210 Steiner
A colorful Victorian façade with not only bit of original flair but a modern streak as well.
210 Steiner: Bath
And sorry, but it’s not deeded parking but rather a leased parking spot that’s “pre-paid” until November of 2009. It’s time to dust off our old parking space pet peeve post
∙ Listing: 210 Steiner (3/2) – $1,175,000 [MLS]
A Parking Space (And MLS) Pet Peeve [SocketSite]

60 thoughts on “She’s A Little Bit Victorian…And A Little Bit Modern As Well”
  1. Clearly brokers should be forced to tell the truth, but there are hundreds, if not thousands of people in SF who own houses who lease parking. It is an ordinary part of SF urban life.
    Of course if some of the supervisors had their way, especially former Comrade McGoldrick, they would not allow anyone to build a new garage in their house. Fortunately he is gone, but we do not know what the new ones will do. Probably the same.

  2. Anyone know where to find information regarding off-site parking regulations for SF, like maximum spots, minimum size, etc?

  3. help me out here. writing from KC. i see many listings from top brokers, this one really sticks out to me, particularly at price/per sq ft. i’ve seen a few others recently mostly around richmond/sunset areas at this price. i dont understand how SOMA et al neighborhoods can hang up there at quoted $800-$1000 sq ft level. i’m thinking of ’09-’10 move

  4. scorpio – this place is huge, and larger places usually sell for a lower $/square foot metric than smaller places. Would be tough to find a new condo in Soma with 2,200 square feet.
    Additionally, the $800-$1,000 number you use is ancient history, at least in Soma. The market seems to be around $650 to $750 per square foot from what I’ve seen (specifically referring to 2/2s in newer buildings).

  5. For the most part I love this place. Especially that bathroom.
    I’m not huge on the kitchen or the exterior or the carpeted bedroom (is that carpeted?) but it’s nice. you can never tell the layout of these places online though.
    I’ve never been good at SF pricing, but I’m surprised this one is sitting. is it on the wrong side of something? or is it just the parking situation? because this has pretty good public transportation options

  6. I mentioned on another thread that I run by this place a lot on my way to the park (I live just south of here a bit) and it is a very pretty house. Fluj suggested that no parking and, perhaps, poor natural light are problems.
    I haven’t been inside, but I really think this is a good example of the market downturn. A few places sold near here around a year ago for between $1.7 million and $2.1 million that were comparable (except they had parking). Some friends of mine sold their place two blocks away from here on Haight for over $2M and it was kind of a dump — but a little bigger than this place (boy, did they smile at their good fortune). Given those comps that sold fairly quickly, I highly doubt this would have gone unsold at the original $1,449,000 asking price a year ago. But the easy money is gone, and those who have the money and/or can qualify for a loan are no longer willing to spend well over a million dollars on a place unless it is “perfect” and expect to stay a long time. The new reality of drying up demand has set in. The question is how low sellers will go to meet that dramatically shifted demand curve.

  7. Realistically, it looks like some of the square footage is subterranean.
    There was a time when people paid the same high prices per square foot for that kind of space, but I think those days are over.
    So you probably have 2/3 of the square footage up and 1/3 down. If the up is $600 psf and the down is $325 psf, you get their price.
    Still way cheaper than it would have been even a year ago, by a mile, but not quite the insane bargain in appears relative to other areas of the city.

  8. KC- this is a very convienient area to live in, but many of the city’s pot clubs are a block away along Haight between Wabster and Pierce. I like the area, but there are a lot of side effects from drug use around (human feces on the sidewalk, homeless etc). It is worse in western SOMA, but this area might be a bit of a shock if you are used to Kansas.

  9. Sounds like a nice family place. The discount for the human feces is already built in. Look at the numbers:
    $350K cash down, and then your payments are only about $7200/mo (including the $350 parking fee). After tax benefits, that’s only about $5500. Add about $2,500 per month per kid for private school.
    Running those numbers, I’m surprised a young family hasn’t snatched this up. It probably won’t last long. If the feces problem gets any worse with the economy going down, selling expense is no problem. Only about $70K or so.

