From the listing for 3024 Pierce Street in December 2007 (and as it looked above):
Prime Cow Hollowv location, Estate sale, 3br, 1ba, 2 story Edwardian home with nice yard, full basement, original detailing. East/West exposure. Classic fixer with huge potential.
Sold for $1,850,000 in January 2008, 3024 Pierce Street has since been fixed up and just returned to the market (“has not hit the MLS…sign went into the ground about 15 minutes ago”) asking $3,599,000, a big number for the 2,500 square foot home.
And the factoid and execution that caught our eye: “I [think] this is the only home in America to have this BI-Fold Garage Door system by FAAC.” We do like a good door.
∙ Listing: 3024 Pierce (3/2) 2,500 sqft – $3,599,000 [3024PierceStreet.com]
It is pretty slick that they got the garage in without needing to raise the house or excavate. It must be a tight fit, but the builder saved some big costs here.
I like it!
Though I kind of like the creepy haunted-esque before pic better. 😉
And I *love* when I can flip through the pics on the website fast, the typical 2s for loading each image in flash crap really sucks. Well done.
Nice scoop. I’ve been watching this one for a while and it certainly looks nice. I’ve banned myself from commenting on price of these gut remodels. I’ll say that this sells faster than the Green St remodel.
This will not end well, I’m afraid.
I agree nice work on the garage. i’d like to know who the contractor is.
Hmmm… This was an odd remodel. The painted the exterior before adding the garage or doing any interior work. Very bizarre. Maybe they retouched the facade post construction. I’m not sure. My gut says this was mostly cosmetic and ultra budget. Is that an outlet on the door frame? The price seems REALLY high. 1400 per foot?
The new exterior color choices made me think of Ronald McDonald. Despite the burger tones, I think that the garage design solution and door system is outstanding.
I also love the garage door. I want one. Seriously. Is there a local FAAC distributor?
second the comment about the quick-flip photos. great technical improvement!
Now live on MLS. 2500 sq ft. Price seems high.
saw the house when it first sold after the little old lady died. great gut-job opportunity but thought it went a little overpriced – highest/best use seemed to be a remodeled owner/occupied home.
huge congrats on getting that garage in there. didn’t think it was possible without major structural modifications. nice remodel too.
here’s the problem according to my rough math:
– $1.85M purchase price
– $350K upgrades per the building permits
– $50K assumed for plumbing/electic permitted work
– $167K holding cost for 2 years (I use a conservative 4.5% on the purchase price – a blend of financing cost and opportunity cost on the down payment)
– $52K property tax
– $140K selling cost (assuming a $2.8M selling price x 5%)
= they’re in this at over $2.6M and I really think that’s conservative.
Anyone think the recent comps in this hood support $1440/sqft and a $1M profit?
I really like this house. Price is crazy high though.
Ok this city has officially gone crazy!!!!
1400 per aq ft for a nothing special view and an remodeled home???? That is just crazy. I have to agree with Eddy below. What were these sellers thinking? The home looks lovely but cmon…… get real
I do like the exterior, especially the addition of the garage. Hopefully they did their homework on the garage installation and the upper floors won’t cave in.
The interior looks….mcmansion.ish.
Website is a great improvement.
Price seems really high. Resp did the math and I concur. They overpaid initially….as something owner occupied….maybe. As a flip….they very well might lose money.
IF this sells, and the speculator makes a profit, it will define the top of this “dead cat bounce” in SF real estate. I’m referring to the CS graphs from yesterday.
$2.4 mln clearing price seems more realistic to me (as long as S&P stays above 1000!). I’ll add my kudos to the garage and the quick-flip photos. Nice!
can’t find much online about the garage doors. does anyone know anything about them? ditto for the curtain rods. anyone? love them.
other reasons why this won’t end as well as the flipper hopes:
– just noticed it’s seismically upgraded. raised my estimate to $2.7M for all-in costs.
– only 2 baths for $3.6M?? and one is on the lower level? not even a half bath on the main level. gotta go downstairs to pee at the dinner party?
– one bedroom staged as a walk in closet?
– master bedroom overlooking the street (granted it’s a quiet street, but still).
Yep, joke of a price. This pales in comparison to other places in this price range, and they are not selling. $2.5-2.7 million is probably a good estimate.
Small rooms. Small yard. Small chance the developer makes a cent.
Of course there was excavation. Look again..why assume there was NONE.
Garage door is a joke..they dont work well..they reduce the clear width of the opening when they fold back..clever but useless..and its visually very ugly.
no bath on the main floor?? bad, bad design. not acceptable at this price..
small 30″ wide built in sub-zero fridge at smallish kitchen: again, bad.
way overpriced..how bout try $2.4-2.6m?
