You must maintain this Redwood City house
646 DOUGLAS Ave Redwood City, CA 94063$260,000
Beds: 3 Baths: 1.5 Sq. Ft.: 1,010 $/Sq. Ft.: $257 Lot Size: 5,000 Sq. Ft. Property Type: Detached Single Family Style: Mediterranean Stories: 1 Year Built: 1954 Community: Dumbarton County: San Mateo MLS#: 80955918 Source: MLSListings Status: Pending With Release On Redfin: 87 days Well mantain house, near freeways and stores
Thanks to Burbed reader Herve for this find!
Unfortunately, this house is already pending. Bummer.
It’s peculiar, usually listings talk about how well maintained they are. This listing? It tells you want to do.
So you’d better maintain this house! You’d better keep it near freeways and stores!
There’s so much other strangeness… for example, why did this realtor take the picture while driving by? Was it to emphasize the dynamics of owning in this neighborhood?
I’m guessing this isn’t going to win the listing of the year.
March 11th, 2010 at 8:56 am
Bought in 2006 for $692K. It comes with free power lines too!
March 11th, 2010 at 8:59 am
Does it come with the agent’s finger too? It’s in two of the pictures.
March 11th, 2010 at 9:03 am
Why are you asking? Are you eating at Wendy’s soon?
March 11th, 2010 at 9:34 am
Nomadic and Herve,
Thanks for the answer to my previous question. Here is another question that I have pondered over.
Several years ago I used to track the data published by:
http://www.rereport.com
I had a database of all their web pages covering more than two years. I was not fully convinced about the reliability of their data.
If you look at the page today it appears the market is up by +24% to +26% compared to last year for Santa Clara County while the volume is within 1%.
Are these numbers really a good reading of the market?
Are there any other sites which provide reliable data?
March 11th, 2010 at 10:31 am
Zak: The median and average prices may be up in Santa Clara county over the last year. But Santa Clara county has many different cities with widely varying median prices. Also, one year ago we had a very unusual financing environment. Jumbo loans were very difficult to get while FHA loans for lower priced houses with 3.5% down were easy to get.
I have noticed that sales (not prices) in the lower priced cities are at record highs, while sales in the highest priced cities are at record lows (over the last decade). This is likely to affect the median.
Once the financing environment gets more stable the median comparisons would be more accurate. By the end of 2009 jumbo loans were more easily available so year-over-year measurements by the end of 2010 should better reflect the market.
Until then a better source of data is to look at city by city data from Trulia.com especially for the larger cities.
March 11th, 2010 at 10:47 am
Zak – other sites to refer to:
altosresearch.com (has overview data by city but requires a paid subscription for details & data by zip code)
redfin.com (has city data on the first screen when you search for the city – you can then click on that for more details)
Here’s an example for Los Altos (scroll down):
http://www.redfin.com/city/11018/CA/Los-Altos
dqnews.com updates monthly
zillow.com has city overviews and if you look around, they even have very detailed reports that can be downloaded into Excel files
propertyshark.com – I already mentioned this one; you can look up details by specific property
.
BTW, Herve – the Wendy’s thing was a hoax. I used to go to that location after the big news broke because it was empty for months afterward. My office was nearby.
March 11th, 2010 at 11:32 am
Zak-
As others have mentioned, beware of the effects of mix. It’s always better to compare same-house sales to get a sense of where the market stands, ala Case-Shiller. Unfortunately, Case-Shiller data is delayed by three months, is a moving average, and reports on the entire SF Bay Area, so it’s not terribly granular.
To get a real-time estimate of market performance in a geographically constrained region, you can use Redfin. Just look at properties that are pending in your region of interest, then look up the price and date of their last sale. You can calculate the annualized rate of appreciation from this. I would ignore transactions that within <1 year, as these are likely remodel flips, or REO flips that aren't true apples-to-apples comparisons. Additionally, the listed price of pending homes is often 5% higher (give or take) than the eventual closing price, so it's best to factor this in.
If you have a bit more time on your hands, you could download all of the recent sales and look up the sales history for each property.
A more approachable (and less accurate) method is to use the median $/sq ft of recent sales, but here too mix can distort things.
March 11th, 2010 at 12:12 pm
Zak: The median and average prices may be up in Santa Clara county over the last year. But Santa Clara county has many different cities with widely varying median prices.
——
That’s right. Take these two examples,
Palo Alto: Median down from $1.7M to $1.64. Median price per sqft down from $825 to $780.
Gilroy: Median up from $425K to $489K. Median price per sqft up from $219 to $228.
March 11th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
“for example, why did this realtor take the picture while driving by? ”
dude.. if you’ve been in that neighborhood, you wouldn’t get out of the car either.
March 11th, 2010 at 3:10 pm
we’re cleared for take-off! http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2010/03/08/daily77.html
March 11th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
from DreamT’s link:
Delegates attending Stitches West, DesignCon, American String Teachers Association, and other meetings and tradeshows added to the increased room night occupancy, he said.
Stitches West? At first I thought – ER doc convention? Nope. Knitting!
String Teachers? Instrumental music.
March 11th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
nomadic – you gotta keep busy as unemployment benefits run out. Knitting and string music are booming industries that will lift San Jose from its morass – I mean, morosity.
March 11th, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Occupancy rate 76.33. Looks like Faux Estater still has chance to get a suite here.
March 11th, 2010 at 3:23 pm
Knitting and string music are booming industries that will lift San Jose from its morass – I mean, morosity.
—–
So these are the NEXT BIG THING. Where do I buy some stocks for violin manufacturer and yarn maker?
March 11th, 2010 at 4:03 pm
we’re cleared for take-off! http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2010/03/08/daily77.html
That reminds me, I read an article recently where SJ airport officials were suggesting to either lift the curfew on SJC, lower the “living wage” for the airport workers, or some other thing to lower the costs at SJC, since few people seem to be using the airport these days.
March 11th, 2010 at 4:06 pm
as opposed to what days?
SJC has always been a ghost airport as long as I can remember (circa 2004) except right after labor day.
March 11th, 2010 at 5:58 pm
Back in my Stanford days I used to book to flights from SJC to IAD or DCA (stops in DEN, ORD, LAX, or DFW) to leave near Thanksgiving, or near Christmas and I would end up in this huge line for the terminal A security that snaked around parts of the parking garage. OAK is also a ghost airport though. SFO which I have been using close to exclusively these days, is still pretty popular.
March 12th, 2010 at 9:48 am
Pralay: So these are the NEXT BIG THING. Where do I buy some stocks for violin manufacturer and yarn maker?
——-
I think you want the new “Ultra Strings & Things” EFT from Proshares.