CFAH

837 Wisconsin Street

Purchased for $1.3 million in 2013 and permitted for a major remodel and expansion by “SS Dreambuilders LLC” (no relation to SocketSite) in 2014, the Potrero Hill home at 837 Wisconsin Street was foreclosed upon and sold for $1,945,375 on the courthouse steps in 2015, a discount of roughly $250,000 from what was owed on the unfinished project at the time.

And this morning, 837 Wisconsin Street returned to the market listed as an opportunity for “a developer or individual who wants to [finish] this [potential 4,043-square-foot] view home” for $1,950,000.

837 Wisconsin Street: Unfinished Interior

Comments from Plugged-In Readers

  1. Posted by The Milkshake of Despair

    So the auction buyer had no intent on finishing the project? Flipping an unfinished property on the less desirable side of the hill like this is a gutsy move. There’s probably less than a dozen candidate buyers, half of which might already have their development pipeline full. I wonder what sparky-b thinks about this.

    • Posted by sparky-b

      Sure I will jump in.

      I offered on the house when it was at 899k. I think I offered $1mm. They overpaid at $1.3mm. They also had this place and 12 others for sale off market for $1.8mm in 2014, no takers.

      The current owner seems to have got the permits complete. They show October of 2015. I don’t know if they thought there was value in finishing the permit process, but this pricepoint doesn’t seem to show that.

      It isn’t worth this much money. The top end of this area is about $3.7mm. There is still a big build to do and I wouldn’t trust anything that’s been done to date. If you spend $1.2mm on the build and you get top dollar on the sale you make $150k.

  2. Posted by katdip

    Wondering about the first flipper on this – based on the SS post, it seems they borrowed about $2.2M on this property and didn’t get it done. Must have been been frantically moving money around to cover other projects. On the plus side, at least now a new owner won’t have to redo some Home-Depot-special remodel. Or maybe that’s what we’re going to get now, because as MoD says, this is quite a risk.

  3. Posted by BMR

    I think everyone is realizing how they all lost money and want to pull out with most of what they invested. This is not a 2 million dollar home, especially if unfinished.

  4. Posted by katdip

    BM- clearly some bank thought it was worth $2.2M because they let the first flipper borrow that much! I think it’s more likely he took the money and used it elsewhere. The first flipper didn’t need $900K to fix this place up, and he certainly didn’t spend that much since he didn’t finish. Not knowing anything about the condition of the property, but if it was in decent shape he reasonably could have estimated spending $300K to fix it up, sold it for $1.8M and made money.

  5. Posted by soccermom

    This should sit for a long time at 1.95mm and then be delisted in what some (ahem) will no doubt take as a sign of a weakening market. Paying 1.95mm on the steps for a gutted 1300sf house just means the current owners are chumps. Not sure it says much else about the market…

    • Posted by soccermom

      Well, it says that the market was so tight for inventory in 2015 for flips etc., that people were chumping themselves.

  6. Posted by Notcom

    Almost $2M for this?!?!

    Oh please, please, please tell me you’ve posted the wrong pics, or it’s actually every house in the panorama, or it was Liberian $$ or something…

  7. Posted by olala

    open floor plan

  8. Posted by jimmy

    The lady behind Dreambuilders had a big Bay Area portfolio with several properties in SF. Properties were all financed with hard money AND the lender added construction $ to the financing (so the LTV was very, very high).

    She over-paid for many properties, the work her crews did were haphazard at best (I looked at a few abandoned projects) so not too many developers wanted to inherit the bad work as it all needed to be re-done, and there was no back end to the SF properties. Textbook case of how not to make money as a flipper.

    • Posted by ess

      Perhaps it was all funding a gambling problem. I mean, one over and above the real estate strategy.

  9. Posted by EBGuy

    Meanwhile, Eagle Vista Equities continues with its no permit, no problem flips.

  10. Posted by FC

    SS Dreambuilders is run by crooks. They have multiple lawsuits against them. If you have issues with them please contact me as there may a class action lawsuit coming against its proprietors. They also do business under crossdial construction and technologies.

Comments are closed.

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