Purchased for $815,000 in March of 2015, the then 912-square-foot, one-bedroom Bernal Heights house at 519 Nevada Street was taken down to the studs, expanded, remodeled and returned to the market early last year, listed as a contemporary three-bedroom home with 1,636 square feet of remodeled space for $1,550,000.
Re-listed as an “auction” with an opening bid of $1,195,000 and an undisclosed reserve price below which the seller wasn’t bound to sell, along with a touted appraisal for $1,818,000 last year, the home was re-listed anew for $1,295,000 at the beginning of this year.
And last week, the sale of 519 Nevada Street closed escrow with a contract price of $1,375,000, which is officially 6 percent “over asking!” according to all industry stats and reports (but 11 percent below its original list price and 24 percent ($443,000) below the aforementioned appraisal).
Still seems way high for a place this fundamentally flawed. (I won’t repeat all of the huge problems noted in the last thread on this place.)
It seems the old adage is still true: There’s a sucker born every day.
At the same time, 30 Elsie was listed at $1.6Mill. and sold for 1.9 within 3 days.
Location matters; This is really the crappy side of Bernal.
And Day and Noe was listed for $1.995m and sold for $2.525m in 7 days, all cash.
If it were [a block and a half] up the hill north it would have gotten near the appraisal value I bet.
Or 1365 Scott #2. Just closed at $1,055,000. Sold in Feb. 2015 for $875,000. Up 20%.
But when it’s the best you’ve got to try to make your point, you go with “sold way below appraisal.”
30 Elsie is a totally different, and FAR better location than this. Not to mention what a horrible house this would be to actually live in, regardless of location.
I think that may be the point. This “horrible” house gained over 500k for the (2nd) flippers off an approx 800k investment. Is the south Bernal market hot or cold?
That was the point of my first comment on this thread. How quickly another house in a better location moved doesn’t seem relevant to this house doing stupidly well though.
I guess I’d disagree with that. Bernal is (still) a good market all over, even if there are hiccups on the high end south of Cortland.
OK, ok. Total investment near $1 million but still not a bad return.
Some friends listed their place recently in Bernal. They’re in escrow after two weeks and will sell well over asking. Lots of offers. The market is still good!
This place was in escrow within five weeks and sold for $80,000 over asking as well! At least according to the official industry stats (and perhaps a mailer or two)…
and this got “under asking” but I don’t think it says the market is going down.
$840 per sq. ft. in this location, and that’s supposed to signal a market in crisis?
The idea that the market goes from shooting upward right into being “in crisis” everywhere is a bit of a strawman. Now you should be looking for a transition from up to flat. The last bubble was massive and even then the market stayed in the flat zone for a few years.
And you should also expect wide variations too. Some properties will do better and some buyers are more attuned to market changes while some will live more in the past.
The interesting question here is if this was a real appraisal done as part of the construction financing or just marketing fluff. During the last bubble, wildly inflated appraisal were a key part of the cycle letting prices run rampant. But supposedly we’ve learned our lesson and this time is different.
It’s not really a strawman (which is a misrepresentation of a debating opponent’s position). The editor has been claiming the market is currently in a severe downturn, with 15% or more price declines (seconded by commenters), for many months. That clearly ain’t so. But we can all make predictions, and yours may very well come to pass (or not).
The only thing worse than the all too typical “in crisis” or “crashing” straw man argument is a Trump worthy misrepresentation of what we’ve actually reported or said.
Well, I wrote: “The editor has been claiming the market is currently in a severe downturn, with 15% or more price declines.” I did not say the editor mentioned the terms “in crisis” or “crashing.” And you link to a posting from a couple weeks ago asserting that new condo pricing “has dropped 16.0 percent from its August 2015 peak.” Who is making Trump-worthy assertions here? Is it because I said 15%, when you’ve actually claimed a 16% decline?
Our apologies, we didn’t understand that new condo pricing = the market as whole, especially in the context of a piece about a single-family home and industry appraisals, or that we actually needed to include “severe downturn” in the list of straw man quotes as well.