Los Gatos House Listing Proves The Bay Area Is More Expensive!
It’s Day 5 of our “Bay Area versus New York: Which suburbs are more expensive?” smackdown. To be fair, we’ll only look at reasonable houses: $1-$1.5 million.
It is, of course, the last day, and it is back to the Bay Area. You might think it is unfair that New York won’t get a chance to respond, but I assure you… this listing is so awesome that there’s no way anyone can respond. Let’s take a look:
140 WOOD Rd, Los Gatos, CA 95030 | MLS# 80812909
$1,100,000
140 WOOD Rd Los Gatos, CA 95030
Beds: 2
Baths: 2
Sq. Ft.: 1,470
$/Sq. Ft.: $748
Lot Size: 0.26 Acres
Property Type: Detached Single Family
Style: Cottage/Bungalow
Stories: 2
View: Mountains, Canyon, Valley, City Lights
Year Built: 1917
Community: Los Gatos/Monte Sereno
County: Santa Clara
MLS#: 80812909
Source: MLSListings
Status: Active This listing is for sale and the sellers are accepting offers.
On Redfin: 542 days
PRICE REDUCED! 2 bdr, 2 bath guest house. This home is nestled on the edge of a majestic redwood grove, which is the gateway to several hiking paths around the main property. It is the original home on this los gatos estate, built circa 1917. Fireplace in living room is clinker brick. Beautiful valley view from deck.
And there you go folks. $1.1M for a guest house. I couldn’t find anything like this in New York.
Phew. It’s been a great week, but I think this report definitively concludes that the Bay Area suburbs are more expensive than New York.
Please, tell 25 people you know about this. The press needs to know. The public needs to know. Everyone needs to know!
December 18th, 2009 at 8:00 am
Ahhh and we (Californians) are also happier than New York:
http://www.livescience.com/culture/091217-happy-state-list.html
46 of 51 is still better than 51 of 51.
Plus this survey doesn’t apply to the RBA, which is a meca of happiness (and equity).
December 18th, 2009 at 8:44 am
An 8% price reduction after a year on the market? Oh, you shouldn’t have!
December 18th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Re#1
Ha! I just saw that article myself. A whopping 46th place! Huzzah! But like you said, Real Bay Area is special.
December 18th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Damn. You all beat me. I can’t get over how much this list coincides with the cost of living. I’ve long held that the more expensive a place is, which naturally brings stratification and class division, the less happy people happen to be. Notice that almost all of the Southern states are at the top of the list. ( woo-hoo, my home state is No.4!) These also happen to be states that are typically a lot less expensive or have a predominantly middle class population.
1. Louisiana
2. Hawaii
3. Florida
4. Tennessee
5. Arizona
6. Mississippi
7. Montana
8. South Carolina
9. Alabama
10. Maine
11. Alaska
12. North Carolina
13. Wyoming
14. Idaho
15. South Dakota
16. Texas
17. Arkansas
18. Vermont
19. Georgia
But when you get to the bottom of the list, you get the most expensive states with the exception of Ohio ,Indiana, and Michigan which suffer from severe economic problems which in of itself is a reason for discontentment.
43. Massachusetts
44. Ohio
45. Illinois
46. California
47. Indiana
48. Michigan
49. New Jersey
50. Connecticut
51. New York
So I guess all that diversity, weather, and culture doesn’t cancel out the fact that people in these states tend to gripe a lot more and do so likely due to the cost of living in those states. Blogs like these which tend to exist in states like California and New York underline this fact even further.
December 18th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
At least I moved up two notches when I came out here.
December 18th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
All I can say is that I’ve lived in 2 of the bottom states. I came from one of the “happiest”. Just from my personal experience, I can definitely tell you that when I first got to Massachusetts, It was like WTF is this? Why in the hell is it so god-damned expensive here?
In hindsight I think it was because I’d come from a state where you would get your college degree, buy your house, buy a new car every 5-10 years, take vacations every summer, maybe buy a camper or a boat to a state where paying just the rent consumed most of the income, buying was out of the question, and what I would’ve considered a middle class house was what the upper crust lived in. The same is true even more so in California and a lot of people consume themselves with the procurement of a house.
Most people where I grew up were also squarely middle class. There wasn’t a whole lot of people driving brand new BMWs, Ferraris, and Porches. Its human nature to feel unhappy when they get a sense that others might appear or actually be considerably better off financially than themselves. Hence in an area where the class structure revolves around a less stratified span, you get happier people who probably feel more accomplished as individuals.
That’s my theory anyway…
December 18th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
“Porches”= “Porsches”
December 18th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Los Gatos is a shitty little town full of workaholic yuppies assholes and those who prey on them like liposuction doctors and RE agents. There’s nothing wrong with Los Gatos that a nice dirty bomb wouldn’t fix.
