Just how big is the lot for this Mountain View house?
$825,000
Beds: 3 Baths: 2 Sq. Ft.: 1,140 $/Sq. Ft.: $724 Lot Size: 7,200 Sq. Ft. Property Type: Detached Single Family Stories: 1 View: Green Belt Year Built: 1959 Community: Thompson County: Santa Clara MLS#: 81120777 Source: MLSListings Status: Active
On Redfin: 20 days Stunning Mardell home!Bright open floor plan. Amazing park-like yard. Lot size 8834 sq. ft per previous owner. Updated kitchen w/ tile floor & granite counter. Beautiful hardwood floor thru-out. Updated interior doors. Dual pane windows. Sunny living room w/ wood-burning fireplace. Spacious dining area has large windows w/ charming garden view. Friut trees. Los Altos High School. Convenient to everything
Thanks to Burbed reader Herve for this find!
What an interesting discrepancy – the listing says this has a 7200 sqft lot, but the details says the lot is 8834 sqft. Now, this doesn’t really matter because either way it is a low low price of $724 per square foot and it has “friut” trees!
But which one are you more apt to believe? How big is this lot?
Discuss!!
June 10th, 2011 at 8:41 am
They ARE making more land after all!
June 10th, 2011 at 9:02 am
You all missed out! The offer deadline was yesterday. Still not pending on Redfin though, so maybe you still have a chance.
June 10th, 2011 at 9:32 am
I actually toured the open house of this place – the lot was pretty big, by Bay Area standards anyway. The apparent size of the lot was helped a lot by the fact that there was basically no distinct front yard, the front and side yards ran together (Which is a plus IMO given how small they are to start with, at least give the ILLUSION of space. It was actually kinda nice, the yard is separated from the road by a hedgerow that goes right up to the driveway so it is really private/secluded in the house and yard. There were a lot of friut trees, including cutris and maybe some fgis.
If you look at the listing now, it says “Buyer to Verify” about the size of the lot, I suspect that is RE code for “previous owner lying through their teeth”.
Overall for a (R?)BA home, the yard was pretty big (Tho I don’t think 8900sqft) and nice but the house was pretty small. 1100sqft is pretty small for three bedrooms. The master bedroom had a queen sized bed that you basically had to crawl over to get into the master bathroom. The other two bedrooms were about the same size as the master (small but not tiny) so it cut into the sqft of the main living area of the house.
The agent was very optimistic about their chances though. I saw it the first weekend it was on the market, and she stopped speaking to her RE friend in a foreign language long enough to tell me that I had to get my offer in by Wednesday because they were going to pick the best one on Thursday.
The price has dropped since then so I guess they’re still waiting for that best offer. She seems to be still trying the same tactic though. The listing now says “Offer Deadline 6/9″
June 10th, 2011 at 10:28 am
“Listing last changed
June 2, 2011, 2:24 PM”
“Offer deadline 6/9.”
The above two things are clear.
What doesn’t jive with the above, however, is:
“May 10, 2011″
“On Redfin: 31 days”
Sure there was a 3% listing price reduction on May 28, but if it was such a great opportunity, why wait until June 2 to put a seven-day deadline in place?
Take a look at what happened back in 2003, a little over eight years ago:
Feb 26, 2003 Listed $595,000
Mar 08, 2003 Delisted
Apr 04, 2003 Sold (Public Records) $627,500 5.8%/yr Public Records
Apr 04, 2003 Sold (MLS) $627,500
Twenty-eight days in February 2003, so the current owner’s offer was made an accepted within ten days. The offer was $32,500 more than the listing price, and if you go back further in time:
Sep 27, 1991 Sold (Public Records) $328,000
So from 1991 to 2003, a period of about 12 years, the selling price increase from $328k to $628k, or an increase of about 90%–nearly a double, but not quite, after 12 years. Redfin reports a return of 5.8%.
Do people actually jump at 3% reductions? Like, OMG, the listing price has gone down by 3%, so let’s offer 10% more than the original asking price! Sorry, but it is very possible that mentality won’t be found again prior to the current owner’s expiration date, and the owner might be quite young.
When will Tulip Bulb mania return?
Using the 2003 sale as a benchmark, it will be very interesting to see for how much this property sells, and when.
June 10th, 2011 at 10:41 am
Friut, fgis, cutris, LOL!
Actually, a fair number of people pronounce it that way, “free-oot” so again it’s plain that the most annoying thing about Internet misspellings is that people really talk that way.