I find that every flip situation that I look at ends up penciling the following equation:
unrenovated price + renovation costs = sale price.
Low and behold there is nothing left for profit. I’m very curious on the sale price of this place to see if it defies that equation.
If anyone has a building/house where they think the sale price of the fixer leaves some space for me to feed my kids once the building is done, please contact me as I’m ready to go. Brokers/agents welcome, just bring specific properties please.
$1,440 per square foot? Are you kidding? They overpaid for this house on the way in, by a lot!!! No way this sells for more than about $2.5 now. The owner/developer better take the first $2.5 offered and be glad they aren’t going to lose even more.
The rooms are small, the house is small, and no way anyone with $3.5 million to spend will buy this place.
what exactly does the seller think using this price? there are tiny rooms and no view. nice remodel, but same thing with 2130 filbert. on the market forever since the price is just a complete joke for that neighborhood. no renovation can remove the noise of drunk 20-somethings. this is NOT presidio heights. why are they asking such high prices for cow hollow with no view?
To get the garage in, they had to cut-out the floor of the bay window and create a window seat instead — I’ve seen worse, but this seriously makes the living room seem small.
“they reduce the clear width of the opening when they fold back..clever but useless”
I assume that, without raising the structure, the opening was too short to put in a standard roll up door, so they used this approach instead. They have extra width, but not height, so they ran with this solution.
“I find that every flip situation that I look at ends up penciling the following equation: unrenovated price + renovation costs = sale price.”
Beats the way things were priced in 2005-6:
Realtor: We think with the expenditure of $2Mil, this property would be worth $3Mil.
Me: What’s the asking price?
Realtor: $3Mil. We already have 14,567 offers, all above asking.
Way overpriced. I just don’t see how they’ll get this price considering what’s available in that range.
Are those pictures HDR’d to get the lighting to look like that inside and out? The dining room looks of different widths from different angles, so likely some wide angle trickery there.
“Urban kitchen” is a nice euphemism for “the kind of kitchen you get in those tiny TICs in the Richmond district.”
For three and a half *million* dollars, I would want more kitchen than that!
@ tipster: just a point to clarify..the height of the garage opening is adequate for a roll-up door..many types will fit this. there are minimum code dimensions anyway for a garage opening.
the type of door they installed is just not the right type..you see VERY few.. I wonder why..they dont work well.
I would’ve offered $1.2, it was an estate sale and usually the relatives/heirs want their money. Markets were tanking….who knows. They could’ve done better than $1.8.
Next, I would’ve painted the exterior and done a general cleanup of the interior. People will re-paint to their taste anyway. The exterior will get them on the property, first impressions and all that. But, that’s what sells it.
Oh, and price. Location is good here.
I would skip the garage. Seems more trouble than it’s worth.
A little bit of paint and a lot less gimmickery.
On the subject of the garage….we had those doors on ours. Had to open them by hand. I don’t know if you could get them to work with some sort of mechanism. Yes, they take up space on both sides.
I don’t think a car is necessary in SF. When we go to Monterey or Reno, we rent.
2130 Filbert is In Escrow Firm so that’s going to close any day now. I’d say that has $2.15 written all over it. Upside down floorplan but a nice home.
I’m going to have to go see 3024 in person. I can’t believe it’s only 2500sqft and they are asking 1400+ per. And only 350k for the remodel seems low IMO.
Lastly, where did you find the information on the garage door? I didn’t see that on the website anywhere?
“I don’t think a car is necessary in SF. When we go to Monterey or Reno, we rent.”
Could we have a discussion about whether cars are necessary or not in SF? I missed the last 3 or 4 thousand times this was discussed on SocketSite.
I remember this place. I put a low ball bid in. I thought it had a lot of potential. The positives:
1. easy to get a garage door in by creating a window seat in front of the windows in the Living Room above.
2. Lots of room to expand into the rear yard. the adjacent properties already extend much further than the subject property = less likely to draw ire from neighbors/Planning.
3. There was approx. 10′ attic space that runs almost the entire length of the house. Add dormers/skylights and it becomes an additional story of great space without increasing the existing envelope as seen from the street.causing more ire from the neighborhood. I also knew at the time that the code had just changed where a 2nd means of egress would no longer be required for a 3rd story >500 SF. (1 stairway is easier to design for than 2).
The negative: new foundations/seismic would be required.
I seem to remember that I could have almost doubled the SF without proposing something that the neighborhood/planning would be up in arms about.
