What happens when you list a big Pacific Heights property that’s in good condition, and with even better bones, for $687 a square foot while other homes in the neighborhood have been selling for north of $1,000 a foot? Yes, it sells for “way over asking!”
How far over asking? While the sale of 2224 Jackson has yet to close escrow, if a plugged-in tipster is correct, the contract price for the property is expected to be at least 80 percent over its list price of $2,095,000 and might just break the “two million over asking” mark.
And while the property is currently configured as a three-unit building, the former single-family home is being delivered vacant and will likely be renovated and returned to its roots, with or without the City’s blessing.
Crazy! The place is a gut remodel job!
It was a ridiculous situation. I believe there were 27 total offers. I know $3.8M did not get it.
The agent might as well have priced it at five dollars. Seriously. Underpricing to an extreme.
Why is the “over asking” metric so important? It strikes me as better measure of the pricing agent’s inability to gage the market rather than an indicator of market trends.
Could easily be a $4M+ outcome here. This was going over asking by a wide margin no matter where the price was set but $2m is certainly a low starting point. Say / write what you want but the strategy seems to work every single time. Not sure why it is not employed more often. A modest home on Gough just sold way over asking. The Spanish style home @ 3867 Jackson just sold for $1300/psf which would put this place at $3.9m. Although 3867 was much nicer in my opinion.
It is like that old Peggy Lee song, “Fever”. Or maybe it is like the Holland tulip bubble from the 19th century.
Eddy –
I think you’re probably the best poster on this site, but I completely disagree regarding the strategy of ridiculous underpricing. Had this been priced at $3.5M – which is where it should have been – I believe it still would have had multiple offers and still reach that sale price. The difference is you wouldn’t have 26 parties wasting their time… you would have about 5-6 offers. It’s not a strategy, it’s a promotional technique employed by agents who can’t wait to tell advertise that they “received 27 offers!”. Lame, lame, lame all the way around.
@NS, I actually think this could have been priced too low for another reason. Buyers have a hard time going 2x on the list price. Even if priced way below market. I agree that wasting buyers time is not good but it creates a sense of frenzy and is a strategy. Real estate is emotional and emotional = irrational (exuberance). It’s not particularly respectful to the time consideration of interested parties; but, honestly, any agent who wastes their clients time by even submitting an offer under $3M in this instance should be fired. I would have listed this around $2.9 to $3.1 and it still would have gone way over and might have elicited an even higher offer. As far as using it as a promotional strategy, I used to not believe that agents did that; but they do and it is lame. Should be interesting to see where it closes. Someone on here was recently commenting on a home selling over asking pre-close and it ended up selling below. So you never know. ps: thank you for the compliment.
Do I perceive a suggestion that this building might suffer the ultimate crime of a “dwelling unit merger”? Would that remove two “affordable” dwelling units, at about $1.3 each? Do we want only rich people to live here? Does this mean that the needy and deserving who can afford only $1.3 million will have to live some place other than Jackson Street?
Serious question: you say ‘with our without the city’s blessing’. does this mean the owner can change the number of units here back to 1 w/out any sort of approval?
Related: if they had to do construction work and get a permit and in there it’s obvious they are moving it back to 1 unit, wouldn’t that be the way the city would say ‘no’?
I have no opinion here, just curious about that statement from SS and permits and all.
This is not a house. This is a 3 unit building. It will be appraised as a 3 unit building. Units do not sell for as much per square foot as houses do. The buyer will have to pay cash. There are a lot of Real Estate Agents who have tried to sell buildings previously converted from houses to units as houses. They FAIL.
The only way an appraiser might allow this to appraise as a house, is if the City has already approved the change back to a house, and the right to change is transferrable.
How do they fail? Do the properties not sell at all? Do they get less money?
1958 1960 Sacramento St. by Gough was originally marketed as a house (With 2 Extra Kitchens) for over $3M. The asking price per square foot was about the same as the asking prices of other houses in the area.
2 units were combined without permits. The bathrooms were remodeled without permits because an Inspector would have made the Owner separate the combined units.
It took 6 months for the property to sell for $2,470,000 at $694 per Square Foot. Market Value for that type of Building at that time.
The difference between the asking price as a house and the selling price as units was about $900,000
No Appraiser will allow an apartment building to be appraised as a house. (Legally)