theFrontSteps – San Francisco

Twenty-nine fifty Broadway sold “off market” last month for $35,000,000.

[Photo Source: SocketSite]

As reported on SocketSite today:
“Hidden behind non-disclosure agreements and tax records stamped “DO NOT FILM,” you’re not supposed to know about the sale of 2950 Broadway which was purchased for $29,500,000 in 2011, remodeled a little last year, and very quietly sold off the market last month. But now you know. And you’re about to know the record setting sale price as well.

With a sale price of $35,000,000 (roughly $3,182 per square foot) and $875,000 in transfer tax confidentially paid, 2950 Broadway has just displaced 2840 Broadway to become the most expensive single-family home ever sold in San Francisco.”

Wow…and some people will wonder and cry foul that it never hit the MLS.

Sellers, it’s time. We need your inventory, and look how happy you could be!

Alex thanks for selling my home as quickly and painless as possible at a price way beyond my expectation! I especially liked that you provided expert advice/service from staging, lighting and photography to make this a success. Using [electronic signature solutions] for all document signing made my life so much easier, and not to mention saving wasted paper from going into the environment. You keep up with the latest trends, you have access to new and potential audience/followers via social networking sites, and you’re just damn good at what you do so, THANKS!!!!

Cheers,
Judy

Brings a tear to one’s eye, doesn’t it. You’re welcome Judy! Thanks for the great testimonial. Call us when you’re ready to buy.

And to all of you other sellers, did you notice how good to the environment we can be? I’ll even come meet you on my bike. Just give a shout, and we’ll get the ball rolling to getting you top dollar on your property too.

-More Testimonials [theFrontSteps]
-Maximum Overbid Of The Week: 235 28th St, Noe Valley [theFrontSteps]

This one is hot off the presses. So hot, this property at 235 28th Street in Noe Valley still has dust billowing up around it from the flurry of bidding that just went down.

–

–

By all accounts, this is a great, great house. Sure, it needs a little work, but could be really nice and totally livable with ripped up carpet and buffed out floors, new paint (get rid of the wallpaper), and tidy up the yard. It’s actually livable now, but we have champagne tastes like all of you. To take it even further, the house could be expanded down, up and back. Big project for sure, protect that lovely historical facade, dig out the downstairs, add one more parking spot, and go big…and that’s exactly what all of you, dear readers/buyers, can expect to hit the market in or around another year, and expect it to be in the $3,000,000 range.

We just bid on this property, and we lost. Asking $899,000, we bid $1,250,000, we were “in the top four”. Winning bid (hate that word) was $1,300,000, cash, seven day close. That’s $401,000 over asking. Hard to beat. And for our buyers, it’s another one lost. It stings just as bad this time (the 7th) as it did the first.

To all you sellers, we keep saying it’s a great time to sell, are you believing us yet?

-235 28th Street, Noe Valley: 3bd, 1ba, $899,000 [MLS]
-When Someone Else Tells You Our Market Is Hot Will You Listen? [theFrontSteps]
-Telegraph Hill Neighbors: Our Opposition Is Unconditional [theFrontSteps]

If you saw our recent post about the house with all that fabulous ($302,000 worth of) furniture for sale, none of which you got to see in the marketing, you might have been just as curious as us about said furniture.

Lucky for all of us (lest curiosity killed this cat), we dug a little deeper and found that the previous listing holds all the answers. The furniture is there, and….well, it’s furniture, so whatevs. But what’s really awesome is how many times you get to see the agent’s photo ghost. Six times! (Seven if you count the double mirror shot.)

We can hear the conversation now, “It’s such a hot market all you gotta do is slap a sign out front and throw it on MLS.” Not true. So not true. There is an art to multiple offers and Maximum Overbids. And there is clearly a new art of agent marketing and self promotion we have yet to discover.

-$302,000 Worth Of Furniture Comes With This House…Sort Of [theFrontSteps]
-San Francisco’s Sexiest Realtor 2009 [theFrontSteps]

Originally listed for sale in the Fall of 2012 for $1,850,000, price chopped, relisted a mere 11 days ago, now asking $1,798,000, this property apparently has an “expansive, unobstructed view of the City and the bay”, but that’s not all.

From the “agent only” remarks we occasionally can’t help but to share with you. It’s a “beautifully remodeled home in Diamond Heights, with the option to buy the house furnished for $2,100,000.00. Show this house blind.”