“Are those pictures HDR’d…”
It doesn’t look like HDR to me (not that there’s anything wrong with HDR). The shoot occurred on an overcast day, so the outdoors were not brightly lit.
As for the website, yeah it is nice, but what’s up with that mouse move to pan up/down behavior ? Why not just enlarge the vertical frame by 20% and show the whole image without panning ? This just seems like an unnecessary gizmo.
I live on Pierce, although a bit away. Nice area, but, as others have said, I would be surprised if this house could hit ~$1,400/sq ft.
found this info: FAAC makes garage door operators. They are based in the UK…good luck getting parts here..They are popular there..not here..hardly EVER see them installed here..again…they dont work.
about the rear yard expansion: NOT true that you can expand deep into the rear yard open space JUST because adjacent buildings already do that..most likely they are legal, but non-conforming additions..rear yard setbacks of 25% and 45% still apply, with some allowable obstructions per code section 134..
also..if you made that existing attic space habitable area, most likely it would be counted as a 4th story..not 3rd story..the garage level is 1st story..yes, there are some exceptions..but mostly likely you would be required to have 2 means of egress from that 4th storey..
Ryan said,
“I find that every flip situation that I look at ends up penciling the following equation:
unrenovated price + renovation costs = sale price.”
That’s not true at all. It is only true when you overpay up front, as a lot of people did in 2007. But, typically that’s not the case. Didn’t 2849 Pacific just sell for $14M on a $7M purchase, there is some profit in that. Anyway they are out there.
“the type of door they installed is just not the right type..you see VERY few.. I wonder why..”
Because they are expensive, not because they don’t work. FAAC hardware costs a lot more than a regular roll up. Most developers cheap out in San Francisco.
Ok.. Well, I guess the garage door is a major fail. If it breaks, you’re screwed.
But I think this thread brings up a good point. The garage door situation in SF is pretty pathetic. There isn’t an ideal garage door made for all the bizarre places we try to stick garages into homes that were never made to have them.
potrero…
If I might be so inquisitive, how much was your “low ball bid”?
well ok…if you say so..but there are MANY quality garage door manuf. and operators that make doors that fit all kinds and sizes of openings…
“but mostly likely you would be required to have 2 means of egress from that 4th storey..”
noearch — just for my own information, is this why bigger houses that have been remodeled with 4th floor/attic space tend to have elevators? (since another staircase is probably harder to place?) Do fire escape stairs or deck stairs count?
The garage doors add less than a foot to the overall width. They are bi-fold doors that are only fastened at the top. They are quite nice in an urban setting because if you need to go in an out, you can open just one part of one side. It acts as a man-door. Roll ups have to be completely opened or you can crawl under, I guess.
If they’re wood, they are really heavy.
“the height of the garage opening is adequate for a roll-up door..many types will fit this. there are minimum code dimensions anyway for a garage opening.”
I defer to your expertise, noearch, but I humbly think you are wrong. You are forgetting that the living room above the opening is a window seat, which would immediately step down roughly 20 inches about 6 inches behind the garage door opening as you head further back.
That means the garage ceiling starts a little above the top of the garage door, but then steps immediately down as you go further back, probably about 6 inches below the bottom of the front door to the right of the living room above the garage. Most of the overhead garage door would need to be much lower than the garage door opening. I assume the garage door itself would then subtract another 6″ from the height. So I think you end up with an overhead garage door that is ony 5.5′ above the right side of the opening.
Breakdowns and all, I think this door was the only door that was going to work. You couldn’t even have inside opening barn doors, as the garage roof steps down too far because of the window seat step down of the living room.
The kitchen falls flat but d@mn I would almost sell my soul for that walk in master closet.
more dialogue:
1. elevators do not count as a second means of egress. an exterior or interior stair, or an exterior fire escape do count as 2nd means.
2.again, the bi-fold doors shown were probably installed because of some owner’s/contractors quirk that they had to have just that kind. the really dont work. they leak air, they look ugly.
3. @tipster: there are other solutions besides what you are suggesting: the opening shown is completely adequate for a roll-up..they make “low clearance” tracks. my own house has one..if really needed, the header above the door could have been raised, or put in a flush framed header (steel or wood). I’ve done that before.
Rollup doors seal very well, can be very well designed and architecturally appropriate. there is also available “side-hinged” garage doors, like an old fashioned barn doors..overall, I prefer a good, solid wood roll-up.
thank you.
Without trying to beat this to death, it’s not the *opening* that I think is the problem. In think the opening is well above the ceiling of the garage as it steps down behind the window seat. A roll up garage door mounted underneath the floor of the living room will hit the garage door opening about 12 inches below the top because the ceiling of the garage steps down.
