Crash: 676 Glen Oaks Road

UPDATE: 9-4-07   ZipRealty now lists the price of this house at $349,000.  That’s a 12.5% reduction.   Only about $150,000 more to go until this is priced accurately.

ORIGINALLY POSTED: 8-1-07

Zip Realty notified me of 676 Glen Oaks Road for sale this morning. Price tag: $399,000.

Redfin lists the house for $435,000. 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath on 1,056 square feet. That comes out to an absurd $412/square foot in an old, compacted neighborhood in Thousand Oaks. ($377/square foot based on the above $399,000 tag.)

Now here’s the good news for those of us who are waiting for housing prices to come back to reality. Redfin says this house was purchased for $471,000 on 2/18/2005. This house has apparently just been put on the market, and they are starting off by dropping the price either $36,000 or $72,000 from the purchase price 2-1/2 years ago.

Redfin also says: “This home has been remodeled over the last few years. Newer kitchen with newer appliances; newer bathrooms; newer ceramic tile in entry, dining area & kitchen. Pergo flooring in living room and hall; newer carpet in bedrooms. Quiet location.”

I have no idea if “last few years” is an exaggeration, or the current sellers actually invested money into this unit and are still going to lose at least $36,000 on the sale price after 2 years.

Crash!

 

Tracking A Sale

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.

 

$600k Fixer

UPDATE: 8-27-07

Price has been reduced to $569,000.  I was right about the $599 being too high.  I’m sure this one has a ways to go.

ORIGINALLY POSTED: 8-10-07

66 W Gainsborough Road

List Price: $599,000

The ZipRealty comment says ” Great buy on major fixer. Needs plenty of tlc.” I don’t know about you, but spending $600,000 on a tract home FIXER seems nuts. Neither Zillow nor Redfin have any past sales history on this house, which generally seems to mean that the current owners have owned a home for 10 years or more, but seeing as this is a trustee sale, that may not apply. Either way, if you bought this fixer with 20% down and 7% interest, you are looking at a $3,193 monthly payment. I wonder where you’re going to get the cash flow to fix this thing. It is 6 bed, 3 bath and 2,383 square feet. That actually comes out to about $250 per square foot, which isn’t half bad. Once again, I’m sure this won’t sell for anything near the $599k asking price.

 

Oh, this has to smart.

UPDATE: 8/17/07  – I just noticed the price has dropped to $549,000 after fewer than 2 weeks at $575,000.  I bet they’ll take just about any offer at this point.

Originally posted: 8/7/07

920 Bower Way. Seems like so many of the houses for sale in Thousand Oaks right now are in the tiny old neighborhood between the 23, Hillcrest Drive and Hodencamp.

920 Bower Way is listed for $575,000. It was purchased for $640,000 on 1/9/2007. That means the asking price is $65,000 less than they paid for it 7 months ago. They lost $9,285 per month. Plus they probably paid over $3,000/month in mortgage payments. “Close to Civic Arts Plaza, shopping, 23 and the 101 Freeways” That means they are about 100 feet away from the 23 freeway. Of course, even at $575,000 this house seems overpriced to me. I don’t think any house in this neighborhood is worth more than $400,000. I’d have to see inside this one, but I’d guess something around $350,000 might be reasonable. Folks, let’s see if we can keep our heads on when we buy houses after this housing bubble returns to normalcy.

Let’s play the appreciation game. This house also shows a sale price of $175,000 at the end of 1995. That seems like a reasonable price. If this house appreciated 3% per year since then, it would have been worth about $242,000 at the end of 2006 – a few days after the current owners paid $640,000.

 

Aren’t Comps Relevant?

 Last week I profiled 676 Glen Oaks. Today their neighbor at 654 Glen Oaks put a house up for sale. 676 Glen Oaks is listed at $399,000. 654 Glen Oaks is listed at $465,000. Both houses are 1,056 square feet. The more expensive home is a 3+1, while the less expensive is a 3+2. 654 has a beautiful chain link fence in the front yard, so maybe that’s what you get for the extra money.

But 654 Glen Oaks is “one of the best priced single family houses in the conejo”. Or…you can go down the street and save about $70k.

Why don’t they close the cabinet door before taking the picture?

What’s up with this floor?

But if you’re looking to spend $440/square foot, this home is for you!

This house was last purchased on 4/3/2007 for $430,462, so I guess they are just looking to flip this baby for a $35k profit in just over 4 months during a crashing market.  You go girl!

 

Auction: 2235 Willowpark Court, Thousand Oaks

I was curious to see if any houses in the Thousand Oaks area are going up for auction, and I found 2235 Willowpark Court on ushomeauction.com.  The site doesn’t have much information, but apparently this house will be auctioned on August 26th.  Next I went to Zillow to get some information.   Here’s where I’d love to get some input from industry professionals/experts.  This house has a sales history of:

04/12/2007:	$571,000
02/24/2005:	$593,000
02/15/2002:	$340,000
05/02/1996:	$208,500

Does  mean that this house was foreclosed on by the lender on 4/12/07?  Or did a homeowner buy it on 4/12/07 and it is already being put up for auction?  What other possibilities are there here?  I’m sure that the purchaser on 2/24/05 was happy that they lost $22,000 on this house in just over 2 years’ of ownership.

 

Wipeout

This property at 858 DORCHESTER ST in Thousand Oaks just listed a couple of days ago. Here is the Redfin listing. The house is listed for $489,000 on Zip Realty. There are no photos online yet, but it’s a 3 bed, 1.5 bath, 1,016 square footer. The Zillow sales history says this was purchased on 4/4/2006 for $550,000. That’s a $61,000 loss in a little over a year. And I bet it sells for less than $489,000.

