Here’s another find from Burbed reader Petsmart Groomer, with many features you’re unlikely to find in the tract homes of the South Bay.

 

4033 18th St, San Francisco, CA 94114
Listed for $839,000, Sold for $824,000

BEDS: 2
BATHS:  1
SQ. FT.:  –
LOT SIZE:  –
PROPERTY TYPE:  Condominium
STYLE:  Victorian
YEAR BUILT:  1900
COMMUNITY: Eureka Valley/Dolore
COUNTY:  San Francisco
MLS#:  384248
SOURCE:  San Francisco MLS
STATUS: Sold

Welcome to 4033 18th Street. This pre-1900 Victorian condo delivers the best in urban living. The open floor plan combines the kitchen and living room into a generous open space accentuated by exceptionally tall ceilings. The bedrooms are large in size and each has a closet that can double as a sunroom or office. This home has hardwood floors, in unit washer/dryer, stainless appliances, granite countertops and an amazing designer shower. There is a shared rear patio with direct access to deeded side-by-side parking. Walk Score is 100!

You get so much less house for your money in San Francisco, but they make up for it by showing more pictures on the MLS.  This condo, which is so small they won’t even tell us how many square feet it is, still manages to come up with 22 pictures by showing 6 views of every room.

Plus each large in size bedroom has a closet, you know, a small windowless area to store things, except these small storage rooms in San Francisco can double as a sunroom or an office.

I guess closet means something very different in San Francisco than it does in the South Bay, and that might explain why Tom Cruise doesn’t want to come out of his.

Today’s featured listing is courtesy of Burbed reader Lars, so thanks very much!  Comments here can get a little raucous, so maybe it’s time for a my-political/economic-system-can-beat-up-your-political/economic-system rantfest.  Yes, this is a Below Market Rate listing.

 

1800 Washington St #314, San Francisco, CA 94109
$281,000

BEDS: 0
BATHS: 1
SQ. FT.: 476
$/SQ. FT.: $590
LOT SIZE: –
PROPERTY TYPE: Junior, Condominium, Studio
STYLE: Modern/High Tech
VIEW: City Lights
YEAR BUILT: 2001
COMMUNITY: Pacific Heights
COUNTY: San Francisco
MLS#: 382137
SOURCE: San Francisco MLS
STATUS: Active
ON REDFIN: 179 days

Luxury below market rate unit. Must be 1st time homebuyer & income eligible. Maximum income level for 1 person:$104,400; Two People:$119,250;Three People:$134,200.Offers submitted with: Application, loan preapproval, homebuyer education certificate/proof of class registration, and SF Purchase Contract. Please contact Realtor for application & more info. Unit avail. thru the SF Mayor’s Office of Housing & subject to resale controls, monitoring & other restrictions. See sfgov. org/moh for info. Fair Housing Opportunity. Offers are on a first come/first serve basis.

Here’s what Lars has to say about this property:

Not sure if this is good material for your blog, but I found this a bit absurd:

You can qualify to buy this 476sqft "below market rate" shoe box for only $281,000 if you are a first-time home buyer making less than $104,400 per year. Good thing that SF is taking care of the poor. Socialists! I wonder if the deal includes food stamps for the Whole Foods nearby?

I want to know why San Francisco property for poor people gets 23 photos.  Most of the crapboxes we dig up in Redwood City and East Palo Alto only have one exterior shot taken from the agent’s about-to-be-repossessed-Mercedes.  If you look at the listings we feature in East San Jose you get a second blurrycam of the kitchen where light from the window overwhelms the tired cabinetry and 1963 appliances.  (Maybe that’s not a bug, but a feature.)

This listing isn’t like that place on Russian Hill with 82 photos, but it’s 28% of the way there!  So what if half the shots are building exteriors and common space, while another third are neighborhood eateries?  The typical Mountain View close-to-Google-and-nothing-else-to-recommend-it 3/2 has 9 pictures if you’re lucky!

This is so much better!  Example: Midnight snacking is easy, as the kitchen is just three steps away from your sleeping area!

However, the Whole Foods is three whole blocks away (but not too far to merit its own photo)!  That shouldn’t matter too much, as almost everything else will be passing right under your window.  Never mind a place on a busy street; this is a place on the corner of a fracking Federal Highway, and this unit is only on the third floor.

