Purchased as new construction in October 2004 for $2,100,000, 946 Elizabeth returned to the market and sold for $2,675,000 in April 2007 for average annual appreciation of 10.3% over those two and one-half years.
The Noe Valley single-family home returned to the market in August of 2009 asking $2,595,000 but was withdrawn three months later without a sale. Listed once again this past March asking $2,499,000 the price was reduced to $2,399,000 in April and it’s now in contract.
A sale at asking would represent average annual depreciation of 3.4% over the past three years and a 10.3% drop in value since 2007. But according to a plugged-in tipster, it’s not in contract at asking.
Think you know Noe? Here’s a chance to prove it (and perhaps a few others wrong).
∙ Listing: 946 Elizabeth (4/3.5) 3,120 sqft – $2,399,000 (pending) [Redfin]
$2.275M
$2.2M
Pretty house, but Very Steep Block make it unfriendly to all but singles and the very youngest families:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=map+946+elizabeth+san+francisco&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=946+Elizabeth+St,+San+Francisco,+California+94114&gl=us&ei=nsIXTJD5PJGQNv3xtMEL&ved=0CBMQ8gEwAA&ll=37.751647,-122.441511&spn=0.015609,0.026157&t=h&z=16&layer=c&cbll=37.751642,-122.441626&panoid=vOZob0e2l9eH6V5RA_0Y7w&cbp=12,318.7,,0,2.12
The base of the street even has steps cut into the sidewalk:
http://www.mapjack.com/?YJxmWZAxbF6E
But it’s very pretty, has a big kitchen and high ceilings and is well laid out:
2.365
Noe peaked later and has not fallen as far (yet) as most areas. And this place is nice, and big. I’ll guess a little over $700/sf — $2,300,000.
That’s an ugly street.
Hopefully less than 2.25.
Less than a $500k loss would be unfair.
I wouldn’t pay any more than 2 mil for this one – it’s barely even in Noe Valley and is on a bad block.
$2.175m
I have to admit that block is ugly. And that hill is STEEP.
It makes me think about how much real estate folks are stressing walkability these days…this gets a walk score of 82 by the way “very walkable”…but walkscore.com admits that their algorithm doesn’t include adjustments for topography. Certainly something to consider in SF when you see those scores highlighted! But at least the 82 score is worse than 75% of San Francisco, which makes sense…
I will only predict that the last buyer will lose money.
$1. $2.215
are we playing by Price is Right rules?
Has anyone else noticed there is a flight to quality in real estate these days? Bad layouts or locations or noisy street corners or bad condition were worth almost no discount 3 years ago, now those properties are virtually unsellable. With good reason! With prices flat, why buy something sub par when you can wait a little longer for something much better!
I recently bought and many fixers we looked at years ago but rejected for the above defects now sit unsold after multiple listings over the last year.
Always buy quality.
yes djt, that is exactly what is happening. bad location, bad layout is “virtually unsellable”, meanwhile 72% of those that are “sellable” get multiple offers (see redfin thread).
my last two buyer transactions were highly competitive and we had to go over asking with sweet terms. meanwhile i have a ton more buyers who are spitting on the current inventory (which only means they don’t want what they can afford). and what they want are not dropping in price because it’s what everyone wants.
so if you think the market is up, down, or flat… you’re right somewhere sometimes.
[Editor’s Note: Careful, that stat is 72% of the offers that Redfin handled in the Bay Area, not San Francisco nor the market as a whole. And again, that’s down from 88% in February/March.]
$2.345M
Because the number looks pretty.
$2.35m
@djt
Indeed, though this place is very nice. Only problem is location
I saw it both in ’04 as well as ’07 and it was a different situation
earlier there was no supply, very few “new construction” 3000sqft
in 2007 the market was very hot but also a lot more options
this place took a while to sell and went under asking
Yes, with regards to quality. I keep talking about quality all the time.
It applies to well planned floor plans, room adjacencies, circulation, entry halls, closets, good flow of space.
It also applies to quality materials, doors, windows, finishes, high end appliances and plumbing fixtures.
Quality will always stand out, and it will sell. Substandard work and amateur work will always end up being discounted in San Francisco.
question is why would someone buy this for so much $$ in ’07 and then turn around and try to sell into the teeth of a terrible sellers market a scant 2 years later?
imo, if you cannot avoid such an outcome you should not be putting so much money into your living arrangement.
“question is why would someone buy this for so much $$ in ’07 and then turn around and try to sell into the teeth of a terrible sellers market a scant 2 years later?”
Life happens. People get jobs in new cities, get divorced, fall ill, need to move to take care of family members, or need to move for a thousand other reasons. It’s three years, not two. I think the average residency in a home is seven years, so this is not an extreme outlier. Bottom line is that buying a home involves taking on substantial risks for just about everyone other than the very wealthy.
The owner was a senior executive at Babcock and Brown, a structured finance company. In 2007, it had a market cap of $9.1B, and was 45% owned by its executives. Today, it’s worth 0.
This is just getting started. Any questions?
“imo, if you cannot avoid such an outcome you should not be putting so much money into your living arrangement.”
Always in motion is the future.
Which leads us back to that old saw, “Buying a house is easy. Holding onto it for 30 years is hard.”
@diemos: why is that so hard?