Maybe some of the friut is pluots, no not really a misspelling, there really are such things, and they taste quite good but sadly, “pluot” is the sound you’ll make on the terlet later.
June 10th, 2011 at 11:09 am
In regards to the whole issue of the lot size, I’ve never really understood the mentality of the buyer who wouldn’t simply pay for a surveyor to measure the lot.
Then again, it is less than twice ‘not a lot of money.’
June 10th, 2011 at 11:59 am
@SEA – re: when that property will sell, and for how much, I suspect that it will probably go for the $825K price, or if less, not much less (800K at the lowest, I would say), and probably fairly soon. That is pretty par for the course in that neighborhood for that size of house. We were house shopping in that neighborhood, and the nice well kept houses there that are priced right get snapped up within a couple weeks — quite a few the week after the first open house.
Also I think it is the RE agent that is doing the hard-sell with setting the “due dates” for offers, since I got the same thing from her when I was viewing the property for the first time. It is probably her “style” to create a used-car-sales-y “ACT NOW, PRICES SO LOW WE MUST BE CRAAAAAAZYYYYY!!!! BUY NOW BEFORE OUR MEDS KICK IN!11!1!~@” mentality.
As for the lot size, that stuff is usually in the disclosure packet. My disclosure packet had a County Assessor’s map page in it that showed the property with all measurements. But I guess there are all kinds of CRAAAZY triangles and shit up in that lot, and math is hard.
June 10th, 2011 at 12:35 pm
“My disclosure packet had a County Assessor’s map page in it that showed the property with all measurements.”
Have you ever spoken with someone who found out later that the property lines weren’t at the expected location? Let’s just say, it was not a pretty sight when my professional surveyor disrupted a neighborhood over lot lines. It’s a little funny how sellers really don’t care about the neighbors they’re leaving behind when property line issues start to block the sale. Let’s just say that I don’t recommend putting up any building without a surveyor marking the spot. An inch or two can become very important in some cases.
Seller sobbing, I walked from that deal–there was no way I was buying into that problem.
June 10th, 2011 at 12:58 pm
Off-topic: have you all bought your ducks yet?
June 10th, 2011 at 1:38 pm
“For each duck we don’t sell, something will be cut.”
That’s what she said.
June 10th, 2011 at 2:05 pm
If you look at the listing now, it says “Buyer to Verify” about the size of the lot, I suspect that is RE code for “previous owner lying through their teeth”.
#3, to paraphrase my mother, that’s the prior owner lying and every one else swearing to it.
.
#9, yep, I’ve got my ducks and they’re all lined up in a row. And they’re dopin’ with EPO!
June 10th, 2011 at 3:02 pm
May not sell at all:
“Jun 10, 2011 - Delisted (Cancelled) – – Inactive MLSListings #2″
June 10th, 2011 at 3:05 pm
“For each duck we don’t sell, something will be cut.”
Russell Crowe would object.
June 10th, 2011 at 3:07 pm
Lorena Bobbit might be happy to do the cutting!
June 10th, 2011 at 3:10 pm
Damn you #12, you beat me to it.
Also, if these ducks are being sold by a Jewish charity I don’t want to hear what they’re cutting.
June 10th, 2011 at 3:15 pm
Wonder how many agents the current owners interviewed?
From the 2003 listing:
“Buyer’s agent: Lucy Woo, Golden Gate Realty Company”
June 10th, 2011 at 4:45 pm
Now that the current listing is cancelled, the copy of the previous listing there. Where do these people learn to spell? Is(was?) the market really so good that you don’t even have to make an attempt? What the hell is tuched? And HARDOOD? Maybe the agent spent some time in prison getting tuched by hard doods?
June 10th, 2011 at 5:14 pm
Actually that should read HARDOOD SOME IJIT PAYD $627K 4 THIS POS
June 10th, 2011 at 6:06 pm
Haha Ducks For Schmucks, maybe what …. 0.001% goes to some charity, where by “charity” is meant the New Porsche Fund set up for the guy who set the whole thing up?
June 10th, 2011 at 9:32 pm
Hopefully my car will fit down that TINY STREET.
June 10th, 2011 at 11:32 pm
I just clicked on the link (hoping to see what the ‘tiny street’ thing is about) and the price has gone down to $627k just since this was posted here on Burbed.
Instant equity!
June 11th, 2011 at 6:11 am
#21- First take a look at #12, and note that’s the 2003 listing.