Update August 27, 2007: Property listed as SOLD.  No price info yet.

Update August 7, 2007: Price reduced to $569,000

Originally posted: July 6, 2007

Let’s try tracking a house for sale and see what happens. I’ll try and update this every 2 weeks or so.

A house just went on the market yesterday at 638 Shenandoah Drive in Thousand Oaks. It’s a 3 bed, 2 bath, 1040 square foot house built in 1970 listing for $589,000. That works out to $566/square foot. Neither Zillow nor Redfin have previous sale history on this house, so I’m guessing the owner has held it for more than just a few years. The listing claims: “Whet your appetite with this adorable starter home…” Being a “starter home”, you would think it should sell fast, so we’ll see if it does, and if they have to drop the price. With $0 down and 6% interest, this “starter home” will cost $3500/month mortgage. If a “starter” was able to come up with the 20% down on this house ($118,000), his mortgage payment would be “only” $2800/month.

Or, you can rent this house for $2100/month and put $1400/month into a 4% interest account and have $36,000 in the bank after 2 years that you can use on a down payment when housing prices might be a bit lower. Or if you invested that $118k you would have used on a down payment plus the $700/month you are saving it would be worth $144,000 in 2 years.

Check back in 2 weeks and we’ll see if this house has had any action.