On my old street, just two blocks north of the present palatial dwelling, five houses have gone up for sale. One is my favorite model in this development, and it’s offered through the dominant Realtor in our area.
She was having an open house yesterday, so I dropped by to say hello and check out the place…and, of course, to find out how much she thought she could get for it.
It is a beautiful house. She said the sellers are the original owners, but it sure didn’t have that stale original-owner look to it. All the cabinetry has been replaced with high-quality new cabinets, the expansive countertops (this model has a huge kitchen) remade in granite, the floors paved with a particularly handsome hard-fired tile. The yard is very attractive; a bay window was added to the breakfast room, a new master bedroom extends into the huge backyard, and the pool has been “dry-docked”; i.e., put to sleep and covered with a large, expensive-looking deck. All in all, to die for.
Asking price is $285,000. The Realtor said that works out to $117 per square foot.
Out comes the calculator!
That model was SDXB’s. Without the extra bedroom, his house was 2,100 square feet. In the same year I bought my present home, he sold his for $229,00. That was just at the start of the bubble, long before anyone realized how fast prices were about to run up.
At $117 a square foot, his house would theoretically be worth $245,700 today. Not bad.
My house, however, would only be worth $217,620; I paid $232,000 for it. So it’s still down $14,380 off its proto-bubble price. Better than it was—for a while, the house’s value had dropped to around $180,000. Today Zillow prices it at $236,000, but IMHO a house, like any object, is worth what someone will pay for it. If our Realtor’s estimate is right (she does tend to underprice, but she’s been around for a long time), then at a 3% per year increase, the house’s value will come back to what I paid for it in a little over two years.
Modestly hopeful, I think. Maybe.