KnifeCatching 1304 Morton St. Again and Again and Again....

Read This:The following review is just my opinion and only my opinion I am not a professional house appraiser or inspector and I am not a structural engineer. The opinions expressed in this review are based on my own inspection of the property, the publicly available facts from aggregator sites such as Redfin and Zillow and the online permit database for the city of Alameda. I am not responsible for incorrect or missing data that appears in these sources. In fact, its probably best that you just ignore everything you read here as the lunatic ravings of an unbalanced mind.

It's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!!!!! again, and again, and again and again....

KnifeCatching 1304 Morton St. Revisited.

My initial review of 1304 Morton St. can be found here.
Then my re-review can be seen here.

Up for review today is 1304 Morton St. which has the official specs of being a 4-0 of 2064sq ft on a nice sized 5513 sq ft lot built in 1895 on sale for.....wait for it.......$979k!!!!!

No I'm not actually going to review this house again....according to the records nothing has changed on the place. They increased the price by almost $100k and now its pending after only being on the market for 7 days!!!

Yay Crazy Alameda Bubble!
One important point from the earlier review.
Still Has Unpermitted Work Issues:
So yes, it appears that someone narc'd on the homeowner for the unpermitted work in what was the basement... (wasn't me honest). Luckily the HO was already talking to the city about getting the work permitted so they dodged the whole code enforcement super expensive bullet but the work still has to be 'normalized'.

A quick check of the building dept records is encouraging. The owner got planning approval to officially convert the house back to a single family and got the planning okay for the work already done in the basement area.

The records show that the HO has entered into the amnesty program and paid the fees to start that. What that gets you is an inspection by a building inspector who will tell you what needs to be done to legalize the space.

As far as I can tell this has not officially happened yet. The permit is not finaled. I hope whomever the soon to be new owner is gets this taken care of as part of escrow or else they are buying a lot of liability for $979k.

Conclusion
If the permit issues are taken care of and the house actually sells for anywhere near asking...in this market I'd have to say this represents a 'deal'
Ya, I know, you never thought you'd hear that coming from me.
 

KnifeCatching 1304 Morton St.......AGAIN!!!!

Read This:The following review is just my opinion and only my opinion I am not a professional house appraiser or inspector and I am not a structural engineer. The opinions expressed in this review are based on my own inspection of the property, the publicly available facts from aggregator sites such as Redfin and Zillow and the online permit database for the city of Alameda. I am not responsible for incorrect or missing data that appears in these sources. In fact, its probably best that you just ignore everything you read here as the lunatic ravings of an unbalanced mind.

It's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!!!!! again, and again, and again and again....

KnifeCatching 1304 Morton St. Revisited.

My initial review of 1304 Morton St. can be found here.

Up for review today is 1304 Morton St. which has the official specs of being a 4-0 of 2064sq ft on a nice sized 5513 sq ft lot built in 1895 on sale for.....wait for it.......$899k!!!!!

Holy Mackerel they lowered the price from $1.3M down to $899k!!!

Could it be that a homeowner has actually come down to reality???  Please read my previous review for an in-depth look at the house.

Some Odd Things About The House:

Real Estate Agent Musical Chairs?
Does anybody else think it's super odd that a big ticket fancy house like this has gone through, I think three different realty companies? Intero, Sothebys and now apparently they are using Better Homes and Gardens Realty? What would have to happen to have a place like Sotheby's give up on the commission on a $1.3M house?

Dishonest Description:
The county still has the house as a 4-0 of 2064 sq ft... yet the ad copy from the Realtor clearly states that the house is a 4-2.5 of 3100sq ft... They appear to be counting the illegal work done in the basement and apparently there is now a bedroom down there?

