Accessed by way of the Vulcan stairway, 1 Vulcan was built in 1908 and “encompasses three floors of living space with grand vistas of the bay and the surrounding gardens.”
Listed as both a single-family home and two-unit building for $949,000, the lower two floors are a “house-like, owner’s unit with wonderful light and a private south garden and deck” with a smaller top-floor unit above, both of which are currently vacant.
∙ Listing: 1 Vulcan (4/3) – $949,000 [MLS]
Passing on an investment like this would be highly illogical.
Strange but cool address since it doesn’t have frontage on a road: 1 Vulcan Stairway. Nice reference in the title too, of course.
Oddly, the postal service doesn’t have an abbreviation for Stairway:
http://www.usps.com/ncsc/lookups/abbreviations.html
San Francisco’s city/county government says “SW” generally, although one document says ST.
Btw, it’s worth mentioning that this is two units on an RH-1 lot. Saying it’s close to BART is somewhat of a stretch too, considering it’s closer to UCSF than 16th/Mission.
Nice photography though excessive snipping out of power wires. Boo !
I’d think that it would be very useful to include a floorplan for a home that is two units though being marketed as a SFH.
I’m not familiar with this block and hope that street parking is easy, especially when the last pitch is up the stairway.
The odds are 9230 to 1 that the next owners are a SUV driving family of seven.
Very cool. Bummer about the parking.
One of the best addresses I’ve seen.
I love the Vulcan Stairway, and I’ve actually been inside this home several years ago. The location is magical.
Just to be doubly clear it has no street access. You must walk up approximatley 100 feet past the house fronting Ord Court to get to the front door.
If nothing has changed since I was last there, and I don’t think it has, it requires substantial work. Like, floor sloping and uneven kind of structural work. Imagine hiring a contractor to do this work, which requires bringing all materials 100 feet up a pedestrian stairway. Imagine the premium this work would cost. Price your bid accordingly….
This house is a special case. Boy would I love to live there, but not $1 million bucks to start….
Oh, yes, and mentioning BART is silly. As a side comment, real estate agents seem to have gotten religion about transit and ped access…they’re always mentioning BART, Muni, and Walk Scores. However, the reality is that most real estate agents live their lives in cars… BART is about a 20-25 minute walk from this location. Not impossible, but not very likely either.
I can’t wait till / hope that “walk score” dies its deserved death. Talk about zapping the uniqueness out of life and inserting automaton as thought in its stead. Yuck.
On that we can agree, fluj. Walk score doesn’t really tell you much of anything because 7-11s count the same as foodie-approved places. Their study on how walk score correlates to property value is heavily flawed and is probably even more inaccurate post-bubble burst.
walk score does not correct for elevation, which is incredibly important in San Francisco.
I agree it is a magical location. I am concerned about schlepping 3 kids and groceries and elderly parents up the steps.
Wonder if the neighbors would mind VRBO’ing the unit upstairs or if the grandparents would make awfully extended stays.
What do the plugged in think about the price?
On the topic of automated metrics. Zillow appears to have started publishing “Rental Zestimates”. This doesn’t appear to be fully functional yet, but I’ve seen it pop up a few times so far.
A million bucks for a house in this location? Even with work, this looks like a very decent deal.
Then again, people with 300K down and ready to pony up 5K on PITI every month usually love their cars, and need them to make the money needed for these expenses. Renting out the top unit would decrease the bill.
I’d say it’s not a NV alternative because of parking, but between a big loft in SOMA and the steps, I’d pick Vulcan.
I’m not sure how difficult street parking is nearby. If it isn’t too bad then that wouldn’t be a deal breaker for a car bound owner. Lack of parking is more of an annoyance than a critical issue.
It would be a deal breaker for people with mobility issues though.
Parking is relatively easy on Ord Court (which is the street which is closest to this house on Vulcan Steps). I’ve visited many times over the years, and I can’t think of a time when I couldn’t find parking somewhere on the street, or maybe just around the corner on 17th Street.