Hope you like the horn section, and I don’t mean from the SF Symphony 12 blocks south, nor do I mean marching bands parading down Van Ness. This is more of a spontaneous jam, as in vehicle horns from traffic on a six-lane thoroughfare.

And watch out for those resale controls, as this ten year old unit has already changed ownership three times.  But you get to go to the Mayor’s Office to apply!  Now that’s class!

And don’t fret about those strict income limits.  Grab yourself a couple of jobless roommates (they’re everywhere!) and you might just slip in under the $134,200 max.  That’s at least 148 square feet a person, lots of elbow room for SF housing!

So why deal with arbitrary rent hikes in a tight market?  Buy this place and deal with arbitrary HOA fee hikes instead! That extra $545 a month isn’t going to kill your budget, as long as one of your roommates can find a cash job off the books.

Today we have another terrific find from Burbed reader sonarrat!  Unfortunately, it’s been sitting in my inbox so long it’s growing mold, and what’s worse, those fickle sellers have yanked it from Redfin!  So, if you could convince them to sell again, how would you like your own castle?

881 Innes Ave, San Francisco, CA 94124

DAMN, missed it!  And look at the location it’s in, too!  Sounds classy! Foxhounds and riders and horns, oh my!  Here’s what sonarrat had to say about the place:

Albion Castle.. produces 10,000 gallons a day of spring water.. sounds great! …it’s WHERE??!

It’s in San Francisco! Let’s see where exactly… after the break, because I’ve got more to show you.

(more…)

Many thanks to Burbed reader Petsmart Groomer for this record-breaking listing.

2451 Larkin St, San Francisco, CA 94109
$3,249,000

BEDS: 5
BATHS: 4.5
SQ. FT.: 4,590
$/SQ. FT.: $708
LOT SIZE: -
PROPERTY TYPE: Single-Family Home
STYLE: Contemporary, Modern/High Tech
VIEW: Panoramic, City Lights, Bay, Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, Garden/Greenbelt, Forest
YEAR BUILT: 1906
COMMUNITY: Russian Hill
COUNTY: San Francisco
MLS#: 384261
SOURCE: San Francisco MLS
STATUS: Active
ON REDFIN: 58 days

Boasting approx. 4,590 square feet, this amazing remodeled home offers breathtaking full span Golden Gate Bridge views & stunning views of the Bay, Palace of Fine Arts, Marin Headlands, & the City. 5BR, 4.5BA, foyer, gorgeous staircase, living room with fireplace, dining room, eat-in gourmet kitchen, family rm, upper view living rm, wet bar, work rm, 2 laundry rms, huge walk-out view terrace, w-out patio, excellent storage, garden, security system, Siedle intercom system, large 2 car garage with interior access, wired for CAT 5, wired for sound in many rms w/ 5 zones of B & W speakers, hi ceilings, hardwood floors, skylights, double paned windows, secondary staircase, + a legal unit. On a prime flat tree-lined blk in prestigious Russian Hill.

One of the recurring complaints we’ve had with listings here are those with no or very few photos.  If you want us to plunk down not a lot of money for a house, we’d like to know it’s worth our while to spend the time to visit it.

No problem here! This 100+ year-old house not only will cost you a lot of money, even by RBA standards, but nobody is going to complain there aren’t enough pictures, either.  Even if two of the first three aren’t of the house at all but some stupid bridge that isn’t included.

Yes, you read that right.  82 pictures.  Which one is your personal favorite?  It’s hard to choose, but here are a few that helped today’s listing earn its wtf tag. Yet many of them are so perfectly suited to this Dwell parody site that the captions practically write themselves.

That poorly-socialized chair once again blocked the harmonic flow between the golden glazed pottery and the wood stove.

Japanese elements such as rice paper and red pine could not disguise the fact that this was still a jail cell.

Okay, now you try it!  Or you can pick any picture number from the listing and provide your caption!

This last one is thrown in to note that you can spend over three million dollars for this place and not get a single square foot of actual land included.

