$700k house in Sunnyvale - yours to tear down! Huge lot!
960 Marion Way, Sunnyvale, CA 94087 Sunnyvale MLS# 80836968 - Property Details
$699,000
* Status: Active
* Bedroom: 4
* Bathroom: 2
* Year Built: 1951
* Lot Size: 9147
* Square Footage: 1219
* List Date: 9/29/2008
* Garage Spaces: N/A
This home is ready to be reborn. Located in an area with large lots and lots of potential, imagine the possibilities. Laurelwood Elementary, Peterson Middle School and Wilcox High School.
Thanks to Burbed reader madhaus for this find. Here’s the comments:
this house admits it’s a teardown, only $49K more
than the last house for a 4/2 you won’t want to live in
but huge lot.also Santa Clara schools in 94087.
So… is this priced fairly? Is this a good investment? It’s hard to do a price per square foot since I can’t divide by zero (just yet anyway) - but still, $700k is a hefty chunk of change.
Would you buy it and tear it down? Is this overpriced? Or is this underpriced?
Wow, this sounds like a high school essay question. “Please compare and contrast this house, with yesterday’s house…”
October 28th, 2008 at 7:31 am
Our latest data on Silicon Valley real estate prices is now posted at:
http://www.viewfromsiliconvalley.com/id458.html
Thanks!
October 28th, 2008 at 8:39 am
Uh-oh! Looks like sales prices are down all across the board! any comments from the perma-housing-bulls?
October 28th, 2008 at 8:39 am
I’d rather spend $950k and get the scraper in Saratoga school district. Let’s say you spend $450k to build a 2000 ft house. A $1.4m house in Saratoga school district is better than a $1.150m house in Sunnyvale, particularly non CUSD.
October 28th, 2008 at 8:51 am
Looks like it is sold already (’Pending Sale’ on MLS).
October 28th, 2008 at 8:53 am
burbed, this one is for you and your pink house fetish: http://www.redfin.com/CA/Sunnyvale/575-E-ARBOR-Ave-94085/home/1310168
October 28th, 2008 at 9:31 am
#3,
What are you talking about?
A 700k house has 7000 sq lot in Sunnyvale, but a 6000 sq LOT in Sunnyvale costs 1.2m (posted yesterday). If you want to buy in Saratoga and a crappy house would be costing you 950m, you’d better pay 1.5m for the LOT with a few house photos.
October 28th, 2008 at 9:46 am
>>Uh-oh! Looks like sales prices are down all across the board! any comments from the perma-housing-bulls?
Bob,
Do I need to remind you this is useless aggregate data? Prices down just means a large volume of REOs are selling in East San Jose. If you go to the neighborhoods most folks here would actually consider buying, there’s been no change in price even since the Wall Street crisis.
October 28th, 2008 at 10:02 am
1617 Swallow drive 94087 on the corner of Kildare sold for 740K a few months ago. Isn’t that a more desirable area than this? I think this looks overpriced.
http://www.1617swallow.com/
I went to the open house for 1617 Swallow, it was also a tear down, much worse in person than the pictures. The agents had priced it at 599K which meant it got hundreds of offers. The real estate agents were the stereotype RE agents you see on TV, too good to talk to people who came to their own open house. I’m always surprised by the superficiality of real estate agents around here.
October 28th, 2008 at 10:06 am
hey vfsv, are you actually including San Jose, particularly EAST San Jose as well as some of those junky Sunnyvale areas in your aggregate data? How worthwhile is that? And to be honest I am surprised its not down A LOT MORE than just 100+K in the past few months. Houses in ESJ are tracking at one half to one third of where they were priced at peak 3 years ago. Come on break that data out for it to be worth anything.
October 28th, 2008 at 10:08 am
WG,
There are parts of Sunnyvale that have homes in the $400K-$500K range. Do you not think these are better alternatives than San Jose?
October 28th, 2008 at 10:23 am
I know the areas you are speaking of, the Lakeview area and I believe Cambrian San Jose is a better alternative. If you buy into an area that was low end in quality from day one it takes longer to appreciate. Lakeview has a ton of flat roof shacks. Cambrian has houses like this:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Jose/2971-KILO-Ave-95124/home/1067323
This particular house is damaged so no one will buy it but you can see the area. Lakeview:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/Sunnyvale/298-HIDDENLAKE-Dr-94089/home/1426308
I know people here prefer the peninsula but I look for appreciation. I think the peninsula is tapped out. On the other hand the south bay is appreciating- Neiman Marcus is going into valley fair for a reason. When you look at Willow Glen and what you get in terms of neighborhood compared to places in San Mateo- there is no comparison.
October 28th, 2008 at 10:50 am
WG,
How much would that Cambrian house rent for, in your opinion? Is it difficult to find good tenants in that area?
Generally speaking, the problem with Cambrian/Campbell areas is that the location is too far from employers in SF or East Bay. From Peninsula down to Sunnyvale, you can commute either north or south for employment, where is for Cambrian, you’re stuck with South Bay.
October 28th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Correction: where as for Cambrian
October 28th, 2008 at 10:59 am
Hi Rick (#6)
I am talking about this:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/Saratoga/13601-MYREN-Dr-95070/home/1119535
$949k for 8k lot in Saratoga schools.
Or to spend $700k, I would get a livable house in Cambrian.
Or to spend 1.15m (the cost of the Svale lot plus a $450k house) I would get a house in West SJ with CUSD.