I disagree with lol, but I’m conservative. I think the price per square foot on this one is already very high, (I wonder what the city records show)and as I stated earlier, I think that any renovation is going to be very expensive, due to the difficult access. I know a former owner had once intended to renovate, and I don’t believe he ever did, for just that reason.
Checked Redfin, which lists 1950 square feet per city records. So that would be $486/square. So perhaps I’m being too conservative? What would it be worth completely “done”..$700-750 per given the lack of parking and access? (note..I don’t really believe that you can reduce value to per square foot, but it’s one measure). In any case, if the above is true, you’ve got about 400-500K to play with for renovation.
Does this make any kind of sense in a back of the envelope sense?
No it doesn’t. No two units are worth 700 to 750 per over here, let alone forever garageless ones.
Good to know..I’m just guessing. Any ideas what value would be of a fully renovated building?
I’d say more like 1.1 to 1.2M or so? This is a pretty tough one.
Went to the open today. Agree with most previous comments. You’re buying the location, which is magical, and the views.
Challenges:
The place needs a complete gut and redo. Windows, doors, floors, kitchens, baths — all cheap, tacky and irredeemable. The floor plans for both units are a disaster. All the rooms are too small, save perhaps for the MBR in the lower unit, which is marginal at best.
The question I was running thru the general contractor / developer chunk of my brain is: what is the better result: two 1BR/1.5BA units, or combine into one 3BR/3BA SFR? I don’t think preserving the current 1BR / 2BR arrangement is possible without ending up with the same “rooms too small” issue.
Given the narrow demographic for this place (healthy enuf to deal with the steps, no kids, no car), I actually think the 1BR / 1BR makes more sense — two gay or lesbian couples, buying together. The combined 3/3 doesn’t seem to be appropriate for this location, since that’s a family-sized place, not to mention the issues with the city of eliminating a unit, which might be “officially” impossible to get permits for.
The bones seemed fine to me, with just a cursory inspection, mind you (found minimal cracks, rot, or sloping/sliding).
But I don’t think the financials work out at the selling price. I think after a complete gut/redo, ending up with a 1/1.5 and a 1/1, both spectacular, maybe 1.4M valuation tops? With transaction costs, and assuming $500K for remodel, this puts you $100K+ in the hole.
This one is probably only for those two childless couples who fall in love with the lot, and aren’t afraid of a ton of work.
PS Oddest thing was the Viking built-in fridge in the lower unit — just free-standing — like the ghost of Christmas future.
I went and looked yesterday too. Basically I agree with Kurt. The location was amazing and I wanted to love it, but it was very outdated.
I’m new to SF, but I’m wondering whether it’s really plausible that a gut rehab in that location could be done for a little as $500K.
“Given the narrow demographic for this place (healthy enuf to deal with the steps, no kids, no car), I actually think the 1BR / 1BR makes more sense — two gay or lesbian couples, buying together. The combined 3/3 doesn’t seem to be appropriate for this location, since that’s a family-sized place, not to mention the issues with the city of eliminating a unit, which might be “officially” impossible to get permits for.”
Do you think the city would readily rezone it to avoid eliminating the extra unit?
It’s not a zoning issue. This lot is already RH-2.
It’s a policy of not reducing the number of housing units in the city, enforced by not issuing permits for projects that do so. The standard way around this is to fudge the definition of a “unit”; for example, a kitchen can be a hand sink, a dorm fridge and a microwave, right? This is why you see hand sinks in odd places sometimes in SF. I could go more into the details, but you get the idea.
Other city lawyers could probably be more precise. I’m just an unlicensed general contractor who dealt with this issue on the other side of the table.
Oh, and PS, it helps to have obvious Irish genes when “doing business” at the DBI. In the end, that’s how I pulled off my restoration of a single-family detached that had a previous botched conversion to two units. The Kafka-esque infighting between city departments, each with differing definitions of that property, was unreal.
“It’s not a zoning issue. This lot is already RH-2.”
