In February the bank owned Odeon (181 O’Farrell) #508 sold for $530,000, only “2 percent under asking” but 34 percent below its purchase price of $800,000 in 2006.
Yesterday the bank owned Odeon #510 (a.k.a. 150 Powell #510) was listed for $546,900, a sale at which would represent a 32 percent drop in value below its purchase price of $808,500 in May 2007. It’s a good thing bank-owned sales don’t mean anything.
∙ Listing: 150 Powell (1/1) 1,071 sqft – $546,900 [MLS]
∙ Oh My At 34 Percent Under A 2006 Value At Odeon: 181 O’Farrell #508 [SocketSite]
∙ Oh My (And Bank Owned) At The Odeon On O’Farrell [SocketSite]
terrible pics. it sure doesn’t look like 1000+ sqft.
What’s the “Oh My” for? Are we supposed to be surprised? Socketsite has been posting these for the past 2 years. It was fun at first, my i’m tired of seeing the same condos (Beacon, Palms, One Rincon, Odeon, Watermark etc) mentioned week after week with the same commentary from tipster etc.
Can you post more about livable housing in San Francisco in neighborhoods like the Mission, Sunset, Richmond, Nob Hill, Ingleside, Potrero Hill?
I think I heard enough of the condo that was purchased for X and now selling for X.
Oh My…
here here…and the same goes for the sarcastic “its a good thing bank owned sales really dont mean anything” comment. overall a very tired commentary.
Yes, as a fellow real estate sales person (in addition to the home sellers posting out there), we’d like to sweep the whole “real estate is a money losing proposition” concept under the rug and focus on anything but all of the money people are losing hand over fist on real estate these days.
So could you please talk about anything else? “Liveable housing” (as opposed to uninhabitable housing) was the first thing I could think of, but really, substitute anything, just for god sakes, stop reminding people how much money people are losing so we can go back to saying “they aren’t making any more land!” and “$600 psft floor” or my favorite, with the Euro crashing “Rich foreigners are buying everything in sight!”
And as for tired commentary, we had no problem repeating “Google” over and over for four years, or “My! Over asking…again?”, or my personal favorite “I hear they got 35,635,374 offers!” THOSE phrases we can listen to endlessly, and we repeated them loudly at open houses, but the fact that anyone who comes near real estate is losing a ton of money these days gets old fast!
(Ha ha, we’ve heard these same pleas by desperate sellers and real estate agents before. )
My favorite canned snark this week was from the bull side:
https://socketsite.com/archives/2010/05/another_perkins_payday_as_207_maple_closes_escrow.html#comments
So much for all the naysayers. Based upon the majority of comments on the previous post, you would have thought that the price would be closer to $330k than $3.3mm. Even the first comment to this post shows the negative bias.
which had the following editor’s note added:
[Editor’s Note: Really? You might want to reread the majority of those comments (or rework that majority/minority math).]
This was, of course, after even tipster said it’d sell above asking. If you can’t handle the truth, just say so, but we heard the platitudes when prices were going up, and it’s fair to mock them now.
This was owned by an investor from Tiburon; thank you Indymac. His primary(?) residence in Tiburon received a NOTS on March 31 of this year. As they say, I’ll take two…
I agree with socketfan
*yawn*
Over $600/mo for HOA? That’s steep, considering that I don’t see a long list of amenities. I’m hopefully assuming there’s a 24 hour doorperson. Parking isn’t deeded, so HOA doesn’t cover security for a garage. It doesn’t seem like it’s a good value.
It seems to me that the question is not whether there are a lot of negative stories posted here, but whether the stories posted here are, or are not, representative of the current state of the SF housing market.
Furthermore, it seems appropriate to cover these formerly hot condo projects from a few years back in order to provide perspective into how they’ve performed over time. There certainly was a great deal of positive coverage back then. If the performance of these properties is, in retrospect, fairly bad, it’s not the fault of Socketsite!
No I get it. I do agree that it’s interesting watching bank owned units fall from the sky. All i am saying is that it’s basically the same content week after week. X condo was bought, now it’s worth X. Then you have comments from people like “tipster” who chimes in the same thing day in and day out.
You can tell by the # of comments in the latest threads. Topics like Infinity or One Rincon use to get over 80+ replies in a day. Now they are only getting 15-20 from people like “huh” trying to stir the pot. I think the readers are tired of hearing about $1M condos.
It was fun in 06,07 and even in 2008 but we are now in 2010.
Take for example the recent post on Arterra being sold out. Barely any noise and comments on it. Why? Been there, done that.
Here’s a “livable” house in Bernal that just sold at its 2004 price:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/505-Franconia-St-94110/home/1036156
And a “livable” condo in Mission Dolores that just sold at 20% under its 2005 price (but Over Asking!!!):
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/270-Valencia-St-94103/unit-505/home/11743576
Oh My!
@socketfan: Though I do somewhat agree with you, the Arterra example was a bad choice. A recent Arterra thread on unit #514 had a tremendous amount of posts.
I think the discussion is good, but I would recommend more conversation around other buildings such:
300 3rd St
199 New Montgomery
235/255 Berry
50 Lansing
Etc.
