We’ve been spending too much time in Santa Clara County, which means we’re forgetting about the other eight counties in the Bay Area.  So let’s head north for today’s front-page feature.  Thanks very much to Burbed reader Tom Paine for this deep subject.

4291 Gravenstein Highway S
Sebastopol, CA 95472

Listed for $535,800 on 2/1/12
Several price cuts, to $315K on 10/19
Sold for $310,000 on 11/8/12

BANK OWNED
1 Story Detached
3 bedrooms
2 bathrooms
2,535 sq ft
3.45 acres
13 years old
15 Photos
Style: Ranch
Lot Size: 3.45 ac
Mortgage Payment: $1,114/mo
Taxes –
Year Built: 1999
Subdivision: Sebastopol
Stories: 1
MLS #21202510
WalkScore™:18

Nice piece of property on 3.4 acres. Cash only buyers. No financing. Serious defects include well contamination, rotted foundation and extensive wood rot.

Here’s why Tom thought this nowhere-near-the-Real Bay Area estate deserved to be all tarted up on Burbed:

Think of enjoying the beautiful views in the morning, sipping that cup of extra flavorful coffee and smelling the sweet scent of rot. And you get that special REO deed that doesn’t guarantee title as a bonus!

Can’t imagine why this didn’t sell faster.  Nothing is more authentically Marin than extensive wood rot.  But you get all this prestige at a Sonoma County price (complete with a Sonoma County address)!

This is also one of those listings we had to play Where’s Waldo with, because it didn’t show up on Redfin or several others.  Plus it had different listing copy with fewer but blurrier photos on Zillow:

4291 Gravenstein Hwy S
Sebastopol, CA 95472
Not for Sale

Zestimate $392,863
Rent Zestimate $2,458/mo
Est. Mortgage $1,371/mo

Beds: 3
Baths: 2
Sqft: 2,535
Lot: 150,282 sq ft / 3.45 acres
Type: Single Family
Year built: 1999
Fireplace: Yes
County: Sonoma
Legal description: MAP D5 151
Parcel #: 062240030
Per floor sqft: 2,535
Total rooms: 7
# Stories: 1.0
Unit cnt: 1
Zillow Home ID: 15806148

Excellent country estate on over 3.4 acres. Home features tile entry, large living area with fireplace & fish tank, granite counter tops & island in kitchen, oversized master bedroom w/sitting area. Outside kitchen with built-in BBQ. Fantastic views of pastures, hills and seasonal creek. Pre qual with BOFA required on all offers. Cash buyers are subject to Deed restriction.

Bunus: Check out the listing history!

It’s been several days since we last featured a property in Mountain View, and that means every one that’s been sent in has gone Pending!  Here’s one of them you can no longer buy because you weren’t phoning your agent every single minute.

2343 Craig Ct
Mountain View, CA 94043
Price:  $835,000

Loan Payment:  $2,798/mo
Bedrooms:  3
Bathrooms:  2
Size:  1,104 sqft
$/Sqft:  $756/sqft
Type:  Single Family House
Year Built:  1955
Lot Size:  8,000
Days on Movoto:  18 days
Neighborhood:  Thompson
MLS#:  81239158
Status:  Pending – Do Not Show
Go See This Home Make an Offer

 

* DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH!* ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES!* EICHLER STYLE HOME BOASTS HIGH CEILINGS & LARGE WINDOWS FOR PLENTY OF SUNSHINE!*TERRIFIC FLOORPLAN W/ SEPERATE DINING AREA*INSIDE LAUNDRY*LIVING ROOM W/ FIREPLACE* COVERED PATIO*LARGE BACKYARD PERFECT FOR SUMMER BBQ’S!*ACROSS FROM MONTA LOMA ELEMENTARY & MINUTES AWAY FROM GOOGLE, SHOPPING & FREEWAYS! WITH A LITTLE TLC THIS CAN BE THE PERFECT HOME!*

The only thing this house is missing is a million dollar price tag.  It’s got everything else: eye-catching facade, listing pix pulled off Redfin and most of the other major sites (thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for Movoto!), ALL CAPS in the listing copy, along with a misused apostrophe and ENDLESS exclamation points!!!!!!