SFMTA Ponders Most Expensive Cab Fares in the Country

At tomorrow’s Board of Directors meeting, the San Francisco Metropolitan Transit Agency will review a proposal that would raise taxi meter rates to 55 cents per fifth of a mile or minute of waiting in traffic. If passed, those 10-cent increases to the current rates (plus another ten cents per fifth of a mile in potential fuel surcharges) would make our taxis the most expensive in the country according to a 12-city study conducted by the SFMTA. Adding insult to injury are the proposed two- and three-dollar fees for booking your ride through a dispatcher, meaning a phoned-in evening pickup could cost you over six bucks just for getting in the cab. The agency will be taking one last round of community input at tonight’s final taxi town hall meeting before voting tomorrow to authorize all or some of the new rates and surcharges. [Chron] [SFEx]

Long time Burbed readers know that one of the fundamental beliefs of this site is that the more expensive and unaffordable the Bay Area is, the better it is because that keeps people hard at work and delivering innovation.

So, I for one applaud this move. We should make transportation as incredibly expensive and painful as possible, so that people will feel the need to stay in more, and work on the next big IPO that will result in higher house prices.

Because… as we all know… higher house prices are the goal of any desirable area.

Please welcome Burbed reader SEA back to the front page with a piece that got held up in comment moderation.  SEA agreed to let us move this to the the featured listing of the day instead, so you could all enjoy every bit of this, um, amazing, um, uh, well read on for today’s Guest Blogger’s view.

Please give SEA a big, warm Real Bay Area welcome and check out this amazing price cut incredible value in Baghdad by the Bay!

Here’s a prime example of a not of money lost, but I’m happy it’s not my money:

627 La Salle Ave #73, San Francisco, CA 94124
$75,000

BEDS: 3
BATHS: 3
SQ. FT.: 1,360
$/SQ. FT.: $55
LOT SIZE: –
PROPERTY TYPE: Condominium
STYLE: Traditional
VIEW: Panoramic, Bay
YEAR BUILT: 1981
COMMUNITY: Bayview
COUNTY: San Francisco
MLS#: 377644
SOURCE: San Francisco MLS
STATUS: Pending
ON REDFIN: 203 days

Sold: July 2005 $400k
Listed: October 2010 $100k (75% lower than last sale–Christmas in October, maybe?)
Listing price reduced: January 2011 to $75k

It did go pending in October 2010, so who knows what’s up with the January price reduction, but who was it that paid $400k for this place, and when will it be worth $400k again, even if the local/national economy suddenly looked very good? I sure don’t see a neighborhood suddenly going from $100k sales to $400k sales (to get back to 2005 pricing), and then, for those who purchased in 2005, it would need to go significantly higher to realize a reasonable return on investment. Here it is some six years later, and let’s use the “double every 10 years” standard, that suggests that this place would need to sell for $800k in just four years. Yes, that’s right, from under $100k to ~$800k in four years. The freakin’ RBA cannot compete with that.

Alternatively, Let’s say the price does not go from $100k to $800k in four years, but rather the selling price doubles in four years. This means that similar homes in the area would be worth ~$200k, so those who purchased at $400k would be down 50% after 10 years. And I think I’m being a bit generous to suggest the prices will double in that area in just four years–first prices need to stop going down, and then double.

All this while people kvetch about an extra buck for a gallon of gas. You know the routine: So many complain that gas is ‘unaffordable,’ yet they dream about buying million dollar homes. Million dollar homes cannot be the problem–let’s go to war over a few bucks each week in gas expense.

And before you tell me how special this place is on the lower end, there is at least one other in that area: 132 Dolphin Ct.

Purchased June 2005 for $410k.
Sold February 2011 for $108k.

Is that close enough to say 75% off? When will the selling price get back over $400k?

I know:

Every home is sacred.
Every home is great.
If a home is wasted,
God gets quite irate.

Every home is wanted.
Every home is good.
Every home is needed
in your neighborhood.

God loves those who treat
their homes with more care.

Here’s a piece from a blog that covers many things San Francisco, but not necessarily real estate.  What caught my eye was a few familiar themes.