  10. i thank u all. i’ll be out a few times over next year to see these neighborhoods myself. feces would be a problem, particularly as my dawg seems unnaturally attracted to same.

  11. It’s really difficult for me to understand why some of you who are so scornful continue to post here. There must be something you’re not telling us. Why bother with the sardonic riffs all the time? weird. Especially on a house in Lower Haight, an area none of you would ever consider living in. It must truly be personally offensive to you how expensive SF is.
    But this house doesn’t get 1.495 last year, the year before, or the year before that. No chance. A half block off Haight? This house can be found all over town. Even in similar neighborhoods like Western Addition, NOPA, Mission, or even Potrero Hill, Bernal, you name it. No house like this one went for 1.495M without parking. I doubt it even happened in Noe.

  12. Whoops. Or 1.449 or whatever it was. no chance. It’ll be interesting to watch now. Tho as I mentioned in another thread a similar house sold last year for 980 or something on Golden Gate and Baker. So they still might be off (although this one is nicer and larger.)

  13. After the price cuts, I think it’s priced about right but I wouldn’t be shocked if it still went for less. As fluj points out, the specific location just off Haight is problematic to say the least, and the lack of parking (especially in this market) is huge. I’m not sure you can add parking either.
    anon, you might try checking the planning departments website at http://www.sfgov.org/planning for more info on parking regulations for the area – it might be in the Market Octavia plan area which has some restrictions around parking.

  14. $350/mo leased parking in this part of town? Seems awfully HIGH! But what a beautiful home. Great job with the re-mod.

  15. fluj is right again. similar set-up on golden gate/baker took awhile to sell. check out the low ceiling heights in the downstairs (barely above the door frames).

  16. wait, you mean not every house in SF is some rare wonderful gem that buyers have to jump and bid over asking because they will never get this opportunity again?
    I am shocked, SHOCKED, to just be finding out about this news now.

  17. “wait, you mean not every house in SF is some rare wonderful gem that buyers have to jump and bid over asking because they will never get this opportunity again?
    I am shocked, SHOCKED, to just be finding out about this news now.”
    2008 called. It wants its self-righteous sarcasm back.

  18. Is that basement portion even legal? Those ceiling heights look VERY low to me.
    I saw the place on GG at Baker and had to duck in order to walk through the basement. I am amazed they even got 980 for it.

  19. I would assume that realtors would care a lot more about sales volume, no prices. A lot of realtors are CLEANING up in the areas that prices have dropped far enough to increase volume.

  20. Tipster,
    It’s the same joke, by the same eight people, over and over again. That’s all. If that’s what floats your boat then more power to ya. Then again you are one of them.
    anon,
    You’re right. Tipster actually knows that too.

  21. There is no chance that California real estate prices will rise in 2009. Chances for a rise in 2010 are so low, they too might as well be nil. Even by 2011, the chances that CA real estate will rise are slim. Depression risk is rising. If we don’t enter a depression, it will be the longest recession since WW2. The wealth destruction has been enormous. Look at Harvard’s endowment. Crushed.
    I would not by any real estate in CA unless I was able to pay cash. I would not buy with a mortgage even if the interest rate was 0.00%. Yes I am serious.
    What’s scary is that after the declines, one would normally conclude that downside risk had been greatly reduced. But not this time. This is a tectonic shift and it’s going to hurt San Francisco very badly as SF offers and will offer zero protection from what’s happening nationally or in the State of CA.
    -The Kid

