I truly love when readers (thanks Shelley) send in links to other sites that truly make me laugh, and have a good grasp of the sf market, so I can quote them and not have to say it myself.
Lest anyone think the sub-prime lending crisis and mortgage meltdown is having a huge affect on the real estate market in the urban yet genteel streets of San Francisco, listen up. Mister Bratt’s investment property was listed in mid July, 2007 at $1,595,000. The property was sold and closed by the end of August for $1,858,000. So what does that tell the children about the still electric San Francisco marketplace?
Now babies, we know that it is standard practice in San Francisco to price a property low and sell it for higher than asking. This is widely considered “normal” in the City by the Bay. However, in this era of near fiscal implosion of the mortgage industry, one might think we’d see a slowing of the market and San Francisco properties would not be selling extremely quickly and for 10, 12 and 15 percent OVER the asking price. But they are children, they are. Ev-er-ee day.–The Real Estalker
Who cares about Benjamin Bratt! Your Mama nailed it! Nice!!!!
–1832 Page, Mr. Bratt’s Investment [MLS]
–Benjamin Bratt Sells SF Investment Property [The Real Estalker]
Properties selling under or over asking are pretty disingenuous ways of judging market strength, especially when you only highlight individual properties rather than all properties on the market. If I put my house on the market today for $5.00, you can bet that it will go for nearly $1,000,000 over asking. I’ll probably get 57 offers and it’ll sell in 15 minutes. That hypothetical activity tells you more about my pricing strategy (obviously too low) than the strength of the market…
Disclaimer: I own in SF. I just bought in the last 30 days.
Yeah. I don’t know that $1.895M is fabulous. It’s pretty solid though. In the end, the indicator is the sales price. Dave, are you gonna tell us where you bought now that its’a wrap?
My place is in Noe. It’s great. It needs about, oh, probably $200k worth of work. But that’s ok. Just going to be a work in progress for a few years… Probably what scared off most other potential buyers.
I also got all the great backstory from the neighbors. House sat vacant for a long time. Had not only some kind of critters living in the basement but also vagrants living in the upstairs living space… The joy of foreclosures.