Having been “lovingly remodeled,” the nearly 4,000-square-foot home at 2526 Francisco Street hit the market in 2014 listed as a “gorgeous family-friendly Marina home with 3 levels of fabulous living space” for $3.885 million and sold for $3.8 million that October, touting a “fabulous kitchen w/ high-end stainless appliances”:
…and views of the Palace of Fine Arts from the master suite.
The aforementioned appliances have since been removed, replaced by new set of high-end stainless appliances within a newly remodeled kitchen and open floor plan.
The lovingly remodeled master suite has been newly remodeled as well.
And 2526 Francisco is now back on the market and seeking $6.2 million as a “contemporary masterpiece.”
Without question, the $6.2 million buyer will wish for a new remodel he can love. Which makes one wonder, “Why bother “lovingly” remodeling a home you plan to sell? Why not just the basics to get it presentable, knowing most buyers these days will redecorate to their own taste?
And I’ll leave it to the real estate mavens to tell us whether the difference between “loving” remodels A and B is likely worth $2.4 million. Love to read the opinions (hopefully with explanations) though.
Keep filling those landfills you filthy rich people….. guillotine’s gonna getcha!
That’s the thing … certainly everyone’s entitled to renovate and design a home for themselves, and if someone has literally millions to do it, so be it. But I’d much rather look at an outdated house (or even bare stud walls) and the build what I want, than to have to think about ripping out all new, perfectly serviceable FF&E just to change style.
Maybe that’s because I’m interested in real estate and development, so by definition I can “picture” what I want more than others? Or maybe I’m just more fiscally / environmentally responsible? But it certainly seems galling – notwithstanding my first sentence – when someone spends 6 or 7 figures to renovate a house *knowing* from day one that they won’t live there, and that their target class of buyers is likely to gut the place and start over anyway.
I would never sell an outdated house to you because you want to buy it on the cheap and make money. I woukd rather reno and charge more and recoup my costs and then some. If you want to reno it again, go ahead.
The Flipper Tax is common enough, where real residents of a property alternate with flippers in between, who do minor changes and extract value from the process for their trouble.
If you don’t remodel then you can’t justify charging much more than what you paid…
$6.2M to be that close to Richardson? I don’t see it.
I realize that it’s a free country 😉 But the sheer waste of repeatedly ripping out and redoing recently renovated houses in San Francisco offends my still New England sensibility. “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.” is a phase I grew up hearing, and sorry, but it still makes some sense to me.
San Francisco is a transient city. Nobody here has pride of place anymore.
GET OFF MY LAWN YOU KIDS!
“Love means never having to subcontract again”
But seriously, when people talk about “what’s wrong with SF these days” isn’t this a case study in what thy mean”: paying huge and ridiculous sums of money for something, only to remodel it – why buy it in the first place if you only liked some of it?? – keep it for a couple years, then sell it for an even more inflated price to someone who will repeat the process. Other than hefty transfer taxes, I’m curious how much life was enriched for the citizenry, as opposed to someone who really would have “lived” there.
Can we all agree to reconvene in a year or two when Loving Remodel 3 hits the multiple listings?
I want to know how to get my hands on all those lightly used appliances, countertops, etc. Where do they end up? One contractor I talked to said he doesn’t have the space or time to store and try to resell counters or cabinets, so they end up in the landfill. What a waste! I frequently haunt Building Resources but never see anything as nice as these.
Habitat For Humanity has a resale store.
In 2014 this was not a remodeled house, it was a scrubbed and polished old house.
This house has now been fully remodeled all the way down to the studs.
All the pipes, electrical, wiring, appliances, bathrooms, floors, ceilings, walls, stairs, doors replaced. The place looks incredible. Anyone interested should go see the open house and than come back and leave a comment here.
Without a before and just seeing the after it’s hard to justify what value the remodel added. I can see people paying the offering if they have money to to throw away but the value is not there. Anyone that is responsible financially would not pay this offering IMO.
A “loving” prefix means nothing. People need to understand that if they do crazy builds like this, they aren’t exactly getting there money back.
[Editor’s Note: The first two galleries of the kitchen and master suite above are “before,” the second two are after.]