Here's the add copy from the Zip Realty Site.
Rare Painted Lady Victorian - Like a page out of BETTER HOMES & GARDENS MAGAZINE! Was on the market at $1.3M+ now priced 4 quick sale! TURN-KEY condition! Full basemnt & Garage converted to game room/wine cellar & can easily be converted back. Gourmet Remod kitchen with sub zero fridge & viking stove. Stumptous "Eastlake" decor down to the door knobs. Walk 2 shops, park & Franklin School.

Uh, no mention of all that fab stuff being 'unwarrented'???

Still Has Unpermitted Work Issues:
So yes, it appears that someone narc'd on the homeowner for the unpermitted work in what was the basement... (wasn't me honest). Luckily the HO was already talking to the city about getting the work permitted so they dodged the whole code enforcement super expensive bullet but the work still has to be 'normalized'.

A quick check of the building dept records is encouraging. The owner got planning approval to officially convert the house back to a single family and got the planning okay for the work already done in the basement area.

The records show that the HO has entered into the amnesty program and paid the fees to start that. What that gets you is an inspection by a building inspector who will tell you what needs to be done to legalize the space.

The inspector came out and this is what he said.
City of Alameda Inter-office Memorandum Date: April 28, 2011 To: Permit Expeditor From: Building Inspection Subject: Inspection at 1304 Morton St. Permit #B11-0283 A Joint Inspection for the Amnesty Program Inspection at the above address revealed that the basement area was converted to a home theater and a recording studio. Requirements: 1. Have a licensed electrical contractor verify circuit loads for the lighting and recording components of all circuits in the basement area to determine adequate circuit breaker and wiring sizes. Many of the outlet boxes are recessed too deep from the combustible wall finishes. 2. A permit is required for the above work. 3. Drawings are also required for electrical and outlet locations. Inspection time: 1 hour.

That's not too bad actually....well....maybe...

Point 1. could be either no problem our a HUGE PITA...If it's determined that the in-wall wiring is not of the correct gauge then, well, you're going to have to tear it all out and replace it....or more likely just jigger the loads to match the wiring gauge.
The boxes being too deep isn't that big of a deal as it can usually be fixed with a 'mud ring'.

Now remember the HO hasn't done any of the above yet (as of this writing according to the city's online data base). Which means the new owner is going to have to go through and do all that AND pay the permit fees...which since we've recently paid fee's on a similar project I can guestimate that they will be around $8k.

Maybe the HO is not planning on doing any of this work and that's why they are selling it so cheap?

Conclusion:
Yes folks, it had to happen sometime....I actually think that this place is reasonably priced and worth the money.

You probably could not recreate this work for anywhere near the asking price.
If you go through and get the basement legalized you'll have a legal 3100sq ft 4-2.5 which is a good sized house in a great neighborhood for $900kish.

I prognosticate that they will receive multiple offers and that the house will not stay on the market very long. As long as there are enough people who are okay with the house's 'odd' layout.

Next Up:
There are several more houses for sale in the Gold Cost that I'll be reporting on soon....

KnifeCatching 1304 Morton St.

Read This:The following review is just my opinion and only my opinion I am not a professional house appraiser or inspector and I am not a structural engineer. The opinions expressed in this review are based on my own inspection of the property, the publicly available facts from aggregator sites such as Redfin and Zillow and the online permit database for the city of Alameda. I am not responsible for incorrect or missing data that appears in these sources. In fact, its probably best that you just ignore everything you read here as the lunatic ravings of an unbalanced mind.
It's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!!!!!

There is an updated post on this property please read it here.

Knifecatching 1304 Morton St.
Up for review today is 1304 Morton St. which has the official specs of being a 4-0 of 2064sq ft on a nice sized 5513 sq ft lot built in 1895 on sale for.....wait for it.......


$1.329 MILLION DOLLARS!!!!!! Hurray!!!!! I believe that this is the most expensive active listing in Alameda.

Lots of super fabulous pictures on the Sothebys web site for the listing.

This is the house that the 'original knifecatcher' L.Opine made a LOT of hay over on her realestate blog. She has beaten me to the punch and already done a nice blog post about this house.
Lets see if I can add to the discussion.

