Prepare yourselves for the email blasts, newsletters, and perhaps even a news report or two as 39 Virginia just closed escrow for 18% over asking in Bernal Heights!
The tidbit that might not be touted so loudly, the reported sale price of $825,000 ($575 per square foot) is 1% under its purchase price of $834,000 in October 2004.
∙ Who’s Afraid Of 39 Virginia Avenue? (Or This Bernal Apple To Be) [SocketSite]
∙ The SocketSite Reality Check For CBS’s Infamous “42 Offer” Home [SocketSite]
The fire-spitting, toxic debt oozing, FHA-backed Bubble-Zilla is officially back in Bernal. Bears run for your freaking lives!
Wow I am surprised
I saw this house and thought its location wasn’t hot nor was the layout
And the downstrains space wasn’t very usable at all and shotty
There is almost nothing for sale in the nicer parts of Bernal (especially small houses with garage). So if you want it, I guess there is competition.
Is this PPSF is misleading? I thought the space downstairs was unwarranted.
While 1% under it’s price from October 2004…
…it is 12% more than it’s price from May 2004.
Herein lies the problem with apples.
Great outcome for the seller. Listing for $699,000 was not a strategy that I would have pursued but in this case it led to a multiple offers and a terrific final selling price. I’m sure they would have been hopeful for a price in the upper 700’s.
The way list price works right now is not very fair to buyers. Sellers are under no obligation to sell at the list price, so they could list it for $1 if they wanted (and really I’m surprised they don’t!). The list price is a marketing tool not a promise.
If you price it low you will get a lot of lookers. The more informed lookers will know it’s not going to sell below market in a desirable hood like Bernal, so the sane offers (at least in the sense that they had a shot at getting the house) were probably over $800k to begin with.
Another Bernal apple here (I think):
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/509-Moultrie-St-94110/home/12354916
Down only 10% in a little under three years (but “Over Asking!!!”). Not bad, relatively speaking, but a pretty devastating loss for the 2007 buyers. At least they didn’t “throw their money away on rent.”
And if you adjust for inflation, $834K in 2004 is $957K in 2010, so that’s a 14% real loss.
(as usual, usinflationcalculator.com, which uses CPI and all of its quirks)
But hey, asking prices don’t matter, right? Except when it goes for over asking… 🙂
what’s the point of including inflation? is there no inflation factor in other investments? is that how you judge the stock market? and aren’t most gains due to inflation?
“is that how you judge the stock market?”
Yes? Don’t you? A 15% return in the early 80s when inflation was high isn’t as great as an 8% return today.
“aren’t most gains due to inflation?”
They’re not if you’re making a good investment. Of course, thinking of housing as an investment is generally misguided and should be strongly discouraged.
In any case, the real reason to think about inflation here is that housing busts usually work in the following way: a quick nominal drop followed by a prolonged real drop over several years (see the 1989-1991 to 1996 housing drop as an example). In this case, we may see more of a nominal drop if mortgage rates go up (although FHA + GSE + Fed + Treasury are trying to avoid large nominal drops).
Bernanke just said either Wednesday or yesterday that he will continue to manipulate rates lowest. Is it too much to ask for the “when rates go up” + “the USG has already signalled their willingness to abandon these policies” crowd sit on their hands for a while?
I hope they took the time to meet their next door neighbors before paying that kinda money… you can plant some trees to block the view of the BigLots parking lot out your back door, but it ain’t so easy to get away from those neighbors.
Ya know flujie, you’re beginning to sound downright macro.
Fluj,
I’m deeply disappointed that this government appears determined to try to re-inflate the bubble. I’m not optimistic that they’ll be able to achieve this dubious feat. After dumping how many billion dollars into keeping the bubble alive, what happened in January? Oh, yeah…
Fluj, you can hope and pray that we’re on the brink of the next big bubble (or even bull market) but that’s an awfully lonely position to take. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone to agree with you on that.
I also follow the housing market in Spain closely, and this blog has some interesting posts. While the editors claim that housing in many parts of Spain needs to fall further in price, it’s interesting to point to their use of US housing markets as cautionary tales for Europe: http://www.idealista.com/news/resumen/semanal
(You have to read Spanish).
Happy weekend.
Does that mean you retract your statement about “now that the USG has signalled its recalcitrance to blah blah blah (8000 credit as evidence)”?
Just kidding. That wasn’t you. I follow trends, USG news, stocks,the 10 year, etc. The answer to me has always been somewhere in between macro and micro, but yes leaning toward micro. I will never get behind an utter discount of Superstar Cities. Nor can anybody argue succesfully, in my book, that a lot of money in this particular city hasn’t taken residence more southward to an appreciable degree in the last 15 years. However, only a fool would say that FHA isn’t hugely important right now. That said, this little 2 to 3 million SFR buying spree over the last month is real. They, unlike buyers up to 1.2M or so, are not getting FHAs.
And sorry, but we built a lot of condos in the last 10 years. Not so SFRs. Take a look around most of the city and it’s not a wonder that they stand up. Can you imagine Manhattan with SFRs? What would they command? An exaggeration, but we are the next densest city by most measuring sticks.
Oh. And thanks for that Spanish blog. If I had my druthers I would be in Malasana, Madrid right now.
Manhattan does have SFRs, known as “brownstones” and “townhomes”. MLS is not aggregrated here, so no Redfin, alas, but a quick peek at just one brokers’ site shows listings at the moment (not sure about commanding) 15 mil to 37mil. On the other hand, these properties are certainly SFRs on a grand scale. http://www.brownharrisstevens.com/detail.aspx?id=221220
Oh yeah I know about Manhattan SFRs and their relative scarcity. Now factor in how much a fully detached property would command. For such a dense city we have a lot of detached properties with big lots.
Ah Malasaña. I lived there for a spell in the mid 90s, flujio, and your random mention evoked a bit of nostalgia.
When I lived there, it had a dual reputation as the most “castizo” neighborhood in Madrid as well as one of the sketchiest (“Mala Fama”). It was an interesting mix of the “old Madrid” (in a cultural sense, Madrid before it expanded with people from all over Spain post-War) working class, university students, and junkies.
Narrow streets, good live music bars, loud ass teenagers and their “botellones”, the open heroin market in Plaza 2 de Mayo, and the damn church bells in the morning after partying until dawn. Good times but I was glad when I eventually moved to another flat in another neighborhood in what some may call “the real Madrid”.
I hear it has been cleaned up and gentrified a bit in a boho-hipster sort of way. Boutiques, trendy restaurants and the like which were non-existent when I lived there. There definitely was a counter-cultural (to the normal Spanish dance club based nightlife culture) bent to the nightlife back then with its blues clubs and the like. In any case, definitely a neighborhood with a lot of character.
In any case, the real reason to think about inflation here is that housing busts usually work in the following way: a quick nominal drop followed by a prolonged real drop over several years (see the 1989-1991 to 1996 housing drop as an example).
Hmm, I think I have read that here before somewhere.