From “seller relocating” in October, to “seller relocated” today, the list price for 2021 Webster was just reduced another $150,000 (its third cut).
And while it’s now listed at a “drastic” $796,000 (29.5%) under its original asking price of seven months ago, do keep in mind that it’s still priced at $404,000 (17.6%) over what the now relocated seller paid just five months prior to that.
As we wrote in late 2006 (prior to its last sale): “It’s not the ideal block (a lack of single family homes/residential), but the house is stunning and it honestly doesn’t feel narrow in the slightest.” And we’re still fans of the ceilings.
UPDATE (5/20): 2021 Webster closed escrow on 5/20/08 with a reported contract price of $2,425,000 (30.6% under orignial asking, but 5.7% over what was paid 16 months prior).
∙ Listing: 2021 Webster (4/3.5) – $2,699,000 [MLS]
∙ RealRecentReductions: You’ve Seen These Before (Will You Again?) [SocketSite]
∙ As Far As We Can Tell, Not Much Has Changed (Other Than The Price) [SocketSite]
∙ Mass Appeal (2021 Webster) [SocketSite]
This is a perfect illustration of the problem with so many San Francisco real estate listings – people just make up the sales prices out of whole cloth. Dear Owner of this Beautiful Property: If you bought this last year for something close to $2.3M, did you really think you were buying it for over $1.0M under its true value? Did you simply assume that it was so tastefully done (even though you didn’t do the work, the prior owner did) that people would pay anything for it? Why didn’t you list it at $5M then?
Anyway, I know we all want to make as much money as we can, but this is the kind of activity that screws up our entire market.
Since the overall market in SF has actually DECLINED since you bought your house, will you take $2,295,000 and breathe a sigh of relief that your property didn’t go down in value? I would pay it!
That kitchen makes no sense. It has super dark counter areas with dark wood cupboards even though there is little natural light, so to compensate there is indirect uplighting, downlighting, and decorative lighting ornaments. Trendy fashion victim remodels like this will spend the next few decades looking impractical and out of place until someone rips all that out and starts over.
Jonathan,
The winner’s curse actually makes this seller’s position even worse…if others are willing to pay $2.3M now, why wouldn’t they have paid $2.3M then?
Unless there’s been some significant work done to the place since the current owner bought, I would surprised if he recovered his $2.3M now.
The place was rehabbed in 2001/2002 I think. I remember seeing it then. So the prior owner didn’t do anything either. It’s nicely done on a great block.
Up 17% from bubble prices? Hard to imagine. But $870psf is a good price for a SFR in that neighborhood. Or at least it was the last time I checked.
Will it be lower next year? Almost certainly, so it would be dumb to buy it now – you’ll lose $200-$300K for the privilege of living there for a year – rent a suite at the Ritz Carlton and order room service every day instead. But for someone who feels they MUST buy, it’s actually reasonably priced, or at least it was.
They should remove that dinette from the middle of the kitchen floor, and disguise the kitchen as one that is simply ungainly, instead of the present ‘impossible to cook in’ look.
Tipster, I agree with your point, but I think a would-be buyer’s Ritz budget would be even bigger. Case Shiller shows that the upper tier houses in this market lost about 6% in value just in the last 4 months of 2007. Even if that trend softens considerably (and I see no reason why it would with jumbo loan rates stuck high and getting higher and lending standards growing ever tighter) you’re looking at a 15% drop over the next year easily. That’s $400,000 at this asking price, more than $1000 a day of losses one can avoid by sitting it out.
I said it before and I’ll say it again: I love this house.
That said, get that table out of the kitchen. It is totally in the way and makes the kitchen look TINY.
also, I like everybody else tires of the “buy the house and then sell it a few months later for 50% more” game.
It reminds me of that commercial where the guy is at an auction and the auctioneer says “SOLD! To the gentleman over here” and then the dude stands up and says “uh, I’d like to sell this now!”
since when did Case Shiller post figures for how much houses ‘in this market’ had lost?
their figures are for CoCo, Alameda, Marin, SF and San Mateo combined. Completely different trends in prices for all of these.
I said yesterday SF was about 14% of the Case Shiller based on total sales, actually I think its less – as CS ignores condos which are a bigger % of SF presumably – I’ve heard 50% of all SF sales.
So, SF represents somewhere between 7-14% of Case Shiller – yes obviously a bigger % of the top tier but still….
Ummm, hello boys – there is another thread about the Case Shiller stuff – why get off topic on this one?
What a lovely house!