OWNING A HOME IN SAN FRANCISCO

POSTED BY: BAGHDAD ON: MAY 11 2011 • CATEGORIZED IN: LIFE IN SAN FRANCISCO

There’s been lots of articles in the paper recently about owning a home being a bad thing. I was always scratching my head about this until I realized I’m one of the few people left that was born and raised in San Francisco and is STILL HERE. Most of the people you’ll find in San Francisco are lucky to have lived here for twenty years at most, so it’s time I gave you a little history lesson about San Francisco real estate.

Now for most people here they don’t remember the time when a house was affordable because they aren’t, well, old like me. I was born in 1962 and my parents had bought their four bedroom house in the Sunset in 1954 for a whopping $18,300. Yes, you saw that right, there isn’t a couple of extra zeros on that number. The builders, McKewan Construction were asking $23,500 and my parents underbid the asking price and got it. The early 50′s was a buyer’s market.

Head on over and check it out, it’s not a very long piece but manages to hit most of the Heavy Hitters of the Real Bay Area:

• Prop 13 is awesome, because
• You should have bought 35 years ago
• My parents were smart about real estate
• It’s Special Here, and if you don’t see this
• You’re Not From Around Here
• I Intend to Die in This House

And this dude is younger than I am.  He sounds like my grandfather:

I used to hate the crotchety old guys who would sit out in front of their houses in a lounge chair watering their lawns talking about why, I remember back when we… fill in the snide comment of your choice. I want to be that guy when I’m in my 70′s.

Here’s some copy that ought to have originated on Burbed.  But this is from from the San Jose Mercury News, or as the journos now call it, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Newsletter!  Thanks very much to Burbed reader Petsmart Groomer for calling this out in the Open Thread yesterday.

Bay Area homes you can buy for the national median price of $157,000

By Patrick May, San Jose Mercury News   Posted:  04/09/2011 4:52 PM

The median price of a previously owned single-family home in America today is $157,000. What can you get for that in the Bay Area?

Headaches, mostly.

Here, where the median is nearly three times higher than the national, $157,000 will get you a 460-square-foot house in East Palo Alto that would fit inside a Saratoga walk-in closet. Or a two-bedroom in Antioch with mold, a squatter’s mattress in the kitchen, the oily remnants of an amateur grease-monkey operation out back, and what looks like a bullet hole dead-center in the front window.

“Bring your tools & imagination to shine this piece of property,” the Realtor wrote on the online real estate site Redfin.

Want to spend that $157,000 on a San Jose bungalow on North 13th Street?

No problem.

OK. So there’s one small problem.

“Burned house,” says the real estate agent’s MLS note. “Don’t go in!”

Photos: Top right, 460 sf East Palo Alto house, Josie Lepe, SJMN.  Above left, SJ burnt house on 13th Street has received several offers.  Karen T Borchers, SJMN.

Wow, CAR (California Association of Realtors) must be pulling a Fry’s on the Merc for running this story.  Bet they’re going to pull all their advertising for weeks!  Nope, the Merc pulled this story within hours of posting it. In fact, the link above is to the mobile site, because it’s gone from the regular one (and if the mobile link doesn’t work, try this link to a cached copy from the Pasadena Star News.

But no problem, we’re going to find all the sites in this story and maybe even write them up in the coming days.  Meanwhile, what do you think is going to happen to Patrick May?

Update: This article mysteriously appeared yesterday afternoon for a few hours and then was thrown down the memory hole.  It’s back so I’ve changed the link, and also added the Merc’s pictures.  Too bad they didn’t take some inside the SF house.

This cozy charmer is at 2169 Addison Ave, East Palo Alto, weighing in at 460 square feet. Owner selling it only to establish a market value with bank so they’ll modify his loan.  Sold in 2003 for $278,000!

$157,000 will get you two homes in Antioch! 1117 Klengel Street, listed for $78,000, and conveniently bank-owned.  Bonus: Sold for $95,000 in… (drumroll) 1993!

Then take a look at 36 Texas Street:

Yes, it comes with roosters next door and a guy down the street dismantling his motorcycle on the front lawn. And yes, you’ll have to clear out that squatter’s mattress from the kitchen. And maybe, with all that motor oil soaked into the back yard, you’ll need the Environmental Protection Agency to sign off on the deal. But for $69,000, what do you expect?