It’s just very different and hard to judge value from an old picture and going to an open house. You can’t possibly attach an additional 2 million dollar valuation because they ‘did another remodel’.
3.8m sale cost.
They rip out 1m worth of first remodel.
Put back in 2 mill in a second.
That’s a net value of 4.8m. Not ‘take sale price + 2m in remodel’.
I saw it this morning – the finishes are very nice, but it’s only 2 bedrooms upstairs (I know a few young families looking at SFH, and they all want three bedrooms on one floor). The kitchen is awkward, and it’s got a convection cooktop – nice as it may be, it’s not gas.
I stand by my earlier post – I don’t see someone spending $6.2M to live this close to Richardson.
Wow, still in 2016 people are buying into gas. I’ve had both. I do lots of cooking. Give me (a good) convection cooktop any day. Faster, safer and takes a fraction of the time to clean.
I prefer the previous kitchen and bath. A very pretty Mediterranean home bastardized with modernism and highway 101 outside your front door. Should never have been priced above 5 mil.
Me too. In a way that’s the point. Putting aside the fact that niether of them are likely to survive to be acutally lived with and used, about as many people are likely to prefer remodel A as remodel B so if you are planning to flip it, why bother?
Ha I could see myself getting really irritated having to go around that island to get to the fridge and oven. Maybe most cooks are more organized than I am – I’d be putting miles on a fitbit every year running around! And I can just imagine the spills from feeling like I had to load up to optimize every roundtrip. Given the space maybe it’s the best they could lovingly do for an open floor plan.
I agree – they moved the stove top out on the island, which is mildly annoying, but it would be really bad if somebody planted themselves in one of the chairs by the counter. How big is that fridge?
Wow, just noticed that. Completely unworkable for an active cook, especially if you want to cook while entertaining. I am nowhere near organized enough to get everything out of the fridge in advance. And try navigating a hot 20lb turkey around that island!
Clearly you have to unload the stuff from the fridge, set it down on the island, go around to the stove, pick it up again and proceed. Not my style of cooking (and I have loved to cook my whole life) I must admit.
Do you think these people actually ask their private chef about how they would like the kitchen set up, or just go with what their overpaid designer chooses?
Of all the people I know with houses in this price range, not a single one employs a private chef.
Do they prefer Sprig or Munchery?
Nah, they just order takeout and put the leftovers in the refrigerator – then once a year when the fridge is full they have to empty it all out. The only difference for poor folk like me is that I have to empty my fridge monthly since it is smaller ;o)
Being rich isn’t nearly as much fun as it used to be.
This is listed as a “short sale”……
I’m predicting 7.2*
*months till reality kicks in. 🙂
$2 mil more for a style that will show dirt and its age faster.
Funny to see how much the pine trees have grown, when you look out the bathroom window to the Palace of Fine Arts.
Too close to noisy perpetually busy Lombard. This would be like living next to a freeway.
I suspect that natural laws of economics will sort some of this out here.
Two factors drive ROIs in these situations – buying well and renovating well. Buying well could be timing and/or seeing what others don’t. Renovating well could be good quality for cost and/or designing solutions not obvious to other potential buyers. Here I doubt that the recent renovation was a winner (unless it was really inexpensive) since it didn’t solve the properties challenges (location, goofy layout in kitchen and upstairs bedroom count).
If a new buyer likes the updates to the tune of $2.4mm, it’s his/her prerogative…to overpay, IMO. No need to be grumpy, let’s see what happens.
Electric cooktops are the worst things to ever happen to kitchens.
UPDATE: The remodeled home at 2526 Francisco Street has just just been reduced by $212,000 and re-listed for $5.988 million (which will be counted as “1” day on the market and no reductions according to all industry stats).
UPDATE: 2526 Francisco Street has just been relisted at $5.988 million.
UPDATE: 2526 Francisco Street has just been relisted anew for $5.588 million.
UPDATE: The list price for 2526 Francisco Street has just been reduced to $5.198 million.
UPDATE: The list price for 2526 Francisco Street has just been “reduced” by $10K (0.2 percent) to $5.188 million.