Bunus: Date stamps on the photos, too.  The only thing left to do is place your bets how high the winning overbid comes in at.

Can you judge a book by its cover?  You’re going to have to if you’re interested in this beauty in Belmont!  Thanks very much to Burbed reader alyson for sending this foreclosed fortress in.

612 Hiller St
Belmont, CA 94002 
Price:  $624,900

Loan Payment:  $2,094/mo
Bedrooms:  3
Bathrooms:  2
Size:  1,970 sqft
$/Sqft:  $317/sqft
Type:  Single Family House
Year Built:  1953
Lot Size:  7,072
Days on Movoto:  15 days
MLS#:  81239349
Status:  Pending – Do Not Show
Go See This Home Make an Offer

Great opportunity to own a home in Belmont! Walking distance to schools, shopping and easy freeway access. This is great for 1st time buyers or investors. Only cash buyers for this property, the buyer(s) are to take possession with the occupant(s) in possession. There will be NO interior inspections for this property, only drive by.*** DO NOT DISTURBE THE OCCUPANT(S) *** Thank You.

Here’s why alyson sent us this listing:

“great for 1st time buyers” but you can only drive by before buying!

Who says you can only drive by?  You have many other options!  You could also walk by, jog by, bike by, skateboard by, rollerblade by, or wait for the next snowstorm and cross-country ski by.

Also, if you’re really feeling adventurous, you could descend down the chimney wearing a cable harness like in Mission: Impossible, to avoid the laser-activated alarms this house is obviously secured by.  That’s why there’s no photos inside.

We do like how Movoto encourages us to Go See This Home when the listing copy tells us we can’t.

Bunus: Home sold for $640K in… 2004!

Listings tend to fall into certain kinds of categories here at Burbed.  There’s your all around crapshack, usually sold for the land value and no pictures inside.  There’s your overbuilt flip that’s wrong for the neighborhood.  There’s your overbuilt “dream home” that’s wrong for any neighborhood, and its cousin, the nightmare home whose builder ran out of money. Burbed reader Tracy Tea House has found us something else entirely over in East San Jose: winner of the wtf tag.

1764 Mount Kenya Dr
San Jose, CA 95127
Not for Sale

Zestimate $434,672
Rent Zestimate $2,549/mo
Est. Mortgage $1,507/mo

Beds: 5
Baths: 2
Sqft: 1,884
Lot: 5,662 sq ft / 0.13 acres
Type: Single Family
Year built: 1961
Construction quality: 6.0
County: Santa Clara
Last remodel year: 1961
Legal description: TRACT 2450 MT PLEASANT BOOK 132 PAGE1 7 LOT 792
Lot depth: 105
Lot width: 54
Parcel #: 64724054
Per floor sqft: 1,884
Total rooms: 7
# Stories: 2.0
Structure type: Other
Unit cnt: 1
Zillow Home ID: 19786732

Split level home with so much potential. Three bedrooms upstairs and two downstairs. Open floor plan with large living room. Inside laundry. Downstairs bedrooms may be locked but rest of the house is view-able. Large separate storage room outside, detached workshop. Some double-pane windows. Home needs front and back landscaping, has nice decorative stone wall. Good handyman special.

We’re not going to let a little thing like the house not being for sale stop us.  Besides, Movoto’s got it for $350,000.

Here’s what Tracy had to say when sending in this Alum Rock redoubt:

Do not drink before viewing these pictures!

Oh wow. Wrong in so many ways, but the picture of the kitchen is a first for me! This house just hit the market for 350K

What, you’ve never seen green cabinets before?  Oh, you mean this one.

We don’t think we’ve ever seen one of those in a kitchen before either.  Guess putting it outside isn’t that good an idea.

Bunus: Check out the (five years) old listing photos currently on Redfin.

We’re always interested in ways to measure how Special a place is.  A website called areavibes.com has a Livability Index that has some interesting assumptions.

First, let’s see what it makes of some places most of us agree are Not Particularly Special (by which we mean we wouldn’t live there for free and we also wouldn’t live there unless we were paid Larry Ellison’s stock options).

Here’s areavibes on Detroit.