December 18th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
“”"Their results come from a comparison of two data sets of happiness levels in each state, one that relied on participants’ self-reported well-being and the other an objective measure that took into account a state’s weather, home prices and other factors that are known reasons to frown (or smile).”"”
“”"We wanted to study whether people’s feelings of satisfaction with their own lives are reliable, that is, whether they match up to reality — of sunshine hours, congestion, air quality, etc — in their own state,” Oswald said.
The results showed the two measures matched up”"”
Interesting study. The results seem intuitive.
Basically they asked people if they were happy – which is a subjective measure of happiness.
Then they measured home prices and other factors, to determine a more quantitative measure of happiness.
The study found both subjective and quantitative measures of happiness had a correlation.
In other words, people were less happy in states with high home prices. And more happy in cheaper states.
December 18th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Okay, enough of the kum-ba-yah moment.
Here’s a reality check:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20670001&sid=aQED_96QBBkk
A highlight:
Masoud Bokaie, co-founder of engineering firm BORM Associates Inc. in Irvine, California, owes $2.6 million on a 3,664-square-foot house with marble floors and granite counters about 10 miles (16 kilometers) away in Newport Beach. He’s waiting to hear whether lenders Luther Burbank Savings and Wells Fargo & Co. will approve a short sale.
He received an offer last month “close to” the loan balances, said Shirley Cameron, his agent at Coldwell Banker Platinum Properties in Irvine, who declined to specify how much. Bokaie said he doesn’t want to pay $7,000 a month in net costs including the property’s mortgages and taxes when real estate values in the area continue to tumble.
“What’s the point when the market is going in the other direction?” Bokaie said in an interview.
United – owners stand; divided (and defaulting) – they fall.
December 18th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Hmmm… Nomadic’s post brings up another possible part of the equation: unhappiness related to debt or loss of money/value. A lot of people In Cali are either in default or own a house that’s worth a lot less then what they paid. Naturally that would make them less pleased. Then again, Nevada and Arizona are “happy” states and they had record foreclosures.
December 18th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
One difference there – when you lose 20% of your house’s value in NV or AZ you’ve lost maybe $60k. Here it’s more like $200k.
Then again, I’m sure those folks losing “only” $60k aren’t very happy about it either.
December 18th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Taxes seem to also be a mitigating factor in the ‘unhappy’ states. Most of the ones on the bottom tier are those with the highest personal income and sales tax rates.
I think the unhappy states in the list also have (currently) high unemployment statistics.
December 18th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Happiness has something to do with ignorance. If you don’t know any better, don’t aspire to much, and don’t get bothered by low achievement, then it’s quite easy to be happy.
December 18th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Top Dawg,
That must explain why California and New York are at the bottom.
December 18th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Not helping, bob. He’s saying there’s an inverse relationship between happiness and intelligence.
December 18th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
That’s ridiculous. Yes- I got what he was saying, which wasn’t anything other than an insult suggesting that those who live in states like TN, AL, LA, and so on must be stooopid and lack drive and determination thus they’re too dumb to know that they should be sad or unhappy. Is that right? Unhappiness is a sign of intelligence? Excuse me while I laugh a bit because that’s about the dumbest thing I’ve read in awhile.
So assuming that those slack-jawed haysees in those happy states need to get their act together, they’d quickly find ways to come up with laws, regulations, and measures that would one day make their real estate, cost of doing business, and taxes and everything so expensive that nobody could afford it.Then they would be just as smart as people in California. I’m sure they are jealous of us and our predictment.
Something tells me that perhaps some of those happy states are actually populated by people who are quite smart and know a thing or two more about living instead of trying to come up with the next fart app for the iPhone or the next pets.com so they can fund their 1960’s Wally Beave rancher in some so-so suburb.
If those states were so stupid, then how come they’re also the fastest growing in the country? Its because people want to live like they do and have the lifestyle you can’t have anymore in the “Unhappy” states anymore.
December 18th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
LOL – sorry. Just couldn’t resist fanning the flames a bit.
December 18th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Regarding the happiness topic.
From my experience those who constantly say “I am happy” are the most unhappy people. They normally say that they are happy but if you dig deeper, you will find out that they normally say it to console themselves. You don’t have go that far. Just look at RealEstater who is too happy with his prestigious zipcode (and don’t forget “I am right all along” phrase too).
In addition, I take issue with the survey. The article says:
So, what are those objective measures? In next para:
Basically these so-called objective factors automatically put metropolitan and industrialized area in disadvantage. Let’s see. Two guys John Martian and Peter Martian arrives from planet Mars and they have same degree of happiness (in Martian objective scale). John settles at Iowa and Peter settles at NYC.
Surveyer: John, are you happy?
John: Yes. Very happy in farm. Whole day riding tractor and milking cows. It’s fun.
Surveyer: Peter, are you happy in NYC?
Peter: Yes, very happy. I love Broadway shows. And all the girls here. It’s fun.