  22. A million bucks is still a million bucks. People have stopped hyperventilating with all the 0s and have realized that a 1M+ purchase was also a 1M+ debt, not a net worth. Sure you could impress your friends and co-workers with a big purchase 2 years ago. But today you’ll look more like a fool jeopardizing his kid’s future when you buy into this falling knive market.
    LMRiM’s post cracked me up. Only 7K/month for a young family! Ask yourselves how many young families around you make the now requested 20K/month net to qualify for such a loan? And have the 250K down? And aren’t in an equity trap?
    As to people posting the same old stuff, I’d say the broken record award winner is hands down the guy shaking his head back and forth repeating to himself (and his sole sidekick) “this is not true, you don’t know squat, please go away now”.
    Nope. Not going away. And rubbing it in in the process.
    66 DOM (aka San FronziScheme)

  23. Fronzi, bro, you have shown your *** on here a few too many times for a scolding to work. I think I should also mention to you that your scorn for SF real estate would probably be best expressed by avoidance. Too much to learn tho, eh?

  24. I hope that the lot of you that are angry and miserable (and so very holier than thou) are the very ones left behind when things start to shift. Please, sit it out, mutter to yourselves about a “recession the likes of which haven’t been seen since pre-WWII” while the rest of us work towards a solution, real estate or otherwise.

  25. Too much to learn tho, eh?
    This reminds me of a pretty harsh (but funny) put down I once witnessed in a professional setting about 15 years ago. I was doing corporate advisory work – pretty high level – but we were all mid-20s, just out of the best schools (only Harvard and Yale in the group – I’m just offering that to give some context to the jab). Everyone was earning $150K+ (in early 1990s dollars).
    One young woman (maybe 26?) was asked to look into something, and report to the very senior guy and the team on her findings. She flubbed it all up, and was visibly “all over the place”. The senior guy cut her off, looked at her, and after a while declaimed:
    “Get out of here. Come back when you know something. Anything. Even one thing.”
    When she protested that she did in fact know something, he looked at her and gave the coup de grace:
    “Anything you know, did know, will know, or even could know,[pause] I know. Now get out of here.”
    Good times… Now, that was a put-down master.

  26. Put downs beget put downs. It’s the way of ye ole Interwebs. Really tho, if you don’t have anything to say it is OK to not say anything. Fronzi does not understand that. That’s why he gets asked to sit his desk in the corner.

  27. LMRiM, I appreciate the support but I do not think the fluj’s posts deserve that much importance. They use to have a point, but now they’re just rants. We do not get many datapoints anymore from him simply because datapoints he can get all go one direction: down, down, down.
    You cannot get a dialogue with him, let alone anything productive. Just let it at that when he thinks he managed to take a chip at me. There are no wounds to lick as there are no wounds because the market took all his teeth out one by one. Sure he’s noisy and snippy, fighting a last stand, but then what? I am not the one looking at my bank statement crying every month. Bien au contraire.
    PS. I love the guy. I love the spirit. He’ll fight to his last teardrop and you gotta admire that.

  28. Amy,
    I agree, we need a solution.
    I have one: lower RE prices. Affordable market-rate housing is a very good thing. It leaves a lot of disposable income for people to consume. I said income, not debt. Some people tend to confuse the 2…
    But the market knows that and is starting to correct this really really fast. Too bad some are on the short side of the stick (am I right to assume your bitterness as a sign you are one of them? If not, I am sorry I made this assumption).
    Again, as I said many times, I’ll be a bull when prices are decent again. I was a bull in 1994-2001 way before the last craze. Right now the market is still overblown with false hopes and illusions of grandeur. Let the markets work (and they do, ultimately) and we’ll see prosperity and hope again.

  29. Amy,
    I agree, we need a solution.
    I have one: lower RE prices. Affordable market-rate housing is a very good thing. It leaves a lot of disposable income for people to consume. I said income, not debt. Some people tend to confuse the 2…
    But the market knows that and is starting to correct this really really fast. Too bad some are on the short side of the stick (am I right to assume your bitterness as a sign you are one of them? If not, I am sorry I made this assumption).
    Again, as I said many times, I’ll be a bull when prices are decent again. I was a bull in 1994-2001 way before the last craze. Right now the market is still overblown with false hopes and illusions of grandeur. Let the markets work (and they do, ultimately) and we’ll see prosperity and hope again.