Detroit, MI is “Somewhat Livable.”  The only “A” grade it received was in cost of living, and that’s because the city will pay you to take one of their excess houses so they don’t have to pay to tear it down.  We can’t imagine what kind of city would merit a “Completely Out of the Question.”  Let’s move another to another Perennial of Pwnage: Stockton.

I can see the new Civic Motto over City Hall (if they have any staff capable of hanging banners): Stockton! Four Points More Livable Than Detroit!  But they are an important four points, as Stockton is considered “Very Livable.”

We now move on toward the Bay Area, but not the Good Part.

When Stockton has finer amenities than you do, and their weather is better too, plus your housing costs are unacceptably high to anyone outside the Bay Area, what’s the point of even entering the race?  Let’s try a better zip code.

Ooooo!  Exceptionally Livable!  And what’s really exceptional is that if we type in an actual zip code, the score went down.

Good luck figuring out why.  Finally, we arrive at the pinnacle of Real Bay Area Living.

We invite you to try to score higher than that, either in the Bay Area, or anywhere else.  And we don’t want you to think these “grades” are completely pulled out of Mitt Romney’s car elevator.  Here, for example, is what the housing grade is based on:

Cupertino scores higher than average in every category.  Why would they be marked down for better numbers?

This is also your Weekend Open Thread, so go crazy.

It’s been an emotional week, so let’s end on an upbeat, high note!

Home Prices Near Highs in Some Cities

By AMIR EFRATI

As housing prices nationwide start to recover from their depths, home prices in Silicon Valley are close to an all-time high.

Many Silicon Valley cities have come nearly all the way back from the real-estate bust of just a few years ago, in terms of how much buyers are willing to pay per square foot for existing single-family homes.

Driven by technology employees looking to buy and a constrained housing supply, Los Altos, Palo Alto and Burlingame have registered the strongest comebacks. During the third quarter of this year, home prices in those cities were just several percentage points away from peak levels in 2008, according to new data from research firm DataQuick

[snip]

WOOT!

Congratulations Bay Area. We are officially back and on track.

This weekend, go out and put a bid on every house. I predict that 2013 will be the year that the starting price of every home will be $1,000,888!

If we all pull together, I know we can do it.

Nothing can stop us now!

And — holy cow, it’s Friday already.  How about something aspirational for those of you with some seriously studly stock options?  Check out this little lulu in Los Altos!  Thanks very much to long-time Burbed reader/first-time caller RM for this find.

1380 HOLLY Ave
Los Altos, CA 94024
$3,495,000

6 Beds 
6.5 Baths 
4,559 Sq. Ft.
$767 / Sq. Ft.
Built: 2009 
Lot Size: 0.28 Acres 
On Redfin: 20 days
Status: Active
Property Type: Detached Single Family
View: Mountains, Neighborhood
County: Santa Clara
Stories: 2
Community: South of El Monte
MLS#: 81238438

Quality built architect designed custom home. Features top rated Los Altos School. incl. Oak Ave School. Close to schools and park. Easy access to hwy 85,Foothill & 280.Gourmet Kitchen Overlooking rear Patio, Great master suite. Two Bedroom suites on main floor & Two Mirror Image Suites in Basements. Spacious Livingroom w/ Vaulted ceilings. 4 car garage two car attached two detached oversized.

This was built in 2009?  Srsly?  Just a casual glance gave me all these 1974 tingles.  Now, let’s hear from RM on why this house belongs on the front page.

This is a very odd house for sale in my neighborhood. Garage in the center of the house, two basement bedroom suites, and a giant detached garage in the back, with no paving for the driveway to the back. (And no pictures.) Lap pool combined with swimming pool in a very constrained space.

Check out the google maps for a good overhead view of the oddness. And confetti colored tile in the kitchen and baths. Whoever buys it will be really sorry if they do not remove the redwood by the front driveway, or if they pay $3,495,000.

Wait, there’s a pool?  Is it in the Basements?

When did “confetti tile” become A Thing?  Didn’t we ran a house recently that had the same fascinating design choice?  Well, there was this.

Alas, this Quality built architect designed custom home is 441 square feet too small to merit the ginormous tag.