A pre-heated house at 642 North 13th St. San Jose, plus agent had to threaten to Taser a squatter.  Price: $166,900.  The catch: Foreclosed in December for $350,000, and sold for $217K.  In 1998.  DAYUM, IT’S PENDING!

Vertigo house in Bayview-Hunters Point.  1482 Underwood Ave, SF.  “The easiest way to repair it is to tear it down.”   Price: $145,900  “The house is all crooked,” said realtor Alyce Cardinale.  Sold for $250K in 2000, foreclosed in 1997 and again in 2008!

Hayward Contractor’s Delight, whoops the agent calls it “Carpenters Delights!”; train goes by every ten minutes.  22026 Western Blvd, Hayward.  Price: $155,000, originally listed for $189,000.
“It’s a fairly quiet neighborhood. Except for the train every ten minutes.”

Which one of these bargains will you be writing a check for?

Left, front of the house on Western Boulevard.  Right, agent David Ormonde shows door to garage from the kitchen in the Western Boulevard property. Photos, Karen T Borchers, SJMN.

Thanks to Burbed reader Real Estater for nominating this article by posting it in the comments on Friday.

Image from USA Today

East Bay tops among California’s most diverse places

By Eric Kurhi and Matt O’Brien, Contra Costa Times
Posted: 03/18/2011 03:20:18 PM PDT

HAYWARD — Close to the geographic center of a city known as the “Heart of the Bay,” Luciano Ruiz peered out the pickup window of a burger joint in what is, by one measure, the most racially diverse neighborhood in California.

“There’s been a mix of people here ever since I grew up,” said Ruiz, 18. “It’s always been mainly Latino down here in South Hayward, but now you see more African-Americans, a lot more Asians. I’ve seen a little increase in Middle Eastern people.”

The 2010 census shows a collection of census tracts in the Hayward flatlands as the most diverse in California and a microcosm of the state’s likely future. Latinos are the largest group, but share the space with many other people. Multicultural churches, mosques and businesses are in walking distance.

Thirty-five miles away, in the Walnut Creek retirement community of Rossmoor, a cluster of census tracts reflect an older, less integrated California. About 90 percent of residents are white and less than 1 percent are African-American in the Bay Area’s least-diverse neighborhood.

“It’s probably accurate,” said Rossmoor resident David Smith of the newly released statistics. “Our population is overwhelmingly white.”

Since this is from the Contra Costa Times, there’s little about neighborhoods in Santa Clara or San Mateo County, and which would be the most or least diverse. East Palo Alto was specifically called out as one of the 10 most diverse communities in California. The diversity index is the probability that two randomly picked people from the area would be of different race or ethnicity. Maybe you might have an idea which neighborhoods you’d nominate?

Anyway, I looked up the data, and East Palo Alto has a DI of 83.4 (the highest was 86.4 and Hayward was 85.1).  Oakland was 81.1. Not mentioned in the article are Sacramento, 79.6, South San Francisco, 79.0, San Jose, 77.1, San Bruno, 76.3, Santa Clara, 71.8, and Sunnyvale, 70.7.  On the other end of the scale we find Belvedere, 16.4, Portola Valley, 22.3, Woodside, 25.2, and Boulder Creek at 26.  Don’t assume that a low DI means white-bread; the Central Valley’s Mendota is 96.6% Hispanic and has a DI of 26.0.

In case you’re wondering how some areas end up with lots of diversity, here’s the secret, according to the above article:

It didn’t happen overnight,” Bogue said. “Just like anywhere, somebody puts a house up for sale, somebody looks at it and somebody buys it.”

Yeah, that couldn’t happen in Atherton, where houses are bequeathed.  But while houses are occasionally listed for sale in homogenous census tracts, the diverse ones, such as Richmond, San Pablo, Pittsburg, Hayward, Vallejo, Oakland and San Leandro have another interesting thing in common.

Local historian Frank Goulart said affordability has also long attracted a broad spectrum of people to parts of Hayward.

“If you want an honest answer, it’s the cheap housing,” Goulart said.

He said many of the homes in the city’s most diverse tracts “were built like shacks.”

There you go.  Diversity is code for crapboxes (like this one above, in Hayward, the City of Diversity).  But don’t worry about it.  The majority of California public school students are now Hispanic, so the Diversity Index must be heading down (see Mendota, above).  That means housing quality will go up, so the Real Bay Area will get bigger!