Not according to the records I can find. Here is the zoning information (which acknowledges there are two units here, but says it’s zoned RH1):
Assessor’s Block Number 2626
Assessor’s Lot Number 030
Low Street Number 1
Street Name VULCAN
‘AV’ OR ‘ST’ etc. ST
Zip Code
Length of lot frontage
Depth of lot
Lot area 2286
Year Built 1908
Zoning Information
Zoning classification RH-1 (RESIDENTIAL- HOUSE, ONE FAMILY)
Special Use District not within a special use district
Signage District not within a signage district
Code for Redevelopment Area 1000 (NOT IN RDA PROJECT AREA)
Set Back
Quadrant SOUTHWEST
Zoning Map Quadrant 07
HEIGHT AND BULK LIMITS: 40-X
District Symbol: X
Height Above Which Maximum Dimensions Apply: There is no bulk limit
Maximum Length:
Maximum Diagonal Dimension:
For applicable zoning code, select this link
Other Assessor Data
Number of Units 2
Volume Number 19
Land Valuation $290,257.00
Structure Valuation $258,004.00
Fixed Valuation $0.00
Other Valuation $0.00
Homeowner’s Exemption $0.00
Other Exemptions $0.00
Type of Exemption
Most recent sale price $425,000.00
Date of most recent sale 3/8/1996
Copyright 2007 Planning Department, City and County of San Francisco, all rights reserved.
Here is the parcel information (also stated as RH1, but acknowledging it has 2 units):
Property Location
0001 – 0001A VULCAN SW Suite/Room: 0000
Mailing Address for Property
1 VULCAN STAIRWAY SAN FRANCISCO CA 94114
For Fiscal year beginning July 1, 2009 and ending June 30, 2010
Land: 289,569
Improvement:
257,393
Fixtures:
0 Personal Prop: 0
Homeowner Exemption: 0 Miscellaneous
Exemption: 0 Exemption Type Code:
Property Characteristics
Sales Base Year: 1997 Property Class: F Neighborhood: 05G
Kitchen:
Kitchen
Built-ins:
0000
Construction Type:
D (Wood frame) Base Lot: 000
Zoning Code: RH1 Year Built: 1908
Lot Frontage:
0 Lot Depth: 0
Lot Area: 2,286
Basement Area:
0Stories:
2 Units: 2
Rooms: 11
Bedrooms:
0Bathrooms:
2
Copyright 2006 – Office of the Assessor-Recorder, City and County of San Francisco, all rights reserved.
If two units are required, in a gut rehab it would make sense to me to put a studio in the ground level, and make a two story owner’s unit above. Then the owner would get all the views. You would probably get a decent 2 BR unit out of it with enough space, which Kurt mentioned is a big problem. That wouldn’t be a two buyer option, but a one buyer, rent/vrbo option.
And that studio would be a great “tales of the city” vrbo-type rental.
Do you think DBI would accept that solution of creating a downstairs unit (likely a studio instead of a 1bed) and creating an owner’s unit on the top 2 floors?
Hmm, interesting, my call on RH-2 was from looking at the latest zoning map, which shows a triangular slice of RH2 on the south side of the Vulcan steps which looked like it included the property. Ah well.
As for Jroot’s question, sounds like you’re kinda serious! The lowest level (there was just an office and full bath down there) would be possible as a very small studio. I’m guessing the DBI wouldn’t have any problem with a 2 unit remodeled into a two unit. They don’t seem to mess with the 1BR/Junior 1BR/Studio distinction, in my experience, but if you’re really serious, you should go and chat with them before doing anything rash 🙂
It’s certainly a challenging remodel, but with some creativity, I think it’s possible to make it work, but still, at the current price, I don’t think it’s possible to do as an investment. You’re gonna want to live there and sink your savings into that goal.
The Chronicle had an article about the stair-streets earlier this week:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/13/MNSN1I8MAR.DTL
“Contingent” per MLS
Really? Crazy….
Very curious to see what this closes at!
Given how quickly it went contingent, you gotta figure close to or just above asking.
The sale of 1 Vulcan closed escrow today with a reported contract price of $950,000, over asking by $1,000.
I think the buyer will come to regret their decision once the renovation bills come in, but bon chance.