You can’t say that Pac Heights/Lower Pac Heights have slipped in the last year. Quite the opposite is true. But asking soooo much over was the mistake here. AND BEFORE THE CHORUS OF “Typical realtor crying over-price” KICKS IN — think about it. This one was bought for 2.3 and they initially wanted 3.5, only a year later!
No. This one displayes all sorts of wishful thinking. They could have priced it at $2.55M in the first place and they probably could have made a nice chunk of change for doing nothing. As is they will probably still make some decent money. Let us not forget that either.
“Up 17% from bubble prices? Hard to imagine. But $870psf is a good price for a SFR in that neighborhood. Or at least it was the last time I checked.”
Well according to Propertyshark the property area is 2260 and not 3100 what’s listed on MLS. That means the SFR is $1180 way over what they claim to be. Here is the link to the property:
http://www.propertyshark.com/mason/san_francisco/Reports2/showsection.html?propkey=30435113#restore=true&init
As I recall, (it’s been 6 years or so since I saw it) they added in two big rooms on the ground floor behind the garage, so that probably accounts for the discrepancy in square footage.
It’s right in front of a busy hospital…
I live a few blocks from this house and drive by it everyday on my way home from work. It should be noted that the 2 block stretch surrounding it gets clusterf$cked on a constant basis by Muni busses, geriatric bad drivers visiting CPMC and large delivery trucks pulling into the docks of the hospital. This activity severely detracts from the Pacific Heights quality of living.
This is just south of California street and is a nightmare in the morning and all day long with people coming and going from the hospital there — looking for parking and congesting up that area. It’s a good looking house. The owners are probably foreign investors looking to sell for their weak dollar converted local currency. Probably bought with pounds, selling for dollars with a exchange value in a declining RE market. Doh!
This house will sell for at or less than the current owner paid.
It’s north of California, and yeah, the hospital is the mitigating factor here.
North, thanks! My Bad.
This sold for $2.295M in Jan 2007 at list price after 59 DOM. So it didn’t fly off the shelf, but appeared to be properly priced at the time. Or was it really such a bargain last year that it now will fetch 18% more – despite the current market conditions? (Or maybe they are pricing it for the Euro market so the price has been relatively constant at about e1.7M)
I live 1 blk away. nice neighborhood and there are no ambulances at hospital.
However, it is way overpriced.
I’ve never seen this house but i do not agree that “$870/sqft is a good price for pac heights”.
Remember the the value of every incremental square foot diminishes – i.e. you can’t compare the $/sqft of a 3100 sq ft house with the $/sq foot of say a 2000 sq ft house. especially if 2 rooms on the ground floor behind the garage are included in that footage. While a value of $870/sqft might be appropriate for the main 2260 sq feet of house I might think the value of that extra 840 feet downstairs isn’t worth more than $500/sq ft max.
one more thing – Tipster looks correct. permit records show the garage and lower level living space was added in Nov 2002.
I won’t even drive down this section of Webster because of the hospital. It’s almost always a nightmare.
Tipster,
I think you could use some refinement in the cost of getting a suite.
At the ritz-carlton, it’ll cost you $729 a night, plus about $500 a night for their tasting menu (including drinks, of course), for $1229, increasing the cost by 23% over your estimate.
Another shining example of “Greed Kills.” Tried to make a ridiculous profit when times were good, and instead will lose miserably in this bearish market. Not a desirable street to live on, no garden, attached, nothing special. Seller will be awfully lucky if he breaks even. You can’t fool all the people all the time…in this case you can fool no one.
Fluj–
By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask you..how many properties have you sold recently?
I just sold one about a week and a half ago, and I am in the third round of negotations on another. Once that sells these clients will be buying something else too. I am not unique, you know? Not to say that things are hot or anything — ’cause they’re not. But people are buying and selling. That’s sort of the thing, isn’t it?
I also completely agree that the table in the kitchen looks ridiculous. A sad attempt at making the kitchen an eat-in kitchen. Hopefully they will remove it, it only draws attention to the fact that at this price point, the kitchen is small.
The listing I can see for this property now shows “Withdrawn”, but it looks like some (desperate) language was added since last time everyone commented on this property:
“SELLER WILL FINANCE WITH 10% DOWN INTEREST ONLY FOR 5 YEARS/FLEX TERMS AFTER 5 YEARS”
http://sfarmls.rapmls.com/scripts/mgrqispi.dll?APPNAME=Sanfrancisco&PRGNAME=MLSPropertyDetail&ARGUMENTS=-N559709431,-N210404,-N,-A,-N12415353
Anyone know what happened here?
2021 Webster closed escrow on 5/20/08 with a reported contract price of $2,425,000 (30.6% under orignial asking, but 5.7% over what was paid 16 months prior).