There’s no danger of that in Silicon Valley, though.  Santa Clara County’s index is a kumbayah 74, almost as multicultural as Alameda County’s state-topping 78.  The least diverse Bay Area County?  Marin, at 45. The overall state index is 72.9, second only to Hawaii’s 81.1.

But what’s more important is housing!  And the county with the highest percentage of vacant housing units goes to Alpine, with a whopping 71% of its housing sitting empty.  For the Bay Area, the winner is Sonoma, with 9.2%, but Santa Cruz’s 9.7% would have beaten it had any of the county physically come into contact with the Bay.  Meanwhile San Mateo and Santa Clara county are both in the 4’s, while San Francisco managed double: 8.3% of the housing units sitting empty.

There’s stats, stats, stats to play with, so have fun courtesy of USA Today.  Data is available by city as well, so go wild and wonder why the city (town?) of Almanor has 100% of their 75 housing units empty.

Photo above: foreclosed home in Hayward, showcasing diversity.

Owning your own private island is one way to show you have arrived.  8 bedroom mansion?  How vulgar!  900 acre winery?  That means you’re in trade.  But a private island?  Now that is landownership.

Thanks to Burbed reader CLS for passing this along.

Last island we featured was a bit wanting in the location, location, location chops.  Not this one.  It’s in San Francisco Bay, with views, views, views!  And it even made the national news!  Yahoo picked up the story (that’s their photo above), and it’s been around some other sites, too, but this local blog may have kicked it back into collective consciousness.

0 Red Rock Is, San Francisco, CA 94109
$22,000,000

BEDS: –
BATHS: –
SQ. FT.: –
LOT SIZE: 5.78 Acres
PROPERTY TYPE: Lots & Land, Other
VIEW: Bay, Bridges, City, Hills, Lights, Panoramic
COMMUNITY: San Francisco County
COUNTY: San Francisco
MLS#: 21022212
SOURCE: BAREIS
STATUS: Active
ON REDFIN: 186 days

Red Rock Island is the only privately held island in San Francisco Bay and is offered at $22M for the mineral rights and bragging rights. It forms the confluence of San Francisco, Contra Costa and Marin Counties. The largest portion of the island is the 4.114 acres in Contra Costa County. It rises to an elevation of 172 feet above the water with fantastic views in all directions and is North of the fog belt. The price includes the mineral rights.

And it’s a good thing the price includes the mineral rights, because it doesn’t include building rights, water rights, or permit rights.  All you get on are some old stories of possible pirate gold buried here, and, of course, bragging rights. 

Of course, the island has its own website!  It needs to, in order to explain that you aren’t merely buying an island.  You’re taking on a whole new paradigm of land use, such as being divided among three different counties (SF, Marin and Contra Costa), including the City of Richmond, and who knows how many state agencies, plus there’s a 1932 Executive Order signed by Herbert Hoover that prohibits destruction or disfigurement of the island.

Not every real property has to deal with so many government entities, but this one is Real Special!

The Associated Press stated that the current owner bought the island in 1964 for $49,500, and attempted to build a 20 story hotel and casino complex.  The project was blocked by the City of Richmond.  He’s also considered turning the place into a quarry and practicing a little mountaintop removal.

Property Shark has never heard of the place (they say the address simply doesn’t exist), and the San Francisco Assessor’s Office software went all Three Mile Island trying to find it even when I spotted it the parcel number. 

So maybe you ought to consider buying it just to avoid bill collectors and process servers.  Plus if any county deputies come after you, all you have to do is step over the line into your choice of two others!

Really, if Zillow can’t find this place, you’re golden:

And puh-leeze on the listing being only half a year old.  The owner’s been trying to ditch this sandbar since at least 2007, and look!  It’ was for sale in 2005 for a quarter the price!  According to Yahoo, the asking price was $10 million in 2008.  Somebody better tell the listing agent that the price is supposed to double every ten years, not every two.

Here’s owner David Glickman on why the price keeps going up:

At the time, I thought I’d sell it. The island has a good spot for a marina, and it’s in the bay, so the marina would be useful," he said. "But each time I thought I was going to sell it, something happened to make it worth more money.