So, What Ya Gonna Sell It For?!?!?!?!?!?

Funny Story.....we don't know yet...

In an effort to get the word out about our selling of the Chez and to help us figure out a price our Realtor put together a group of Realtors to come look at the house and give us their opinions on what they thought the house could sell for now and what it could sell for when it was finished. Besides what my Realtor comes up with we'll probably average the rest of the numbers to help arrive at a sensible selling price. When I say sensible I mean a price that is as high as it can possibly be but still have us in contract within a month of listing the house.

I put together this list of 'positives' for the Realtors to think about.

1. It’s a legal triplex of ~2858 sq ft with no parking requirements.
2. New foundation-slab where we dug down to give 9’ ceilings on the bottom floor.
3. An extensive under slab drainage system means bottom floor stays bone dry.
4. Earthquake retro-fitting done.
5. Electrical service upgraded to 200amps with 100amp sub-panels on each floor.
6. Natural gas service was upgraded and all the gas lines where re-piped.
7. Warm water radiant heating installed on first two floors. System is set up to also heat 3rd floor. Luxurious, energy efficient heating!
8. Stamped concrete outdoor sunken living room with natural gas plumbed fire pit.
9. New fancy ‘carriage door’ automatic garage door.
10. Custom antique brick driveway and path.
11. All work done with permits.
12. In Franklin School District.
13. 4 Houses down from Little John park.
14. Has tankless water heater installed-Endless eco-friendly hot water.

I was out getting groceries (doing the standard Alameda TJ's and Safeway double play) put arrived at the house just as the tour was ending.

Who should I see walking out of my house but several Realtors who I have reviewed and who have no love for the MadScientist....AWKWARD!!! Even the owner of the brokerage was here....It should be fun to hear their responses...

One Realtor even said that if she were younger she would buy it!!

There are apparently already several all-cash buyer types who are interested in touring the Chez.

I'm wondering if I'm going to see a correlation between Realtors who have all cash buyer clients and their estimate of the properties sensible selling price....

Okay, But Really, What Ya Gonna Sell It For!?!?!?!
Just as an exercise in ridiculousness I'll do the math that most folks seem to do to arrive at a selling price for their homes...
Purchase Price of House- $570,000 (its not like its a secret).
Cost of improvements - $200,000 (would of been a lot more but we did a lot of the work)
So Sensible Selling Price=$770,000 right??? Right???

Ya Right, Don't I wish.

Our Loan Is Approved!!!!

One giant hurdle out of the way!!!

Our mortgage broker just sent us an email saying he got our loan approved!!

We have been seriously sweating bullets about this...cause we needed to be approved for the new loan without the very common provision of having to sell our current house first.
Well, the loan is approved pending a favorable appraisal....

Guess they think we can handle both mortgages indefinitely?

Time for many celebratory margaritas!!!

We'll start stressing out about the appraisal tomorrow...but still..

We got our loan approved!! YAY!!!!!!!!!!

Holy Moly We're In Escrow!!!!!

Yep that's right folks you read that right......We're in escrow on a new to us house!!!!!!

Holy Moly, I don't know whether to jump for joy or puke.....

The Story:

Turns out the original 'winner' tried to squeeze the bank to the tune of $100k and the bank told them to take a flying leap, I guess...

We were told by the listing Realtor to resubmit our bids....I think it was us and 2 or maybe 3 other people...one of who reads this blog!?!??!?! Hi R!

We fricken found out we were the winner when we where down south in Hell A visiting relatives...we had to do all the signing of contracts by an ancient fax machine and we had to schedule all our inspections long distance.

Today I dropped off our good faith deposit and found out that we've been in escrow since Thursday the 30th! I freaked initially cause I knew that they are only giving us a 7 calender day window to lift our inspection contingency....and all of our inspections are scheduled for Weds the 5th, a day before the deadline!!!

I've been told that the bank that owns the property has no problem extending the inspection period but it hasn't been made official yet...I'll sleep better when it does....not like I'm sleeping a ton now anyways...