Now that this silly, inconsequential, election is over, we can focus on what we do best here in the Bay Area – increase housing prices. I’m so glad the election is over because now everyone can stop spending on campaigns, and spend more on buying homes. Or paying more in rent.

Recently, I read this piece and… well… frankly I was infuriated:

San Francisco Rental Market Drives Applicants to Extremes

by Sam Harnett | October 23, 2012 — 7:57 AM

San Francisco’s rental market usually cools down in the fall, but not this year. The average asking price for a one-bedroom in the city is now $2,673 a month, up more than 10 percent from last year. This big rent increase reflects a housing shortage fueled on one side by the recent wave of tech hires and the other by an absence of new units. In response, apartment hunting has returned to the frenzy of the dot-com boom, with prospective applicants packing open houses, forking over application fees and even engaging in bidding wars just to secure a temporary place to live.

I experienced this superheated market firsthand. My girlfriend and I spent three months this summer searching for an apartment. We saw over two dozen one-bedrooms, most for more than $2,200 a month, and almost all of them completely horrible. We’re talking shag carpet, mold, and converted garages with no windows. Even the worst places we saw drew crowds. The open houses were like some twisted beauty contest where you had five minutes to tell your entire life story, woo the landlord, and leave everyone else in the dust. Emil Meek puts it perfectly: the process “turns you into a monster.”

I met Meek and his girlfriend Alma Freeman outside of a packed open house in Potrero Hill. They are in their mid-30s and both have that stretched-out look of put-on smiles and constant heartbreak. Meek is a landscaper and Freeman works for a non-profit downtown. They have great credit and collectively earn $110,000 a year, but they still can’t find a place. Freeman says “it feels a little bit like you are looking on the sidelines and not really able to compete.” The desperation of the search has made them manic. They are arriving to open houses as much as an hour early, peeking into the windows to try and scope the place out, and doing everything in their power to get their application in before anyone else.

Even more worrisome Meek says, is how the process corrupts everyone involved. At one place they saw, the landlord was running a bidding war like it was some kind of game show. The couple had actually met the same landlord a week earlier at a different apartment, and there he had said he was looking to fill the vacancy with “just the right person.” At the second place, the “right person” had come to mean whoever was willing to pay the most money. He looked around at all the applicants and then said “sorry, it’s San Francisco!” As disgusted as the couple was, it didn’t stop them from putting down a bid of their own.

[snip]

Good grief.

1. These people should be pouring their money into mortgages and driving up prices, instead of being selfish, non-citizens and renting. Sheesh.

2. These landlords are such novices. Really? Only judging people by their incomes. You can do better than that! Let’s look at how professionals do it. Time for a flash from the past:

Home Front: Sellers can be choosers

June 17, 2005 12:00 am

By Amir Efrati / The Wall Street Journal

Within a month of putting her two-bedroom house in San Francisco on the market recently, homeowner Linda Gao had five offers, each one above her asking price of $699,000. So before accepting the most-attractive bid, she threw in an extra condition: If you want to buy my house, you have to feed the squirrels.

Two weeks later, she and the buyer hammered out a contract that included feeding the backyard wildlife, which Ms. Gao has done three times a week for the past two years. "I don’t think it matters if it’s a buyer’s market or a seller’s market," Ms. Gao says. "Anyone with a good heart would feed them."

In this booming real-estate market, prospective home buyers are encountering some unorthodox requests. As sellers are barraged by eager bidders, they’re seeking not only the highest price or wrangling over who’ll pick up taxes and closing costs — but some also are asking to stay in the house months after the deal closes, or requesting fixtures that typically stay with the property, such as refrigerators and diving boards. In Tempe, Ariz., one seller invited bidders to sit for interviews until he found one he thought his neighbors would like. A homeowner in San Antonio was happy to let her house go, but only to a buyer who promised not to renovate it.

"As a buyer you have no leverage in this market," says Bruce Ross Bernor, an agent in San Francisco. "You have to bite your tongue and go along with it."

[snip]

Some buyers aren’t eager to give ground. After Lisa Lai Fook offered the $499,000 asking price for a town house in Oakland, Calif., last month, the seller asked her to write a letter describing her background. Ms. Lai Fook walked away. "I’m really busy," says the 33-year-old chemical engineer. "To sit there and write a letter to someone I don’t know after I’ve put down a ridiculous sum of money is insulting."