First off, I want to say, that yes, this house is fricken gorgeous! Super-duper, should be in magazines gorgeous. The main floor is crazy fancy with like a ballroom. EVERYBODY in Alameda loves this house. The owners are/were smart enough to have it be on the historical homes tour, and I think on the recent Christmas home tour. I'm actually super surprised that Sothebys actually had an open house this past Sunday. I couldn't make it over there unfortunately but I bet is was a mad house...the former owners were smart enough to not ever have an open house. With a house this fancy I can understand that....
The house also has nice Grounds...not super private but nice.

Google street view of the house.
Ain't it pretty?

Okay if you haven't already ogled the pics on the listing website you should do so. The sales history of the place is interesting. But to get the full picture you have to actually look at the sales history from both the Zillow listing and the Redfin listing.

Originally offered for sale at $1.25M on 12-12-08 the house kept getting relisted and the price dropped until it sold for $938,000 on 12-02-09 and now its on sale again for $1.329M listed on 12-1-10. Wow, after owning if for a year they are relisting it for $391k more than they bought it for....wow....I didn't realize that the housing market was booming again.....

Looking at the house with a critical eye.

We toured this house a while back when we thought that the owner might come to their senses and sell the place for a sane number. The house is pretty but if you really look at it critically, I don't have any idea who the target market for this place is. As it is configured, I don't see how the house can work for a modern, Gold Coast style family.

First, lets talk about the top floor, there are 3 bedrooms up there and 2 full baths. The 'master' bedroom is not exactly what you would call large...in fact, I doubt that it would fit a Cal King bed in there and it only has one small closet. The other two bedrooms up there were smallish also. We thought that for our little family that we'd have to convert one of the bedrooms into a walk in closet for our clothes...so that leaves you with enough space for one kid....

The kitchen-
Super fabulously pretty for sure, but practical? I spent some time in the kitchen and with all the fridge drawers and dishwasher drawers there appeared to me to be a serious lack of cabinet space....also, the counter space...hardly any...don't know who's going to cook in there but its not going to be easy.

The home office-
Didn't have one, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out where to put one. People who can afford a house like this are probably going to have the kind of jobs that are going to require a home office.... The only thing that I could think of, was to replace the wall removed to create the humongous grand entertaining room and give yourself a home office in the front part of that room.

Permit Check-
From reading the online permit data base this is what I can tell....the half bath is illegal and all the construction on the bottom floor appears to be done without permits!!!!!!

When we toured the house I can't remember exactly what the state of the bottom floor was...I think it was unfinished space with some drywall up...but my memory is like a steel sieve lately...

Why, oh why would the new owners not of pulled permits for the remodeling on the bottom floor? According to the official stats the bottom floor is probably not considered legal living space by the city....so that super fancy movie theater-mixing studio-wine tasting room appears to all be illegal....

I don't get it, you got the money to buy the place and pay people to do a super fancy makeover of the bottom floor why not pull a permit...it's only a couple thousand at most....If the new owners had done it legally they would of added ~1000 sq ft to the place and then maybe the price wouldn't seem sooo crazy?

Conclusion:
Super-duper pretty but not practical and all the unpermitted work in the basement is a huge potential can of worms....if you don't think that of the zillion folks who toured that place on Sunday that there was not at least a handful of die hard preservationists snooping around for work they disapprove of, you are kidding yourself....in fact, I'm kinda surprised that there is not already a complaint against the house...well, its only Tuesday....

Someone please tell me who the target market is for a house that doesn't have enough space for a modern family, and, is on a busy, busy street which you can definitely hear from inside and next door to a bar. Like, who's the not enough space for a master suite but has a wine tasting room and movie theater-mixing-editing room, but not really a functional kitchen demographic?

Maybe a very young, single Google millionaire with rock star aspirations? There's probably tons of those out there...

And that's the way I see it.