a nice senior level engineer must have bought this house for his family. I’m sure he’s very happy with it.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles - HELLO PEOPLE THIS IS THE BAY AREA. More diversity than you can shake a stick at! You can hear noise from at least three separate and distinct vehicular modes of transportation. Talk about a fringe benefit!
Btw, the noise from the airplanes probably isn’t that bad as its more centralized on the northern and southern points. Granted, you’ll still hear it but at its probably not nearly as loud as the trains must be!
864k! poor poor people with no common sense. I’m sure he had a bang-up argument as to why someone would be pay that amount of money for something that doesn’t even qualify as turd.
August 11th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
You know what, lots of engineer families are earning more than 200K. I won’t understand why they are not paying 864k nowadays.
August 11th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Unless the appraiser was on crack.
——–
There were lots of bay area people in crack in 2006-2007.
August 11th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
nomadic, there are lots of times when I think it must have been fraud because of the price, or the appraiser was insane, incompetent, under the influence of drugs, but I have never heard anything about it.
But yeah, the house wasn’t even fixed up in this case, it does seem a lot like fraud, but who knows.
August 11th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Appraiser? APPRAISER?!? Some douche bag executed an agreement that said he would pay 864k for this thing and you blame the APPRAISER?
Of course, the buyer has no sense, so I suppose you’re right to blame him in some respect, but come on.
“You know what, lots of engineer families are earning more than 200K. I won’t understand why they are not paying 864k nowadays.”
Yes, I believe this to be so. If they didn’t live in the bay area, they wouldn’t make 200k, so they deserve to live in a turd. Homage must be paid to the real estate slime balls, for they control the market.
August 11th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
That $864k price is totally explainable. There must be a good gas reserve discovered underneath the house, the tech guy extracted all the gas and left the scraps to the fortunate new buyer at a great entry price, who wanted to renovate it to worth at least $600k. Then what do you know, the leftover gas underneath the garage blown his hope.
Look, the ground is so rich that weeds pop out even though there is great attempt to clean up by the FB.
August 11th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
* P.O.S.
.
August 11th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
anon, that’s why I think it smells like fraud. The appraiser would’ve been in on it (or smoking crack, as mentioned earlier).
Even during the bubble, one could buy a better place, in a better neighborhood for $864k.
August 11th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
All I can say is, if you’re relegated to buying this kind of house, moving to Austin is worth considering.
On the other hand, if you happen to be a deaf person, then at least there’s a way take advantage of the low price.
August 11th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Well I own an investment house that is a little too near the freeway for my personal tastes- you can definitely hear the freeway in this house - and it is a few blocks away from 280- I don’t buy houses right off the freeway no matter how cheap they are. This is a unique case.
* freeway noise is not consistent- it seems to have more to do with how the WIND is blowing than actual freeway sounds.
7am-11 or so NO NOISE WHATSOEVER
11-1 sometimes noise
1-5 quiet
6-8 fairly noisy
to that earlier poster, yes my sunnyvale planes were probably moffett. It was 1990. Planes were so bad then that when they flew over, if you were on the phone, you couldn’t hear and needed to step away from the phone.
August 11th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
…but but this is RBA. Real f’in bay area.
August 11th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Curiosity got the best of me and I drove by this house as I was picking up something from Home Depot.
Guess what? Yeah, there’s noise. Well, the street isn’t THAT loud, but that’s not the problem.
This entire street is filled with duplexes, quadplexes and 8-plexes filled with shady people who look like drug dealers. There are crowds of people hanging out in the street around the one or two escalades with rims. Aside from those nice cars, the entire street looks like a junk yard as it is filled with run down primer gray junkers.
The home itself still has the Christmas lights up and looks like it hasn’t been lived in for quite some time. Honestly, the place looked abandoned. Abandoned!
As an aside, there was a person outside _this home_ weed wacking the dead weeds in front. Nice looking yuppie type driving a Volkswagen. Maybe a googler. who knows? I was tempted to ask him how on earth this home came to be worth 864k, but I figured let it go.
384k for an abandoned property, lick my balls please!
August 11th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Drug dealers? Free junk? Now I’ve got to check it out.
August 11th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Anon,
Maybe there was a movie set going on?
August 12th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
WG, definitely Moffett. Those planes fly really low, so you really hear them. I’ve never noticed any airport noise from SJC landings/takeoffs. They do a lot of circling around Sunnyvale/Cupertino.
anon, great report on this asterisk house. Does it have an asterisk for the appraiser being on crack and steroids? Or did the buyer’s agent use a Designated Bidder? Not sure if you can get an asterisk for a 162-day Spring Bounce as opposed to 154. But let me check if the taxes are current…
looks like they are, but there’s a 61 & 62 suffix with some extra taxes that were paid late (in May), amount in the hundreds with a small penalty.
Usually an abandoned property would let the taxes go even sooner than the mortgage payment.
Wish I had more time today so I could dig into the county records and look for serial refinancing like I found on that other place last week.
August 12th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
anon - funny you mention Escalades on the street. If anyone checked out Google street view (you have to move up a couple houses to see the right one) you will see both a Cadillac AND a Jaguar parked out front. Too funny.
August 13th, 2008 at 4:27 am
Escalade is mexican for ‘has arrived,’ RIGHT RE?!
August 13th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
$864K!!!! Did anyone notice that last sale was the bank buying it back? I wonder if someone just paid a whole bunch extra transfer tax to make it look more expensive than it was. No loan on file at time of sale, either.
1st party: ReconTrust
2nd party: CountryWide Home Loans
Amt: $472,949
I didn’t find any refi’s for the last owner, but it also sold for $483K in Sept 2004.
Good Gawd! These people bought this house in Feb 2007 and the Notice of Default was filed in June! It’s like they didn’t pay one single loan payment! The trustee sale was in October. Three different people on the deed, I don’t know if this was fraud on the buyers’ part or another case of aggressive loan marketing to people who were completely over their head with paying this. (inotherwords fraud on the agent’s part)