Are we the only ones that are confused by the marketing of a home that apparently has a fabulous remodel, great views, and great furniture ($302,000 worth), none of which we get to see?

Oh…hold on, hold on, hold on. It’s there…”Show this house blind“. Now we get it.

-21 Ora, San Francisco [MLS]

Have a look at what hit our email in the past couple months, and the companies heavily marketing “pocket listings”, “off market” property, or “not on MLS” opportunities.

You, the buyer, would probably like to know about these opportunities, wouldn’t you? Well…you can’t. Not until these brokerages wake up and join the year 2013, move beyond “private” or internal email as the method of choice for delivering these opportunities, look to social networks for some guidance as to where the buying (and selling) public lives, and get with the program!

Pacific Union, McGuire, Zephyr, Paragon, TRI Coldwell Banker, Vanguard, Sotheby’s, the list goes on and on…you ALL have pocket listings, and you’re all marketing them “privately”, so let’s make an effort to encourage each other to participate in an alternative marketplace to bring these opportunities to your fellow agents and the public, rather than continuing to shove this growing marketplace under the massive bureaucratic rug that is our National, State, and Local Association of Realtors. And for heaven’s sake, quit throwing your colleagues (Climb Real Estate) under the bus for taking a step in the right direction! (You know who you are.) It’s high time an alternative to the MLS takes shape, and the opportunity is right here and now.

[The same properties shown above, with links to the site:]
-Dominican Estate [Decker Bullock/Sothebys]
-53 Clifford Terrace [Vanguard]
-1299 Bush Street [Vanguard]
-219 Brannan [Vanguard]
-524 Roosevelt [Vanguard]
-2876 25th Ave [Vanguard]
-466 Hill [Vanguard]
-2509 Polk [McGuire]
-855 Folsom [McGuire]
-2094 Bush [McGuire]
-66 Parker [McGuire]
-2200 Pacific [McGuire]
-171 Caznea [McGuire]
-615 Buena Vista West [Sotheby's]
-2245 Francisco [Sotheby's]
-29 Oak Springs [Sotheby's]
-26 Sanford Lane [Pacific Union]
-1200 Laguna [Zephyr]
-1278 Stanyan [Zephyr]
-50 Lansing [Zephyr]
-Nob Hill Secret address [TRI Coldwell Banker]
-2325 Divisadero [TRI Coldwell Banker]
-2220 Sacramento [TRI Coldwell Banker]
-465 10th St [TRI Coldwell Banker]
-6 Emlin, Kentfield [TRI Coldwell Banker]
-595 12th Ave [TRI Coldwell Banker]
-850 Powell [TRI Coldwell Banker]
-287 Mangels [Barbegelata]

[Editor's Note: Some of these properties were placed on PocketListings.net, and others have since hit MLS and are now sold, but they did land in our email a very short time ago. You can expect some of these links to be killed by day's end, due to panicking brokerages.
Finally, if you'd like to be alerted when these opportunities hit our inbox, drop us a line, and we'll figure out a way to get them to you.]

-PocketListings.net: How To Tutorial [blog.pocketlistings.net]
-Climb Real Estate, PocketListings.net Join To Bring You More Buying And Selling Opportunity [theFrontSteps]
-It’s not listed, but it’s definitely for sale [New York Times]
-Remaking Real Estate, Again [SF Gate]

For those that prefer your updates on Facebook, please take a minute to visit and “like” theFrontSteps there. If you want to be my friend, you can do that too.

Let’s get your property listed, get it some exposure, and get you top dollar to travel the world! See what some happy clients had to say.

There is a little something I used to do back in 2003 thru 2008 (mostly on what was then sfnewsletter), then the market tanked, and so too did The Maximum Overbid Of the Week. Alas! It has returned. At the request of some long time readers, I present 430 Noriega:

A wee little four bedroom home in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Heights that hit the market asking $1,300,000, and promptly sold for $2,025,000, a mere nine days later, and $725,000 extra. Buyer and seller represented by the same agent on this one. Not bad. Not bad at all.

For the record, Curbed beat me to the punch on this scoop, so check out what they had to say too.

