Sunday, April 06, 2008

Sunday Open Houses in the Neighborhood

As we often do on Sunday afternoons, Dick and I went out today to check out some of the Open Houses in our neighborhood.

It's interesting: it's Spring, and it's definitely "Open House Season" but there seem to be more open houses on the market now then in recent memory.

Before we go out, we usually check the Open Houses in San Francisco Site to get an idea of what's open, and we'll map out our walking plan.

What's also interesting is seeing the number of houses listed at, or above $1.5 million. Clearly, we all know that there's a housing crisis happening in our country, but you would never know by what these people are asking for these properties. San Francisco Real Estate seems to still be as crazy as ever. Dick and I go out often, and while we do notice that some properties are on the market for weeks, and sometimes months (as compared to days and a couple of weeks) the prices for these properties still seem ridiculously high.

Whenever Dick and I check out a new property, we like to play "The Guessing Game" with each other. One of us will pick up the property brochure without looking at the details. After we walk through the property and leave, we will each take our best guess at what the listing price is. We've been doing it for years, and we've gotten pretty good at it. Usually, we're able to nail the price within $50,000 or so. Lately, though, we both have been taking the "housing crisis" and possible recession into consideration, and we both have been guessing figures much lower than what the actual listing price is. Go figure.

Here are a few houses that we saw today.

580 Sanchez
really pretty Victorian, nice location, updated maybe 10 years ago

offered at: $2,200,000.00

545 Sanchez Street
1880 Stick Victorian, seems to have a lot of original detail, and original floorplan (small rooms), double lot

offered at: $1,795.000.00

221 Danvers Street
I actually couldn't find a listing on the web for this location for it's current listing, but I did find one from when it was on the market more than a year ago. According to, this property did sell in February of last year for just over $1.5 million. Dick and I saw the property when it was lasted last time, and the buyers/now sellers didn't do much to it since then. It's a really odd space - would need a lot of work, and probably a lot of permitting, but it is on a double lot.

offered at: $1,675.000.00

360 Eureka Street
This was a really cute and charming house - a cross between a Victorian and Cape Cod style (whatever that means). Small-ish (for the price, at least) but on a large lot. This was probably our favorite property that we saw today, and the only one in which the thought the price was near a reasonable range (which is still really high).

offered at: $1,495.000.00

656 Douglass
New construction on an old Victorian. Ridiculously large (who needs 6 bedrooms, and 5.5 baths?).

offered at $2,395,000.00

That's just a small sampling of what we saw today.
I'll say it again: do these people know what's going on in the housing market and the economy these days? Who is spending this kind of money on houses right now?

Whenever Dick and I go out to look at open homes, we always come home to our cute little His 'n Her condos, and feel so lucky that we have a home that we both love so much.

No comments: