On the route to Sophia’s school there’s a house that I love to look at every time we walk by it. It’s surrounded by a stone fence, about five or six feet high, with an iron gate on to the street. There’s a giant playset for kids — as high as a two-story house, made out of redwood, with lots of Habitrails for crawling around. And the house itself (the adult Habitrail) is gorgeous on the outside. I looked it up on mlslistings.com, and discovered the house is as big as it looks, with 5500 square feet and more than a half acre of land. I would love to see the Open House on this one.
Asking price? $4,750,000.
But — believe me, I know how this sounds — I can completely understand that price. That house is quite a package A 100-year-old mansion, sitting on a fantastic plot of land, in an enviable part of an expensive town.
The house two doors down from us just went on the market. It’s 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, less than 2000 square feet. It’s beautiful inside, from the photos, with lots of stone work. And apparently it has more land that I would have guessed from the outside, but probably not a bigger lot than we’re on.
Asking price: $1,675,000
Two words: holy. crap.
The above-the-fold in the San Jose Mercury News today was the Bay Area’s current median house prices.
Santa Clara County’s sizzling housing market cooled a little bit last month, but the median price of a single-family home jumped to a record of $714,250, bucking speculation of a downturn or bursting bubble.
That’s a 19 percent increase from October of last year, when the median price was what now seems a modest $600,000.
The article goes on to say that things are cooling down, the market’s reaching equilibrium, the same overnight-craziness isn’t apparent.
On the up side… if you do manage to cash out of a California home, you can go almost anywhere else in the country and buy the side of a mountain.
On the down side… what’s the monthly payment on a $714,250 house? Who the hell can afford that? And how far are people going to have to drive in order to live somewhere affordable? Or more affordable than this, at any rate?
We’re not in this house for the immediate value it holds — we love this neighborhood, love the walkability of it, are happy as little clams to be here and have the kids here.
Which is good because… when things come back to earth, it’s going to hurt. A lot. And we won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
Regardless of where you are the best investment is in realestate. While there may be ups and downs, during the past 60 plus years land everywhere has gone up in value. I just got the listing of the assessed value of all the properties in HP. Along with this required public posting was a notation by the county assesor pointing out the fact that land values (and some buildings) continue to increase. Percentages were stated but looking at our neighbors it belies the values which keep climbing up and up. Bottom line an assset is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it at the time.
Wild. Just wild.
Can you make note of how long it takes for each house to go into escrow? And if they slash their asking prices first? From everything I’m reading, the market is already past peak. That is, people are putting their houses on the market for the same absurdly inflated prices, but fewer buyers are biting. Inventory is building. It’s only a matter of time before the prices come down too.
(And yes, it’s different in different parts of the country, but this specifically includes the SF area, though San Diego seems to be leading the way down the way it led the way up.)
Actually, I think the asking price is closer to $5.8M. But at that point, it’s just money 🙂 (We also live somewhat close by and I was curious enough to look it up. Even in crazy Sillycon Valley that is getting into the pretty rarified pricing atmosphere…)
We’re completely priced out of the market, even with decent salaries.
We’d have to move to like, Stockton, or buy a fixer-upper in a dicey neighborhood to be able to afford a monthly payment. Even Antioch and Brentwood have climbed up over the 400K mark for median home price.
Believe me, right now I’m sort of kicking myself that we didn’t take an FHA to buy the 4br 2ba with in-law suit around the corner from where we used to live in Berkeley, for 600K 3 years ago.
We’re living in a 900 sq ft townhouse with no yard and living in Walnut Creek (ick ptooie) instead, just to get by.
Pawliger: are you saying that the house is listed at $4.75m, but they’re telling people it’s really $5.8m??? Aren’t there laws about that?
Tamar: I haven’t noticed too many For Sale signs staying around for long. I’ve been expecting the end to come around here for a while, but so far it’s just kept going up.
Don’t know whether it’s the same house. I went to mlslistings.com and looked for houses in Cupertino > $4M. Only one came up, it was 5500 sqf, land, but it was $5.9M. Maybe I didn’t find the right house…
Oh, heh. We ended up not moving to Cupertino, because frankly the price/quality ratio was way too skewed there (having the #1 school district in CA does things, I guess).