As we wrote this past July:
Purchased for $479,000 in June of 2002, the [1,000 square foot] one bedroom single-family home at 1251 44th Avenue was taken back by the bank this past May with what would appear to have been $567,000 owed. The property was just listed for $448,900.
The median sale price per square foot for homes in the neighborhood was $396 in 2002, peaked at $579 in 2007, and is currently weighing in at $508, down 3% year-over-year and down 12% from peak, but up 28 percent versus 2002.
Keep in mind the median sized home sale in the neighborhood has averaged around 1,450 square feet, size matters when it comes to comparing price per square foot on an absolute basis [smaller homes tend to yield higher prices per square foot], and remodeling has been particularly popular over the past eight years.
Yesterday the sale of 1251 44th Avenue (“…clean, bright and airy home in prime Sunset Location!”) closed escrow with a reported contract price of $460,000 ($460 per square).
To recap, from June 2002 to September 2010 the value of 1251 44th Avenue fell 4% on an apples-to-apples basis while the neighborhood median price per square foot increased 29% (the median price increased 27%). From June 2002 to July 2010 the Case-Shiller index for middle tier San Francisco properties increased 3%.
∙ Apples, Medians, And May Case-Shiller For 1251 44th Avenue [SocketSite]
a particularly unattractive sunset row house
Yes, but it was likely just as unattractive in 2002.
Anyone else think that REO properties tend to sell for a bit less than traditionally-listed properties? I’d say this sale with a loss of 4% is within the measurement error of the SF CS (it’s a pity they don’t report the confidence interval).
High tier reported up 12% in this period, Middle up 4%, Lower down 19%. This sale presents more evidence that the CS is a better barometer of the market than median price per square foot, although it’s a bad idea to draw too much from an n of 1.
Not that interesting of a data point IMO as it is a 1BR SFR, which is an anomaly and it is just one datum out of hundreds. REOs definitely sell for less as they typically are in bad shape and have poor marketing. Also, I believe what is typically reported is avg. $/sf (mean not median).
That is one God-awful ugly house.
Snobs! I’m not a big fan of the outer sunset because I don’t like the constant fog or the lack of green. But a lot of my friends like it out there. This place is not bad for a couple and from the MLS pictures it looks like it is maintained just fine. Just a 1/2 block from the park. Bottom line is it went for below 2002 pricing (but Over Asking!!!). Yet another of the many, many SF examples of substantial price declines in this market, top to bottom, in all neighborhoods.
ugly one bdr in outer nowhere=your platform for “Yet another of the many, many SF examples of substantial price declines in this market, top to bottom, in all neighborhoods.”
i’ll counter your one data point with 49 hill st.
I agree. A pretty desperate apple for the market-is-tanking everywhere crowd.
That was probably in the mission statement, if there was one. Do SFRE bashers not hit pages? Please. Read accordingly.
Are you guys really so insecure that you need to be completely defensive to the point of missing the editor’s point. He never said the market is tanking everywhere.
His point appears to be in the last sentence of the post, which is “you can’ read too much into median price per square foot as an indicator of values because it seems to be more of a function of improvements”. Here, an unimproved place fell by 4% while median ppsft increased by 30% over the same period.
If you had believed the median price per square foot was a metric for anything other than improvements, you would have overpaid for this place, so that figure should be ignored. If you looks at Case Schiller, although even that was too high, it was closer than ppsft.
This place hasn’t fallen all that much over the period for this post to be some how interpreted as a sky-is-falling piece. Instead, it was a comparison among three different data sets and their accuracy towards a place that was unimproved.
I think you guys are WAY too defensive about prices falling, and so that should be a sign to the rest of us that prices really are about to fall in a big way. Whenever prices are ABOUT to fall in a big way, the real estate industry gets overly defensive about it. Here, it wasn’t even the main point of the post, IMHO. The response is quite a worrisome sign.
Things must be getting worse than I thought. Looks like prices are about to fall faster than ever!
bulls and bears can bark all they want. In the end only Mr. Market’s words count and Mr. Market doesn’t pay any attention to SS.