Amusing myself in the wee hours by cruising real estate listings in my zip code, I came across one of the neighbor’s houses, comparable to mine, on the market for $199,000, some $36,000 less than I paid for my place. The sales pitch shouts,
UPGRADED CABINETS, JENN-AIR APPLIANCES, ENGINEERED WOOD FLOORS, NEW LUSH LANDSCAPING WITH 12 ZONE IRRIGATION SYSTEM. NOTE**SQ FT INCLUDES 300+ BONUS ROOM OFF KITCHEN**COULD BE FAMILY ROOM,DEN/OFFICE,KIDS PLAYROOM OR???**THIS KNOELL HOME SITS ON A LARGE LOT(OVER 11,000 SQ.FT)LOTS OF YARD FOR THE KIDS TO PLAY**SEPERATELY FENCED SPARKLING DIVING POOL OFF COVERED PATIO**LONG DRIVEWAY W/ROOM TO PARK AT LEAST 4 VEHICLES
Gee, thanks, guys: Let’s invite some more chuckleheads to turn their houses into used-car lots!
It’s not an especially pretty model, and it’s a bit too close to the light-rail construction on 19th Avenue. But still…it has most or all of the amenities my house has, and they’ve set the price in the basement.
Ah, yes: the light-rail construction. Make that nonconstruction: the City has changed its mind, after having ripped out the better part of an entire row of homes in our neighborhood and spread hideous cement-gray gravel over the resulting scars. The SOBs came in here, wrecked our neighborhood, and then walked away! They’re now considering other routes to serve the west side (read “the multimillionaire developers who own the new stadium out there, not to mention the occasional politico and city official”). It’s pretty clear the proposed line past our area will be abandoned, leaving us with devalued homes and enhancing 19th Avenue’s premier characteristic as a conduit of blight.
That would explain the cut-rate price on this house, which is owned by a couple who have lived there for many years.
Not the cuttest of all possible rates, though: a house on the street just to the south of me, which was wildly improved by a speculator who bought on the deflationary edge of the bubble, is offered as a short sale at $130,000.
Meanwhile, about 100 steps down the street from the first house, another neighbor is trying to unload a bland little house, “as is” with no photos at the Realtor’s website, for $229,000. That place has been on the market for quite a while. It’s not a short sale or foreclosure, but between the lackadaisical sales effort and the unexceptional front elevation, one could easily think it is. The house doesn’t look all that bad, but it’s nothing special, either. Houses around it, though, are badly run down: the Rental Baron’s slum property was bought by a woman and her son who put way too much money into fixing up but succeeded in selling at the height of the bubble to Adam the Pool Guy, not the brightest decorative light hanging in the backyard gazebo. Adam now owes over $325,000 on a house that he has allowed to go right straight back to pot. The kids across the street from Adam inherited their house from his mother, and they also are letting the place crumble away.
It costs a lot to water a lawn around here. So people who can’t afford the water bills will just let the grass die. Xeriscape it? That costs a chunk of change, too…if you can’t afford a $300 water bill, you sure can’t afford to have someone come and convert your bermuda grass to imitation desert.
“SEPERATELY FENCED.” Heee! Well, I guess you can’t expect much better than a pitch to people who use the front yard as a parking lot from sellers who can’t run a spellchecker and haven’t heard much about periods. Another house around here is described as having an “UP GRATED KITCHEN.”
😀
Someone wants $239,900 for a very pretty little house that has been massively overimproved in the seedy neighborhood just to the north of us. What could they have been thinking? Our friends who moved out of that tract several years ago finally had to default on the house that backed on to the grocery store. The bank wants $129,000 for it.
A bank is trying to sell a house that fronts on the seven-lane main drag that forms our neighborhood’s southernmost border: $251,500, rather more than anyone should pay to live on a feeder street for Interstate 17.
Next street to the north of me, a neighbor wants $264,000 for a place that has been “upgraded” in fun-house style: red kitchen cabinets, black countertops, blue carpets. While the price is what you’d think of as about right for this area, it would take a special buyer to fall in love with this place. The present owners so loved the eyeball-popping scarlet cabinetry that they put it in the bathrooms, too.
The folks who want $289,900 for the house with the view of the 19th-Avenue nonconstruction site are still waiting for their dream buyer to come along. That place has been on the market for months. Many months.
And in the what were they thinking department, a house on my old street, about two blocks to the north of the present manse, recently came on the market for $294,900. It has some recent upgrades (2008), but it has no pool and its exterior is so undistinguished I can’t even picture which house it is—and I walk or drive by there every couple of weeks.
The $199,000 model is the same or a similar model, and it does have a pool. That’s a $95,000 range for identical houses in the same six-square-block neighborhood!
Add the slightly more decrepit tract just to the north of us into the mix, and you get a spread of $160,000, for housing that’s all pretty much cut out of the same cloth.
Think of that.