Let’s face it… if you’re a property owner (a good person), if you’re not being demeaning and cruel to non-property owners, you’re not doing your job in helping those people understand their place in society.

Landlords! It’s time to turn up the heat! Demand that free cuddling be part of the lease! Demand that the renters feed the neighborhood capybara. Don’t have a capybara? Get one so that they have to feed it! Ask them to take a Meyers-Briggs test – but then throw it away just to make them understand you wanted them to waste their time.

Do it for the good of the Bay Area!

If you were a landlord, what would you do to renters?

Um.  Here’s your listing of the day.  It’s in Mountain View, so you can’t lose on this (as long as you don’t buy it).

2148 REINERT Rd
Mountain View, CA 94043
$800,000

— Beds 
— Baths 
— Sq. Ft.
Built: — 
Lot Size: 0.25 Acres 
On Redfin: 22 days
Status: Active
Property Type: Planned Unit Development Land
County: Santa Clara
Community: Rengstorff
MLS#: 81237824

As per city can be built 2 homes on it, buyer to verify this information with the city.

Right.  As the Burbed reader who sent it in quipped, “Department of redundancy department?”

Keep calm and carry on in comments.  If you happen to mention elections we won’t complain, but verify with city first.

If you haven’t already sent in your absentee ballot, today is the day for you to vote.  There’s a clutch of candidates who made speeches and some of them are going to get elected.  Burbed has not endorsed any specific candidates, but we have a guide to the state propositions based on how much each would increase the value of your house.

Now, here’s the house we’d vote for if it were on the ballot.  Thanks very much to Burbed reader MJ for nominating it!

1430 South Wolfe Road
Sunnyvale CA 94087
$728,888

Bedrooms: 3
Bathrooms: 2
175 days on Trulia
33 views
Property type: Single-Family Home
Size: 1,768 sqft
Lot: Ask agent
Price/sqft: $412/sqft
Year built: 1949
MLS/ID: 81218044

REGULAR SALE, NOT A SHORT SALE!!!NOT A SHORT SALE!!! NEWLY REMODELED PROPERTY!!! 1,768 SQ FT. GRANITE COUNTER TOPS, NEW BRAZILIAN CHERRY CABINETRY, NEW CARPETING IN ALL THE BEDROOMS, MARBLE IN BATHROOMS & HALLWAY, HOUSE IS IN A GREAT LOCATION. CONVENIENT ACCESS TO HWY 280, 85 AND LAWRENCE EXPY. IN OTHER WORDS A TURNKEY HOME FOR YOUR BUYER.

Here’s MJ’s nominating speech.

I’ve read the blog for a while but never felt compelled to send anything in. Until now. I believe I found a home with every Burbed cliche. It is a crapshack. It has a sweet price history, quadrupling in price in fourteen years, eights in the listing price, garage converted to “living unit with two bedrooms and a kitchen”, awful location on a busy road (though oddly the listing copy mentions its proximity to a different busy road), seven photos of the stove, and insane listing copy noting twice it isn’t a short sale. It even has DHO, see the reflection in the patio door.

I don’t feel like I can take credit for this. The realtor really deserves it all.

Oh it gets better. My wife found out it come with Sunnyvale utilities but Santa Clara schools, four Redfin agent comments, and the first shot is a Google street view. We really have hit every Burbed cliche except pink house.

But was it a former meth lab?  Got ya there, huh?

MJ sent us a link to Redfin, which was perfectly fine when we checked it out a couple of days ago, but this is what we see now.  Another Burbed cliche, the listing got pulled the day we wanted to write it up.  Fortunately it’s still on almost every other real estate site (for now), so we’re going to grab those pictures while the grabbing is good.

Whoa, how’s this for a cliche?  Search for the house by address, click on the Trulia listing, and get the wrong house in the wrong town.  We swear we’re not making this up, but the Google link to the house was sending us to 1395 Jefferson in Santa Clara.  Whew!

At least the Redfin comments are still there, even if the 24 photos were taken down.  See some of what you missed, after the break.

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