  30. Earlier yours truly delivered a salient datapoint about a similar property to the Victorian featured in this very thread, actually. A datapoint that tidily refuted some arguments. Guess you missed it. You really are a very poor student. What, precisely, do you bring to the table Oh spout-off-about-interior-design-but-don’t-know what-recessed-cans-are guy? Paraphrasing doesn’t count for much of anything.

  31. “What, precisely, do you bring to the table Oh spout-off-about-interior-design-but-don’t-know what-recessed-cans-are guy?”
    Amazing what two years of RE downturn can do to a realtor’s brain.

  32. “Amazing what two years of RE downturn can do to a realtor’s brain.”
    Yeah man. The last two years in SF were really brutal for realtors. Nice one.

  33. Truly, you gotta love the error laden attempted dis. It’s up there with the incorrectly worded, atrocious grammar filled educational background slam, or the spelling error filled spelling correction. BBS classics all.

  34. DOM,
    Point taken. I agree, prices should drop and likely will. I just find it painful to read the posters who enjoy reveling in the misery of crashing prices and savings lost (and who flat out make figures up just to prove their point. eg. $350K cash down = $7200/month mortgage- WHAT?). It’s creepy. I am a homeowner in the city I love and since I bought a fixer that I hope to live in for some time to come (not to get rich quick, but to lovingly remodel) I feel lucky to not have to deal with landlords.

  35. and who flat out make figures up just to prove their point. eg. $350K cash down = $7200/month mortgage- WHAT?).
    Purchase price – $1,175,000
    Down payment – $350,000 (30%)
    Loan = $825,000 (jumbo, nonconforming)
    Taxes = $14,000 (1.163% + $230 SFUSD and teacher support fees)
    Parking fees (note that I specifically said “with parking”) – $350 (that’s what the listing says)
    Monthly mortgage, 30 year at 7-1/8%, no points = $5550
    Tax = $1,170/mo
    Parking = $350/mo
    Insurance = $100/mo
    Total = $7170, of which about $6000 is deductible
    I am assuming that if one were to go to “only” a $235K down payment (20%), the rate would probably be higher, but even at 7-1/8%, you’d be looking at $8000 monthly nut (this is a new purchase – totally nonconforming jumbo, even at 30% down). Did I get my math or assumptions wrong here? Did I “flat out make figures up”? It’s pretty clear that I was talking about total monthly payments (even specified the $350 parking fee explicitly).

  36. I went to an open house over the weekend for a house priced at $1.16 million. I picked up the payment analysis sheet offered by the realtor. The assumptions were a bit different from those by LMRiM:
    Asking price $1.159 million
    Loan amount $927,200
    Two options for the loan:
    3/1 Interest only ARM at APR 4.58% for payments of $4153/mo
    7/1 Interest only ARM at APR 4.99% for payments of $4539/mo
    (I’m leaving out the info about adjustment caps and points and so forth.)
    So this completely baffles me, because I thought lenders weren’t making these loans anymore. Or are they still making them to people that pay 20% down? Any folks in the trenches with insight on this?
    (And no, I’m not buying now, I’m just a lookie-loo neighbor.)

  37. “Truly, you gotta love the error laden attempted dis. It’s up there with the incorrectly worded, atrocious grammar filled educational background slam, or the spelling error filled spelling correction. BBS classics all.”
    fluj, get some professional help and don’t forget to take your medication 🙂

  38. I wonder how many folks with “bubble equity” will do these IO ARM loans anyway for their “dream house”?
    Even ignoring the obvious, you still get hosed with property tax, which deductible or not is paid on the full purchase amount.
    Keeping “payments” under 5k is very important — it’s about what two off-the-shelf SF professionals can afford to pay, before these additional taxes — note the above poster’s *horror* in a (correctly-computed) 7200 monthly cost.
    If people are still behaving as if IO ARM teasers are their true mortgage cost, we may indeed be in for some rough stuff ahead!