Let’s see if I can draw this, it’s a SIDE view of the garage. The upper lines show the living room floor and then a step up to the window seat. The lower line is the garage door. The garage door would hit 12″-20″ below the top of the current door because it has to sit flat with the rest of the garage ceiling, creating a gap above the garage door to the bottom of the window seat. That’s what you’d lose.
LivingRoom|Seat
___________——
That didn’t work: one more try:
Let’s see if I can draw this, it’s a SIDE view of the garage. The upper lines show the living room floor and then a step up to the window seat. The lower line is the garage door. The garage door would hit 12″-20″ below the top of the current door because it has to sit flat with the rest of the garage ceiling, creating a gap above the garage door to the bottom of the window seat. That’s what you’d lose.
Front of the house is to the right: this is a side view:
LivingRoom|Seat
___________—— Garage ceiling
—————– Roll Up Garage Door (Gap Above)
Cars
Instead they got this:
___________—–
As the garage ceiling steps down, it probably is matched by a downward sloping garage floor. The floor slopes up too high at the front right side of the garage opening to allow an SUV through if the garage door extended out to the front because it would have to be lower to match the ceiling height of most of the garage.
ya..I think you did beat it to death.
If I were offering a house for sale in today’s market, with its near-universal, double-digit price cuts, I’d start off way high, too.
The new exterior color choices made me think of Ronald McDonald. Despite the burger tones, I think that the garage design solution and door system is outstanding
Gotta give it up for “burger tones.” Nice one.
@ noearch;
i mispoke. I should have said that the existing house had YET to be developed TO the rear yard requirement (45%). Then one can explore and intrusion/obstruction into the rear yard per Chapt 136. It has been my experience that intrusions into rear yards are much easier when they are well designed and when the existing adjacent properties have such intrusions. Re: exiting: I’m not sure what exceptions you speaking of….. It’s my understanding that only one exit is required in R-3 occupancies, regardless of story count, as long as you meet the maximum travel distance to an exit.
@potreroarch:
ok, cool. got it…yes, as you know, almost any kind of rear yard addition takes enormous patience, design reviews and code interpretations..each one really is unique..but yes, it does help somewhat if the adjacent properties are already at the max..again, depends..
you may be right about the one exit in R-3 occupancies..but depending if the building inspectors want to count that “attic” space as a 4th floor, there could be issues, mainly another exit..it just takes code research, some very clearly developed drawings and knowledge..as you know. good luck. thanks for the comments.
This will never sell for $1400 PSF… I say it goes for around $875 psf or approx $2.2
Only $2.2M for a viewless, bathroom-challenged 2/2 with a big master closet, Nobo?
Why, they’d be practically giving it away!
The list price for 3024 Pierce has been reduced $204,000 (6%), now asking $3,395,000 ($1,358 per square foot).
I haven’t seen the inside in person but I noticed from the outside that the house seems to be only two rooms deep. What you get for $1400/sq.ft. seems to be a two bedroom house. The “family room” is really where the kitchen table has to go. The deck is going to be nice a few days out of the year and the “bonus room” downstairs looks like it won’t be able to hold any furniture if the Murphy bed is ever used. I need to be blown away for that price and I’m not even impressed. I suppose the IHOP down the street is a big plus, though.
Dropped again to $3.2.
And now for lease at $9K per month. Guess this means they are accepting it is unlikely to sell at the current price.
This is a tiny house pretty close to Lombard for $3.2. Contrast it with 207 Maple that just sold for $3.3. Maple is in a much better neighborhood, corner lot and more house. 3024 Pierce needs a reality check. There’s no comparison,
Small house + average location + quirky garage door =$800/sf in today’s market.
Whoever pencilled out that this place would sell for $3.6 million was dreaming in any market environment. $1,000 per square foot would have been a good number to shoot for when the market was a little stronger.
I took a run at this when it was first for sale, and when I was told it would take at least $1.8 to buy it I backed away. It just didn’t make sense at that price. I was told that it was being purchased by “someone who just had to live in the neighborhood, and didn’t care if they overpaid. They had lost a couple other houses and were determined to get this one.”
Don’t know if there is a shred of truth to that statement….doesn’t seem to be in hindsight.
I was told it was a 26 year old girl who was planning on living there but she decided to go to business school in some foreign country so she could be with her boyfriend. I think the country was Morocco. I thought it was a weird story but the renovation does seem like it would appeal to a single 26 year old woman. I don’t see it suiting a family so much.
sooooooooo overpriced!
seriously, drop a million and might be closer to real price
The MLS listing for 3024 Pierce has been withdrawn from the market without a sale. No word on whether or not it has been rented.