Purchased for $1.1 million in April of 2018, the single-family starter home at 458 Mangels Avenue, “a charming Edwardian, nestled on a tranquil street in the Sunnyside Neighborhood,” returned to the market priced at $1.299 million this past April, a sale at which would have represented net appreciation of 18.1 percent, or a little over 3 percent per year, over the past 5 years.
Listed at 947 square feet, with a spacious kitchen, formal dining room, living room, two bedrooms, Jack-and-Jill bathroom, and double doors that open the kitchen to a deck, patio and landscaped backyard, there’s also a basement, garage, bonus sleeping loft and period details throughout.
Yesterday, 458 Mangles was relisted for “$999,000,” a sale above which would be considered to be “over asking!” according to all industry stats and aggregate reports but at which would be 10 percent below the price 458 Mangels fetched in the second quarter of 2018 on an apples-to-apples basis.
If you think you know the market for single-family starter homes in San Francisco, now’s the time to tell. Keep in mind that the frequently misreported index for single-family home values in San Francisco is “still up over 30 percent!” over the same period of time, having dropped 11 percent over the past year.
Don’t see what the point of telling readers of the listing that “original period details” are still present when those same details, as well as almost all the rest of the woodwork throughout has been coated with white paint. This home looks like what would result if a traditional Edwardian had a love child with a shopping-mall-located Apple Store. That being said, the marketplace has trained buyers in this segment to accept this and there are lots of philistines in this city with money.
I don’t know the market in Sunnyside, but I expect this home to sell for over asking. The current price of $999,000 has to be a gambit to induce overbidding or waiving of contingencies.
Period details are period details, no matter what color they are. Off-white walls and white trim are a common choice and have been so for decades. (Most of my own home has this color scheme, and has for at least a quarter-century. I have no idea what color the walls and trim were a hundred years ago when it was built.)
It sounds like you’re implying that people should conform only to your aesthetic choices. I’ve been in buildings with dark, unpainted (stained?) trim that might be original, and personally, I think it’s an awful look that belongs back in the early 20th century where it came from. But either way, it’s simply a matter of preference and your criticism is a bit silly. Most people do not choose to live in a museum.
I agree that the price seems intended to create a bidding war.
I believe the point of having trim a different color – indeed the whole point of having somethign called “trim” in the first place – is that it contrasts with the wall/ceilng; strctly speaking, the trim here seems to be a glossy white, and the walls a flat ivory(ish) so I suppose we can say they followed the ‘letter of the law’…we might even say they’re being subtle.
But let’s keep the good times flowing: I’ll second the agreement about price signalling.
IMO, painting original woodwork is a cardinal sin. I don’t care how long ago it first occurred, no reason to continue to travesty. There are plenty of products on the market that can assist with paint stripping and restoration. But hey, I get it, the average SF homebuyer just wants to feel like they live in a suburban new build and will probably move to one in a few years anyway.
Agreed. And this is a problem through out S.F. I recently bought a place, and while shopping around, seeing so much beautiful millwork either painted over or ripped out to make spaces fashionably bland was pretty depressing. It won’t be long before the monolithic “white everywhere” aesthetic runs out of gas, and places like this will look incredibly dated.
I do love the look of original wood, but it’s hard to mourn the loss *too* hard since I’m guessing it was painted over sometime in the 1950s. I would never have the heart to paint over it myself but I don’t totally fault whoever did—I have lived in places with original wainscoting intact and those spaces can get DARK.
All in all, great little house and if someone grabs it for ~$1M, that’s a total score.
I can be quite envious of white trim at times, for the brightness and ease of cleaning or refinishing. We have lived with a lot of natural finish Edwardian wood trim, wainscot, stairway, doors and windows, picture rails and crown molding/ceiling trims for 40 years now. We patiently refinished them about 30 years ago. We did not try to recreate the original paint color, a dark red somewhere between fire engine and red wine, nor the bilious wallpaper.
This issue — painting or destroying original interior architectural details — has come up many times on SocketSite. In most other sophisticated cities, including Boston, New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Brussels, Barcelona and Lisbon, one pays a premium for original interiors. A friend paid 40 percent more for an original interior in Putney over the price of new. It is not clear why San Francisco is different, but all the agents on this site seem to agree that it is. If we could, we would put a legal restriction on the deed, if we ever sell our house, to preclude flippers from removing the fireplaces, moldings, plaster, woodwork and other evidence of the formal “Edwardian” grandeur of 1900.
It is not clear why San Francisco is different…
Well, there could be one simple explanation, couldn’t there? :
othersophisticated citiesJus as the “City that Knows How” seemingly became the “City that Knew How”.
An interesting question. There are many, many examples of beautifully preserved homes in the tonier neighborhoods of San Francisco—homes in the working class areas tend not to fare as well as far as preservation is concerned, as one might expect. I suspect that aligns with older East Coast and European cities as well. Or, do West Coast buyers have have some sort of uniquely New World approach to interiors? There could be something there.
What I haven’t seen in 25 years is a beautiful, original wood interior ripped out and replaced with white modern due to flipper/buyer preference*. I have seen a few lost because they had 10 layers of probably lead paint on them and restoring it just wasn’t feasible.
*There was a home on Coleridge in Bernal a few years back people lost their sh*t over when the flipper tore out all the wood and Dwellified it, but none of it was original nor did it match the original style of the house, it was the former owners rather over-the-top ongoing renovation.
Speaking of which, If You Think You Know Pac Heights, Now’s the Time to Tell.
Cute house and yard. Good neighborhood. Garage. Only one bath. Decent K-5 school nearby, feeder middle school not so much, but small house for family with kids that age. $1.1 million.
Beautiful home in a great neighborhood, walking distance to BART. And a decent price, for SF at least. If it sells for $999k it’s a steal imo.
I live in Sunnyside. This home is small for the neighborhood; prices are down a little, but this will go over asking because Mangels is the “good” side of Monterey Boulevard. Close to the park and walkable to Glen Park.