Owned my Noe V house now for 26 years..what’s the big deal?
noearch, take a look at foreclosure numbers from the last few years and see if you can come up with an answer to your own questions.
729 Elizabeth sold for 2.525M @ $918 psqft. 30K over asking which was supposedly very surprising for everyone involved.
…and tipster takes the prize…again!
946 Elizabeth has been sale-pending since April? Not that this place would likely be eligible for the tax credit, but they’ve blown past even the extension date for closing. What’s the deal?
Here is what someone on a very old thread from 2007 said about 946:
“946 elizabeth 2.675M – this house was built 2 years ago and was sold for 2.1M, which demonstrates the run up.
in short the rich are getting richer and it’s getting harder to build in Noe.”
Down the street, did you guys see 760 Elizabeth? This realtor is selling his own house and cut the price by either $200K or $300K in less than a month (depending on whether he entered the sale price as a typo or not), which makes sense since his price was encroaching on 946:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/760-Elizabeth-St-94114/home/682720
Also in Noe, is 1626 Dolores a 2002 apple? That’s sale-pending. I don’t see any permits on it.
By the way, the price was reduced to 2.499 and it did NOT sell, then they reduced the price to 2.399 and it sold for 2.525? And it took almost 4 months to close?
When I put all that together, I think there were some seller “concessions” thrown into that price. Seller pays closing costs, seller pays this, pays that…First you agree on the 2.399 price, then you increase the price, but throw in all sorts of stuff. Maybe they wanted some things changed out, so they had the seller do it so that it could be wrapped into the purchase price rather than finding a source of funds after making the huge downpayment to try to make the improvement themselves.
Then the Realtors all try to portray the higher price as the new market price for the home alone.
Who knows what happened, not me, not anyone, but it doesn’t pass the smell test. The realtors, all those helpful souls who are merely trying to help educate the market and wouldn’t DREAM of always pointing out the high side sales and not the low side ones, will of course climb all over this statement, but then again, their commissions depend on it.
I would caution people to look at all the facts and decide for yourself. Is it possible that closing costs were added in? Is it possible that some improvements were required during a FOUR MONTH closing period? Isn’t it strange that it closed ABOVE a price at which it did not sell? Maybe none of those things happened, but the next time some realtor comes out touting a high price, you might poke around the edges, use some common sense, and see if it’s possible that the price the realtors are touting contained something more than the home.
In 2006, you had no down loans: the goal was to pull everything out of the loan to keep the property price low. Now, it appears we are seeing people reaching for a 30% downpayment who are going to be cash poor after the sale and who are going to try to stuff everything they can into the purchase price because they can finance it rather than coming up with more cash that they don’t have. Not like the old days when you put 0% down and took out a home equity loan the next day because you had all that “equity”.
Your friendly realtor will of course, NEVER suggest this to you as even a possibility. And that’s when you know you are on your own…
“By the way, the price was reduced to 2.499 and it did NOT sell, then they reduced the price to 2.399 and it sold for 2.525? And it took almost 4 months to close?”
No tipster, fluj is talking about a different house down the street. Funny that he felt the need to mention the asking price.
ha. and he spent so much time on that.
YMMV on the asking price. YMMV on the need to say something each and every time you see it mentioned too. I mentioned it in the first place because they had already started out high, and in this market getting over asking is definitely surprising. YMMV on the need to be snide about a fact like that.
What? A different house got over an asking price and that’s somehow news? Weird.
I searched the address, there wasn’t a previous entry, and it’s on the same street. It might surprise you to know that people are interested in sales within the actual marketplace. Perhaps make a note of that. Then it’s up to you whether it might be a good idea to shut your mouth when the situation isn’t tailor made for a pat riff off an editorial soft toss.
There are two other recent listings on this street too:
761 Elizabeth
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/761-Elizabeth-St-94114/home/1263040
893 Elizabeth
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/893-Elizabeth-St-94114/home/1343451
Why is everyone moving out?
LOL. Tipster writes one of his elaborate stories about agents out to get you, all based on his confusion on what house was mentioned.
Classic.
And to your point sfrenegade. People getting over asking on that block, maybe everyone’s trying to get while the gettin’s good!
“People getting over asking on that block”
Ummm, I just pointed out a price cut, and this whole thread is about a price cut on an apple. Only the trendy place fluj mentioned at 729 got over asking. I guess we’ll see how 761 and 893 do.
Um, yeah, I wasn’t actually serious that the owners of 761 and 893 had put their houses on the market because of the result of 729.
I know you weren’t, although such an attitude was common during the boom. It does make me wonder if something’s going on there. That’s a lot of houses on the market in a very small time period.
761 Elizabeth is a 2005 remodel on a 2000 buy. There are permits for electrical and plumbing, and then the rest of the structural work is outside: brick foundation replacement, reroofing, and replacing windows/siding. Should be interesting to see how that turns out.
For 893 Elizabeth, there are no permits for the current seller, but it claims remodeled kitchen.
^that should say “the rest of the *permitted* structural work is outside…”
All of those Elizabeth SFR listings are either in contract or sold except 893.
This just popped up on redfin as a sale at $2.375.
Darn, I missed the price by $10K. I must be slipping.
Hey everybody. Feel like you could have got the price right if only you had another chance, well you are in luck: Here it comes again.
In escrow