Surveyer: But Peter, you know what you are not happy because your air quality is bad, you commute in Subway everyday, and you rent a small studio on Park Ave for $2000.
Boooo. So much for objective measure.
December 18th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
“Happiness has something to do with ignorance. ”
Top Dog must be the happiest person on this earth!
December 18th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
I guess Pralay wants me to chime in. IMHO, happiness is about one’s ability to achieve his/her goals. Bob is unhappy here for a very simple reason: He is unable to achieve his goal of home ownership. Pralay is unhappy because he never seems to get the price drop he is projecting. I would say I’m fairly happy because I have what I need, even though I’m just an average tech guy.
December 18th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
I see where you’re going but just because top dog is ignorant it doesn’t follow that he is also happy.
With respect to that article – the idea of trying to objectively measure a subjective thing (happiness) seems preposterous to me…
December 18th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Maybe California will be a happier place when all the unhappy people who bitch about everything move back to Tennessee?
December 18th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
I would say I’m fairly happy because I have what I need, even though I’m just an average tech guy.
—–
Average hitech guy? Probably not someone who cannot even describe his profession consistently.
Fairly happy? Probably not for someone whose “respect” in workplace depends on five digit zipcode.
December 18th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
I see where you’re going but just because top dog is ignorant it doesn’t follow that he is also happy.
—–
If you apply Top Dog’s logic, RealEstater is ignorant.
If you apply RealEstater’s logic, Top Dog didn’t achieve anything in life.
December 18th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
“I would say I’m fairly happy …”
I would have guess that based on top dog’s statement.
December 18th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
I’ll go against the grain and state that bob and RE made statements worth posting.
bob: “Its human nature to feel unhappy when they get a sense that others might appear or actually be considerably better off financially than themselves.”
But bob, why the continued focus on “financially”? And why always focus on negatives? How about you rewrite this with “It’s human nature to feel happy when…”
RE: “happiness is about one’s ability to achieve his/her goals”
Happiness is about being enabled. I don’t agree with it but I understand why you would. Happiness is found in the journey rather than the destination.
Spoken like a Scientologist
To me happiness is the wisdom and ability to focus on what feels positive both to you and to others around you. I believe RE when he says he’s fairly happy, the best proof being that it takes a lot to get him off his happy rails. Conversely, to be happier, simply surround yourselves with happy people. Unfortunately my theory would seem to contradict bob’s, wouldn’t it
December 18th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Happiness is about being enabled. I don’t agree with it but I understand why you would. Happiness is found in the journey rather than the destination.
Yes, but the journey is so much more satisfying when you feel in control of where you’re headed (that is, you’re enabled.)
Maybe I’m just arguing semantics there?
December 18th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
I’d argue the opposite. The feeling of control on external factors is an obstacle. It is limiting, misleading and subject to surrounding circumstances. It encourages you to define your happiness as how you can do as opposed to how you can be. True happiness lies in a heightened sense of appreciation regardless of present or future circumstances. You can be disabled but happy, enabled but sad. If you lose your sight, you can become a bitter person or you can grow to appreciate senses you didn’t previously develop as much, and worldly possessions or abilities to achieve goals are not a predictor of the path you would take. The person who “finds happiness” describes an inner journey which involves letting go what’s gone and appreciating what’s there, rather than “feeling in control”.
December 19th, 2009 at 1:21 am
I have to chime in on this thread. After moving out of the Bay Area after 10 years of living there, I’m MUCH happier! Well, I can’t say I’m completely out of the area, I ended up in Monterey, but, the houses are much cheaper out here, there’s no traffic, it’s much smaller and nicer, no air pollution, and the people seem nicer and more down to Earth.
By the way, I decided to see how the Bay Area home prices were faring after seeing the housing market implode in the past year… pretty shocked! Burlingame and Millbrae are actually higher in prices than what my wife and I remember them to be from a year and a half ago. WTF?? That just made me realize I’m so happy to have finally left that place after 10 miserable years.
December 19th, 2009 at 4:05 am
>>Conversely, to be happier, simply surround yourselves with happy people.
My version of that would be to surround yourself with positive people.
December 19th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Herve Estater,
No. California will be a happier place when taxes are lowered, fewer “entitlement” programs are available, government employees are axed and more deadbeats move out. Our state income and sales taxes are ridiculous and yet we are still running a deficit?
Maybe California will be a happier place when all the unhappy people who bitch about everything move back to Tennessee?
December 19th, 2009 at 11:56 am
“True happiness lies in a heightened sense of appreciation regardless of present or future circumstances.”
Well said.
December 20th, 2009 at 10:00 am
Burlingame and Millbrae are actually higher in prices than what my wife and I remember them to be from a year and a half ago.
Asking prices may be higher, but I doubt the sold prices are higher than mid 2008 in terms of $/sqft.