So to answer Burbed’s question, this seems high to me.
October 28th, 2008 at 11:17 am
WG, the Swallow house has the same schools as today’s house - Santa Clara school district. I like how the agent says it “borders” the Birdland neighborhood. No, it’s in Birdland, because it’s on a street named after a bird. What it does not have are Cupertino Schools (the dividing line moves around and here it’s Wolfe Rd). $600K was clearly underpriced, but they weren’t marketing it as a teardown, either.
SiO2, let’s compare this house to the scraper in Saratoga, then. This one has a bigger lot, and it’s cheaper. Now, Saratoga schools are definitely more desireable than Santa Clara. That lot size for Myren is on the small side for Saratoga. That said, it makes more sense to build $450K worth of house, even on a smaller lot, into a good neighborhood, than to overbuild in southeast Sunnyvale. It is a nice neighborhood but it is not the expensive part. You’d be taking a chance hoping that this place would improve beyond where it is. It is possible. If you don’t have $1.5m to improve in Saratoga, you could spend $1.1m to improve here. But you’re better off spending $1.1m and buying in southwest Sunnvyale in the first place. (CUSD)
Today’s house has a larger lot by Sunnyvale standards. If you look at neighborhoods, there are many with 6000 sf lots (especially in the less desireable north, in fact you’ll find lots even smaller than that), and many with 8000 sf which are more desireable. Some streets, however, get bigger lots because of where the major streets are or the development going in around the original farmhouse property, or whatever. So you’ll find streets here and there with 9000 sf lots, plus plenty of cul-de-sacs and curves with even larger lots distributed here and there.
Look at the aerial map and you’ll see all the lots on Marion are sized 9000+, the homes behind them on Eton are much smaller (both thinner and shorter borders). The lots on adjoining Navarro look even larger than on Marion.
I know this area, a lot of the homes are in poor repair, many streets have no sidewalks and street lighting is not as good as further west. Sunnyvale clearly neglects some neighborhoods in favor of others and this may be one of them. Also today’s house appears fenced off, as in condemned. At least you could actually move into Swallow without it falling down on your head.
October 28th, 2008 at 11:31 am
SiO2, LOL to that Myren house. I pulled that up and thought, Hmm pretty nice prices HAVE come down! Then I realized those pictures are NOT of the Myren house they are the neighbors! ROFLLLLLL! That Myren house is just the LOT. I don’t know. There are some 95070 zipcodes over there by Westgate shopping center that don’t look too good to me.
Madhaus, thanks for the update on the Swallow house vs this. The Swallow house was in TERRIBLE shape but honestly it didn’t look as bad as this. And whats up with these HUGE lot sizes, 9K is not a huge lot. I try to get 8K lots (it is tough admittedly) on really cheap houses. Chain link fences are usually a pretty bad sign on house condition. Not always but most of the time.
October 28th, 2008 at 11:50 am
WG, I said 9K was a big lot by Sunnyvale standards. The most common lot sizes are 6K and 8K. You can find bigger if you look.
The lot sizes get even smaller in Palo Alto, especially in 94306 with those 3/1s on sub-5000sf lots.
October 28th, 2008 at 11:54 am
WG
I agree, the neighborhood around Westgate is not as nice. East of 85.
This is on the west side of 85. It’s kind of funny actually. There’s a lot of not-so-good houses there, 50 year old flat roofed stuff. But there’s some new construction, as seen in the photos. And it’s gotten nicer in the last 5 years. I suppose it’s due to the schools, it’s worthwhile to buy the junker and rebuild. So looks like it supports your theory of buying the lesser house in the better neighborhood.
sorry to hijack this thread, this place just cracked me up. I particularly like the boarded up windows. I wonder how long it has been like that? How long ago did someone live there, and what was the final straw to make him move out?
October 28th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
SiO2, I lived near Westgate West about 18 years ago, really nice cute little neighborhood. Very well kept and presented nicely. Had an excellent elementary school (Country Lane) but the middle school sucked.
The area east of Westgate was worse.
Don’t use 85 as your dividing line, look at the school district. Saratoga is in not one, not two, but three different districts. Too far east and you end up in Campbell School District.
October 28th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
I forgot to answer somebody’s question up there. Your average 3br/2ba house in Campbell, Cambrian area rents for $2500 now. If you want to move it in a half hour and get 200 applicants price it at $2200.
Cupertino houses are renting for $3K for a ho hum house.
October 28th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
As long as we’re comparing rents: my friend just rented his old 3 bed/1 bath house off Bay Rd. in Menlo Park for $3200/month.
October 28th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Madhaus, you forgot one:
Campbell
Moreland
Cupertino
Saratoga
I agree, there is a big diff in nhood based on district. Although, the Moreland area on the east side of 85 and north of Saratoga is very nice.
WGer, my neighbor in Cambrian just rented out a 4br house (he owns it, renting to someone else). He was asking 2600, not sure what he got. It’s pretty nice inside. So your number seems pretty reasonable.
October 28th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
That’s right, there’s Moreland AND Campbell in Saratoga. I keep assuming those two are the same because they flop up against each other so many places. Country Lane Elementary is Moreland.
October 28th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Well, Madhaus, to further complicate it, Campbell and Moreland feed into Campbell High district. So I guess you could say that Saratoga has 7 districts:
Campbell, Moreland, Saratoga, Cupertino elem
Campbell, Fremont, Saratoga-LosGatos High!