Mo’ Moderne Atop Liberty Hill (Or Not)
February 4, 2011
From San Francisco’s modern era of design and development to modern day trends, we’re calling it a modern themed week in retrospect. And we’re closing it out with a peek inside the Streamline Moderne 849 Sanchez atop Liberty Hill (or not).
Other than noting a sale for $3,400,000 in June 2008, the price at which it’s listed today, we’ll let the pictures and plugged-in lovers of Streamline Moderne speak for themselves.
∙ Listing: 849 Sanchez (4/3.5) – $3,400,000 [849sanchez.com]
∙ San Francisco’s Modern Era Of Design And Development [SocketSite]
∙ San Francisco Listed Housing Inventory Update: January 31, 2011 [SocketSite]
Comments from Plugged-In Readers
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Big budget design
Sometimes more curse than blessing
Scary loss ahead
2781 square feet. At $850 per square foot, this is 2.4, a million under what they paid. Scary loss is right.
Note to stager: Consider upgrading to the same chair, but the model with arms for the head of the table. Also perhaps add to your inventory the same chair in the ‘smoke’ color. It has a bit more presence than the crystal clear while still being transparent. Last I checked these were not available from DWR, only through Kartell. Best of luck!
PS Love these houses; there are more in close proximity on Liberty that are ready for a flip!
From a quick glance of the website photos, I love this house. Although a lot of rooms.
I am not sure there is actually any geographic featured named “Liberty Hill” There is a Liberty-Hill Historic District, but that name should contain a hyphen (though it often appears without one) and refers to the two main streets in the historic district, Liberty and Hill. This building is well outside the boundaries of the historic district.
Well, the district includes Mission @ 20th which is about as flat as you can get. At least this house is on the same hill as Dolores and Liberty.
can’t tell. is this newly renovated and staged or renovated, lived in and then moved out? where do you get the 1mil dollar loss from? i personally love it. love the art deco
You “can’t tell” if it was newly renovated.
The current owner paid $1200 psft when the rest of the neighborhood tops out at around $750 psft. Does that give you even the slightest clue?
The whole thing is just dumb. Step back and look at the front of the house: looks just like the house next door, with some curvey bay windows and glass blocks. Geez, buy the one next door for 1.3 and add them in for $50K. Have a banister fabricated and redo some drywall for $10K. Redo the baths and kitchen for $250K. You’d be up to $310K. That works out to about $110 psft. Add another 40 psft in case I’m wrong. I think you could get the one next door for way less than $1200 psft-150 psft.
The person who bought this at that price got carried away by emotions to pay this kind of price. I don’t think she finds another buyer at anywhere near what she paid.
405 Hill street a few doors down just sold for $631 psft in brand new completely redone condition. There are certainly some differences, and you might want to make some design changes but it’s not worth twice as much. Same square footage: price paid was $1.790 compared to 3.2 here. 1.4Mil buys you a lot of design changes.
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/405-Hill-St-94114/home/1369959
I actually think the loss will be significantly in excess of $1M. The $850/sft price above was clearly stated as an overly optimistic sample point. Sale price will be nowhere near that. Then you add in transaction and carrying costs, even if you theorize they didn’t spend a penny on improvements (which I doubt).
I think we’re talking a 1.5 to 2 million dollar bath here.
* shudders *
PS I love the house, and love “Moderne.” I think the house would show better empty tho.
PS: Some pics of it at its previous sale in 2008 (asking $3.25M:
http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2008/05/05/mystery_solved_streamline_moderne_at_849_sanchez_street.php
I saw this house in a porno movie.
“PS I love the house, and love “Moderne.” I think the house would show better empty tho.”
Please don’t insult the stager. Everyone would make different choices in design to a degree, but clearly this was very professionally done with a lot of coordination even between elements of the fixtures and furnishings (must own stock in DWR?). The house would show well empty because of the extremely high attention to authenticity and detail, but me thinks the staging hits the target with respect to the profile of a prospective buyer.
One person’s insult is another person’s opinion. I thought my comment was rather mild, given prior SS etiquette. Maybe you’re new here?
Do we know this house is staged? Maybe the owners should be the ones getting defensive?
I’ll say this tho, the current interior is certainly much more talented and attractive than the one shown in the 2008 photos!
But I stand by my opinion, which I’ve often stated here, without it implying anything about the talent or taste of owners/stagers — it’s that some houses would show better empty. This is an opinion that, for some odd reason, in SF, just seems so radical, so “another galaxy”, that people misinterpret it as a slam on the stagers’ (or owners’, as the case may be) taste.
Oy.
Oh, and PS: we’re all waiting for that link to the porn, house54 😉
PPS @GoodBuyBadTimes: On the other hand, the weirdly off-topic DWR references, the clumsily inserted and oddly fetishistic knowledge of plastic chairs, the breathless comment about proximate houses “ready for a flip”, as well as your posting ID, which invokes the image of a drug-induced smiley face — THOSE I’ll make fun of.
For the record, there appear to be two more of the acrylic chairs in one of the bedroom shots.
EH, Thanks for taking us further “off-topic” – had completely missed those chairs. 🙂
The work done on this place drew some complaints from the neighbors, but not much came of it. They pulled no permits since the June 2008 sale, but one of the complaints was in July 2008, so I’m not sure what that means.
The prior owners also tried to installed solar PV, but that permit says “cancelled after field inspection.”
Not really my style, but I like this a lot better than the stucco box modern we often see. If the stager had continued on the Kartell theme, this would look more Dwell, but the choices in staging actually help it look less Dwell fortunately, even if the bathrooms and kitchen are too Dwell. The cat in #17 is appreciated.