If anybody knows Zillow well, maybe you can help me with something. Prior to the 4/4/2006 sale there is a 2/1/2002 sale listed for just $74,000. What’s that all about? Why so low? Is it an error? Was the house damaged? Every once in awhile I run across listings like this. The only other sale history on this is 1/13/2000 for $220,000.

Judging by the size of the house and the neighborhood, that $220,000 figure sounds about right. If we calculated a 3% appreciation per year since 2000, that puts the current value of the house around $270,000. That’s a $1,500/month mortgage (assuming 6.5% interest and 10% down). I think that sounds about right.

 

Branch Ave, Simi Valley

Yesterday I went to an open house in Simi Valley. We looked at 1477 Branch Ave. We were given a flyer that had a price of $650,000, but that was crossed out with $639,000 handwritten underneath. Zip Realty says this house was first listed on 3/7/07. I was thinking that the $11k price drop was awfully generous, until I saw on Zip Realty that this was the 3rd price drop on this house. The original ask was $669,999. That $309/square foot price doesn’t seem all that bad, but to me this house really doesn’t seem worth $639,000. But then, I don’t think any average tract home is really worth much more than $500,000. Sales history on this one says it was sold for $208,000 in 1993 and $208,000 again in 1999. 6% appreciation per year says this house is worth about $330,000. But I think the pool is fairly new, so that should bump up the value a bit. Nothing else in the house seemed particularly new or exciting.

The floorplan of this house was a little bit odd, but it has a really nice pool in the backyard. We went upstairs and weren’t impressed. It felt like the floors were squeaky and the elevation changed as we went from room to room.

When this house sells, I will update the price here to see where it falls.

 

Schizophrenia

I got an automated e-mail today from ZipRealty notifying me of a new listing at 566 Houston Drive in Thousand Oaks.

This house is being listed for $490,000. But wait. Yesterday I noticed it listed on Redfin for $475,000. Which is it? Well, look at the picture on Redfin. That’s not a very good-looking house. The backyard patio area is so closed in, it looks like a dungeon. Then look at the sales history. In 2002 the house was purchased for $296,500. Assuming 6% annual appreciation, this house should probably be listed at just under $400,000. But considering this house is just 3 bed, 1.5 bath and 1,200 square feet, I’m thinking $400,000 is still quite a bit for a house in one of the less desirable areas of Thousand Oaks.

Wikipedia says the median household income in Thousand Oaks is about $97,000. That seems reasonable. Typically it is advised that a household pay no more than 30% of its annual income on housing. After taxes, that means a $97k family would have about $1,800/month to spend on housing.

At $400,000, 10% down and 6.25% interest, the monthly mortgage on this house would be $2,216.00 – a little above the $1,800 threshold. A house would have to sell for $325,000 with 10% down at 6.25% interest to have a monthly mortgage of $1,800. In order to afford a $2,216/month mortgage, a family would need to earn about $118,000/year.

I wonder if an average Thousand Oaks home will ever get down to $325,000.

I guess I should share yesterday’s ZipRealty notification as well. 202 Tennyson Street for $449,000. Price seems OK until you see the note that says ” Total,total fixer!!! Home has settlement problems. Sold as is.” How much does it cost to lift a house and replace or reinforce the foudation?

 

Oak Park Action

Here is a list of all houses sold in Oak Park during the past 3 months. I excluded condos, and I defined Oak Park as north of the Los Angeles County line and east of Lindero Canyon Road. If the house had previous sales info since the year 2000, then I included that data. There was only one house that had previous sales data after the 2003/2004 housing boom, and that was 495 Burano Court which previously sold for $979k in 2005 and then sold for $1,080k 2 months ago. It is also the house on this list with the smallest percentage gain in value and the smallest absolute gain. So far it doesn’t look like there is a whole lot of evidence to suggest much of a crash or downturn in Oak Park. Perhaps a more upscale neighborhood such as this is less susceptible to foreclosures or other forced sales, so it may take longer for the ripple effect of the surrounding housing market to hit Oak Park.

The interesting thing on this list is the house at 6077 Larkellen. Last month it sold for just $208k, after selling for $133k two years ago. It’s a 1900+ square foot house. Either this house was sold within a family, or it must be the victim of a fire or other damage.

Address	SqFt	Date	Price	$/Ft	Prev	Price
6547 Pinion St	1,295	5/17/2007	$690,000	$533	9/20/2002	$470,000
475 Park Springs Ct	1,628	5/30/2007	$790,000	$485
5151 Pesto Way	1,859	5/31/2007	$870,000	$468	11/3/2000	$432,000
495 Burano Ct	2,358	5/21/2007	$1,080,000	$458	3/31/2005	$979,000
11 Kanan Rd	1,350	5/14/2007	$616,000	$456	12/20/2001	$314,545
6525 Joshua St	1,594	5/31/2007	$690,000	$433
5024 Blackpool Ave	1,950	5/17/2007	$808,000	$414	3/21/2002	$530,000
1153 Heatherview Dr	1,623	6/1/2007	$667,000	$411
421 Sunny Brook Ct	1,936	6/19/2007	$785,000	$405
1109 Heatherview Dr	1,623	5/11/2007	$638,500	$393
6830 Oak Springs Dr	2,213	4/18/2007	$840,000	$380
6384 Tamarind St	1,996	6/14/2007	$755,000	$378
4976 Barbados Ct	2,216	6/6/2007	$817,000	$369	10/31/2002	$528,000
493 Savona Way	2,387	6/6/2007	$799,000	$335
5060 Evanwood Ave	2,466	6/4/2007	$820,000	$333	5/12/2002	$485,000
6077 Larkellen Ct	1,909	6/1/2007	$208,500	$109	11/29/2005	$133,500