  39. I think this thread has now burnt itself out. But I’ll add one anecdote on the subject of IO loans and looming recasts.
    I was skiing over the holidays with friends who bought a nice but small and unspectacular place in Pasadena in early 2004. Paid $1,000,000 with a 5/25 IO loan. Monthly loan payments are now $5100. Loan recasts in a couple of months and payments will jump nearly $2000. They tried to refi last fall but were told they needed about $400,000 cash because the place appraised at $800k and they need “at least” 20% down based on the appraisal value. So they will now be paying $7000 a month (plus insurance and property taxes less deduction) on an $800,000 place.
    They can swing it, but “it will suck” in their words. No 401k contribution or any other savings for quite a while. The kicker is the only reason they can swing it at all is because he just got a new job in Century City that pays better. But where he used to have a 30 minute drive downtown he now has a 90-minute drive each way (She stays home with their two little kids). He (being sane) hates the commute. They would move closer to work in a heartbeat but are stuck since they can’t sell and absorb the loss (and won’t walk away). Ahh, the American dream of homeownership. The road to wealth and happiness.

  40. Trip,
    I feel the pain for these people. They probably did everything right in their lives and deserve much better than being in this situation.
    They can thank the cheerleaders who are always playing with other people’s money. A lot of them pumped, pumped and dumped, getting away with the money. Actually, not all took off with the cash, if you know the meaning of my handle 😉 At least some bulls are true believers. But others less trustworthy took the money and ran.

  41. “They can swing it, but “it will suck” in their words.”
    God bless ’em. Their ceaseless toil is funding diemos’ defined benefit pension plan.
    I give it a year before they strap on their sequined dance shoes and moon-walk away from that liability.

  42. Actually, not all took off with the cash, if you know the meaning of my handle 😉
    I’m sure the cretinous intent behind your handle is not lost on most of the regular posters here. Again, if you’d like to know what’s really transpiring you are welcome to e-mail me.

  43. Ugh, I can’t help myself . . . when calculating the $7200/month figure you’re assuming full asking with no tax benefits (which would likely yield a return of + $20K if income is adjusted properly).

  44. Amy,
    If you are going to criticize my posts, at least read them. If you look at the original post(which you were responding to), you’ll see I noted the tax benefits, and was even a bit more generous with my estimate of tax benefit savings than your estimate.
    And yes, I did assume full asking, because it is taking some time for reality to dawn on SF sellers. This house will make sense when it falls to about $600K, and I am sure you will be able to pick up places like this for about that much within 2 years.

  45. Okay. Touche. You win. I can’t wait to see the $600K “fair” price. You will truly be the real estate messiah that you believe yourself to be when that happens. Monkeys will also be flying, so things should really be interesting.
    🙂

  46. saw the place and the neighborhood. the place is large and lovely, including the downstairs rooms.
    I sure don’t know why the price is what is it- seems on the low side. all of the parks get some homeless folks, and this one is no different i suppose ? wonder if that NOPA house someone mentioned was so convenient like this one ?( MUNI undrgrnd, safeway, etc.)

  47. At well over 500 dollars a foot, right off Haight, no southern exposure, and without a garage, you think it’s on the low side? If it had a garage it would probably go for 1.4 or so. But without one … this last price seems about right. Wonder what it will get.

  48. Haight street? Bunch of good/fun restaurants, non-noc, I sorta like it. Pot clubs? I haven’t seen them, but ispose they are there is someone says they are. potheads? yes and plenty. garage would be great, but for 300k a garage would have to be magnificent. And Southern Exposure , that sure is valuable. Can someone put a price tag on that?

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