Dolores Heights?
I’ve often heard that name applied to this area.
I agree with Kurt Brown: we’re expressing opinions and view points here. No one is insulting the stager.
I personally prefer houses that are not staged, but are impeccable inside, showing the architecture, the bones, the good lighting, finishes, etc. I feel staging often disguises certain drawbacks of a house, especially room size and functionality.
I like Streamline Moderne also, but I don’t see much of it carried into the interior; it’s mostly a clean modern, white space. Even the new interior steel stair railings lack the personality and true style of Moderne.
$2.5m — 25% discount from peak.
A randomly selected single family home “apple” in SF would be down around 30% from peak give or take. This one is a little nicer than randomly selected.
”A randomly selected single family home “apple” in SF would be down around 30% from peak give or take. This one is a little nicer than randomly selected.”
I can’t agree with this statement as I have not seen any statistically relevant data to say “apples” are down 30% from peak “on average”. I’d love to see a real statistical analysis of apples done by someone with the time to do so.
Median and average pricing along with avg $/sf says more like 15% to 20% off peak pricing as has been debated on SS ad nauseam.
Here is a year end report with one real estate broker’s view point. I don’t agree with everything stated, but I still think 2011 nominal pricing will be flat (+/-5%) in 2011, barring any significant and unexpected events. Also, the annualized 10 year graph of median prices and volumes tells the big picture story pretty well IMO.
Homes-Citywide 2009 2010 % Change
Avg List Price $1,142,921 $1,173,938 2.71%
Avg Sale Price $1,128,008 $1,164,339 3.22%
Med Sale Price $830,500 $850,000 2.35%
Total Sales 1612 1750 8.56%
Condos-Citywide 2009 2010 % Change
Avg List Price $815,263 $794,767 -2.51%
Avg Sale Price $791,684 $776,404 -1.93%
Med Sale Price $683,175 $685,000 0.27%
Total Sales 1672 1971 17.88%
We’ve moved the conversation regarding January listed sales volume to:
SF Listed Sales Volume Up 15% In January Driven By Low-Cost Areas.
And now back to 849 Sanchez and Streamline Moderne, or even a debate over the legitimacy of Liberty Hill…
Tipster: but the house next door is not a corner lot, nor the curvature of the walls. I agree, it is overpriced at the ask, and it was overpriced in 2008. $650 – $700/ft² sounds about right to me.
but i understand the desire, as i too love this place; it is a great specimen. Wish i could pay the ticket on this one for she is a beauty. Oh and that banister alone will be $25k — i just got 3 bids for something similar..
there are some faults in the redo that they could have and should have avoided — as noted the kitchen & bathrooms are more dwell then deco (st. charles cabinets are still made), and the light fixtures are absurd.
I agree with noearch — the staging is stupid here, unless you have period furniture to match then leave it alone. acrylic? come on…
on pricing, maybe they are taking a cue from poundstone’s book on anchoring. even if they get 20% above “market” rate due to the absurd ask, they come out ahead. will be very interesting to see this one play out.
“The current owner paid $1200 psft when the rest of the neighborhood tops out at around $750 psft. Does that give you even the slightest clue?”
Did Tipster just say that the owner overpaid? I thought he (or she) didn’t believe in that…
Liberty hill was topping out at $750/sq.ft. in 2008 ? That doesn’t match my experience at all, it seems as if properties were selling for more then.
@R: I believe that with egging on by your realtor, and advertising by the real estate industry and the press releases from the NAR and the assistance you can get from realtor newsletters and web sites, it’s very easy to overpay.
I think the Realtor newsletters are very very valuable (for lining your birdcage). The postcards stating “Sold with 32 offers over asking!” can be useful as bookmarks, especially for very sad books where the favorite character dies an excruciating death over many, many chapters, because you can look at the bookmark before you put the book down for the night while you are getting through those miserable chapters and laugh and laugh at the postcard. So it’s not like I think realtors add no value at all, but it’s tough to think of other examples.
There are some realtors who actually help their buyers (though they all pretend to), but you could hold a convention of those realtors for SF in a phone booth.
Anyone buying while interest rates are rising is an idiot and will overpay automatically with or without the help of a realtor. So there are lots of times when *everyone* overpays, like right now, for example.
MOD, I said “tops”, not “topped”.
the neighborhood topped out at well over 750/square. anecdotally, my old next door neighbor paid over $1.9 million for a 1700 square foot house on the “wrong” side of Dolores Heights (Castro side, without the downtown views)in 2007. Downtown facing properties on Liberty, Sanchez, etc were trading for over $1000/square foot routinely (and still have very recently)
yep, she hits well above $750 on a good day, but I haven’t seen anything in that direct nabe over a $9 handle for the past year, though I may have missed it…
343 Liberty was $500/ft²; 418 was $890/ft²; 4054 20th was $800; 506 hill $750..as tipster said 405 hill was $630; I think $950ish was was the recent high I saw.
The ask is ballsy imho. I predict $800-$850/ft² in the end. a premium for the corner lot, view and design. just my 2 cents..
Geo, you mentioned the corner lot thing twice (2nd time: “a premium for the corner lot”). Is a corner lot that much of a premium? I always saw a corner lot as a negative because of loss of privacy, but I suppose it could be a benefit if two sides received views.
sfr — two sides of views, and much more internal light/windows make corner lots often advantageous. you actually have more potential privacy as only neighbors 10 feet away in the back and on one side as opposed to 3. it does depend on the corner.
this one, i think is a great corner.
This appears to be in escrow already which means that it will probably sell for closer to asking than many predicted.