@A.T: You are doing exactly what I think 70% of the readers want to see. Homes in decent location selling/currently on the market. I don’t care if the seller made money or lost.
I don’t mind condos but not 1 every other day. Take an example of The Palms. Use the google function on top and see how many Palms threads are up. For a lousy condo, there’s been over 10 post about it, usually with all the same stuff.
@SFRE: Discussion good for Arterra? Were you here in 06 when the Infinity vs ORH had over 100+ comments? -100 comments about vents!
socketfan, I’m with you 90%. I prefer the discussions of better places in better neighborhoods to see how things are doing outside the worst-of-the-worst. However, I must say that following the train wreck that is the Beacon/Palms/1Rincon, etc., that were the poster children of the bubble does stimulate the more sordid elements of my pysche. And while all aspects of the SF market are not 100% correlated, this is a small town and they are all inter-related, so you can’t really say some area or dwelling is sui generis.
“Topics like Infinity or One Rincon use to get over 80+ replies in a day. Now they are only getting 15-20”
No surprise. Most of those posts were from flippers trying to talk up the market for those properties, or flippers from competing properties trying to explain why their property was better and should therefore demand a higher price. Where are they now?
But that doesn’t stop posters from coming on here and “yawning” about a post, when in reality they are thinking, “holy mackeral, yet another post about a property owner who lost money? If only we could shift the focus of conversation, maybe buyers would stop worrying about losing their life savings and give me my commish!”
@tipster: Not to change the topic of conversation, but let me ask you a question, if someone was planning to move to SF in 6 months and needed a place to live, and needed 2+/2+ what would recommend?
I think your comments are valuable, but I’m not sure if you haven’t lost touch with what is happening in the real world. Of course we understand that properties have lost 25-30% from peak, but as a hypothetical what would you recommend?
I know what’s happening in the real world. I knew what was happening in 2006 and I know what is happening now.
Here would be my advice: buying in the middle of a bubble, whether the bubble is being fueled by real estate agents and investors talking up the market in the press and in chat rooms, or by the government trying to at least partially reflate a bubble via all sorts of unsustainable, artificial means, is a stupid, risky idea in which only the stupid and gullible participate for the long term.
Will that be the case is 6 months? No, the elections will be over so the urgency to prop up prices will have ended, and prices will start falling in earnest, and investors will start to give up and throw in the towel about 6 months after that. The “boy that looks cheap compared to bubble prices” crowd will have all foolishly bought. And we’ll be in the midst of a steady decline.
What would I do in 6 months. Rent. And look around at other areas of the city. Because when your lease is up, rents will probably start becoming close to parity for owning.
What I can tell you is happening to Silicon Valley is that we had a pretty decent 6 months where everything stopped crashing, but now things are getting worse again. Not Armageddon worse, but a slow decline.
Some big companies are doing better. The midsize and smaller companies are doing worse. We’re still having customers shutting down, laying off, not using our products or services as much. The larger customers are squeezing their suppliers. The smaller ones are asking for things they can’t pay for: when we bill them in advance, they call and cancel the order.
In one of my businesses where we cater to new business formation and very small companies of 1-5 people, demand has dropped to zero. Zero. Essentially no new business forming other than those on complete shoestring budgets. The rest is down about 40% from 2008. It turned up a bit about 4 months ago, but then started turning down again two months ago. Whether this is up and down or the start of something long term down I don’t know. There is too much government intervention to know anything right now.
I wouldn’t be in a big hurry to buy in the next 6 months.
Fair, logical, well thought out response. Thank you.
Actually a lot of casual readers who rarely post a reply appreciate seeing info like this. You can accuse socketsite of cherry picking negative apples-to-apples (sorry, couldn’t help it) and being bearish, but remove socketsite and other sources of info from the web and all you have is dribble without data from the real estate industry. Yes, there are good r/e brokers out there, but my experience hasn’t been great over time (small lies and big ones (self-regulated?!)) and I think that it is the exception to have someone truly well-informed and ethical. In general, the NAR would be perfectly happy to have the public under their control with no data or other sources of info. The less data and info out there, the easier it is to preserve their fiefdom of pumping up the market, selling on perception or maybe a carefully selected comp or two, and trying to hold on to the commission structure for negative value-add.
Didn’t read any of the comments above, just wanted to say I love the post!
I think NAR members benefit more by the boom and bust cycles because the extremes generate more transactions. Booms draw in buyers that otherwise would not be investing. Busts flush out reluctant “sellers”. You need a boom to create a bust. Market churn directly translates into more commissions.
The worst thing in the world for the NAR is a completely stable market that encourages or allows homeowners to remain in place.
Given the recent review by one resident, requesting an overnight stay to check out the noise level from the store below firsthand before buying sounds like a good idea. http://www.yelp.com/biz/odeon-residential-building-san-francisco
I totally agree with nanon. I love the apples to apples and really enjoy seeing another side to the boosterism of the RE marketers. Housing will stabilize but only after a huge adjustment takes place and I don’t think we’re at the bottom yet. I can’t wait to see houses become ‘housing’ again and not just an ‘investment’.