[Update: Steven L writes in the comments, "Since you note that Curbed beat you to the punch, couldn’t you also have noted what one of the commenters over there said? “This is a little misleading at best. There were 2 adjacent lots valued at 300K each that were attached to the sale. The total asking price was really $1.9M and a sale price of $125K over that isn’t that big of a stretch.”]

Are you a would be seller? Let’s talk about putting your property on the market, and helping you go out on top.

-Golden Gate Heights Abode Gets $725k Above Asking [Curbed SF]
-The Maximum Overbid Of the Week [theFrontSteps]

Ahhh….neighbors. You love ‘em. You hate ‘em. You can’t live in San Francisco without ‘em, and you certainly can’t easily remodel a home to today’s standards without opposition from them. Check out what just hit our inbox:

If, for some reason, you can’t see the letter, which we uploaded as an image, we’ll go ahead and tell ya what it says:

Dear Mr. [deleted]:
We are neighbors on Telegraph Hill who will oppose any changes to the building envelope at [deleted] owned by [deleted] in this historic district of Telegraph Hill. While the Hill has suffered through renovations in the past, projects such as yours have occurred with extreme environmental changes. Water drainage issues on Telegraph Hill regarding a nearby project created unfavorable slope instability–buildings have been lost and a large boulder ended up on Sansome Street. Additionally, neighbors on [deleted] and surrounds are tired of construction noise and delays in completion caused by projects such as yours. A recent project took 10 years and is still incomplete.

Telegraph Hill is a historic district whose character depends upon building ownership which understands the value of building enhancement not as building expansion, but building enhancement as careful care in keeping up properties in their historic dimension. We find your application to be sadly ignorant of the need to abide by the common elements vital to the neighborhood and its character.

Your proposal to enhance the property needs to be cognizant of the historic preservation without additional elevation or facade changes in all directions. Projects like yours have been attempted in the past and have turned out badly.

While we many of us may be away during your pre-application meeting time, please understand that our opposition is unconditional.

Sincerely,
Your neighbors and friends on Telegraph Hill
[Thirteen names deleted]

Just another bump in the road for a developer out there trying to bring a home that has sat vacant since WWII (yes, that long) into our housing stock…before it falls off the hill or gets consumed by the pests and rodents feasting on its rotting self. But Hey! It’s “historic”.

[Update: We're told none of the authors of this letter took the time to actually visit the property at the open house outreach, and none have contacted the developer, or the architect (aside from this letter) to begin a dialogue of constructive or courteous negotiations.]

You gotta love San Francisco and all the righteousness it preserves…

-Telegraph Hill Landslide forces 120 from homes… [SFGate]
-San Francisco Neighborhoods prone to liquefaction…[theFrontSteps]

Pocket listings, “not on MLS” listings, “off market” property for sale, you’ve heard it all. They exist…in droves. Every single (yes, every single) brokerage has them, every single real estate agent would love to know about them, and the public is becoming more aware of them. They’ve been a part of our industry for decades, but sharing them on one public platform has not (currently it’s all internal emails, or “private” networks). Fortunately for all of us, PocketListings.net launched a couple years ago and is becoming THE place to share these “private” listings. But as is the case with every new technology that comes out, most real estate agents and brokerages are slow to adapt. Painfully slow.

In an effort to expedite the sharing, and make things more simple, Climb Real Estate and PocketListings.net have teamed up in the form of an old school newsletter. Why Climb Real Estate? Because they “get it”.

All of these posts are already online at PocketListings.net, tweeted @PocketListings, and some are shared on Facebook, but it appears the real estate industry still prefers email, so we’ve taken a few steps back, and have started a newsletter.

If you’re interested in getting your company’s off market, pre-mls, coming soon listings, and your agents’ buyer needs featured on this newsletter (with your branding included), email contact@pocketlistings.net, and we’ll set it up. If you simply want to be on this newsletter distribution, just send an “add me to the list” email to posts@pocketlistings.net (buyers, sellers, public, anybody is welcomed). This was our first send, and it’s only going to get better.

We applaud Climb Real Estate to be the first to journey down this road. We hope that Pacific Union, Vanguard, Paragon, Zephyr, Hill & Co, TRI / Coldwell Banker, McGuire, Barbegellata, Herth (all in San Francisco) are next to join, because we have recently received emails from every single one of those companies marketing this very thing. It’s high time you all put those opportunities in one place, as it will benefit everyone.

-PocketListings.net