Another thing that was inconvenient was that they only gave us a 10 day window for our loan contingency....seems a bit short to me, no?

Come hell or high water nothing that we do will cause this place to fall out of escrow! The only thing that has us losing sleep is the loan appraisal....the house is unique and has issues and I'm not sure how well the appraiser will take to it...

So, in the finest Neumansky tradition we are once again paying too much for a house that needs too much work...

Next up, lots of pics...

Next next up, selling the Chez,....how're we going to do it?

What Will Our Project Cost 2010-11 Version

Remodeling magazine is out with their new Cost Vs. Value report for 2010-11.
To see the main page of the report go here. Its fun to see what potential home improvements will cost in your area...try it. No shock that AGAIN the SF Bay area has the highest costs....
To see the SF Bay area specific numbers go here.
To see how the SF Bay area numbers have changed over the past 2 yrs go here.

As before I believe that the cost values have a much stronger grounding in reality than do the value added numbers. The cost numbers are generated by Home Tech Information Systems which makes their money providing estimating software to contractors.

The value numbers are generated by asking appraisers, insurance adjusters and real estate agents how the project would effect the value of the house... While I could be convinced that an appraiser and insurance adjuster could have a meaningful opinion on this...Realtors??? Hmmmm....

Below I have reproduced a table comparing costs and values between this year and last for projects that we are contemplating doing on our house. Of course there is not an exact match but these projects are close enough for government work.

Midrange Projects
	2009-10			2010-11
Project Name	Job Cost	Resale Value	Cost Recouped	Job Cost	Resale Value	Cost Recouped
Attic Bedroom	$65,829	$67,531	102.6%	$70,938	$74,206	104.6%
Deck Addition (wood)	$13,642	$14,196	104.1%	$15,091	$17,025	112.8%
Major Kitchen Remodel	$67,789	$67,815	100.0%	$71,015	$67,583	95.2%
Master Suite Addition	$132,443	$114,104	86.2%	$143,853	$123,003	85.5%
Roofing Replacement	$26,242	$22,664	86.4%	$28,699	$21,821	76.0%

If you click on the descriptions on the left it should bring you to a cool page with a description and cool 3-d renderings.
First you'll notice that all of our costs went up!!!! Hurray!!!!, Wait, isn't there supposed to be a recession on and rampant unemployment in the construction trades??? Guess not in the SF Bay area....

What Will It Cost
It looks like if we got all the work done at the same time it would cost .......wait for it....

$329,596!!!!!

Woo-Hoo we're rich!!!! Oh wait, no we're not...

What 'Value' Will It Return
If you can believe the numbers all the above improvements will add....
$303638

That's a difference of -$25,958....

Wouldn't it be nice if you could really, really believe the numbers above...
Ass-sue-ming the numbers are semi-believable I still say that this makes a good case for DIY'ing as much of a project as possible.

If by DIY'ing some of the work yourself you can get that total cost down to say $275k then you would of actually increased the value of your house past what it cost and you'd get a nice net return when you sell it....ya right.

Wow, actually those numbers are kinda depressing...who has that kind of money to spend now a days?

If we could get the entire house redone for that $329k we'd have a nice-legal 2000sq ft 3-3 on the top two floors and a legal 1000sq ft 2-1 rental unit on the bottom floor....wonder what the house would be worth then?

Let's see... 1831 San Jose just sold for a cool $1M and our house is bigger (legally) but on a smaller lot....so that means our house would be worth $1M right??? Right???? Ya right...that's the kind of thinking that makes houses sit on the market for 80 gazillion months with no price drops...

Anywho, use the cost vs value numbers at your own risk...but when looking at a house that's going to 'need some work' I think looking at the costs and considering them to be good base numbers is a good way to go.... So, if some Realtor tells you, you can do a master suite addition in the attic for $40k you'll know that they are FOS.

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.

Bathroom Remodel Update

We Got Inspected...Twice!!!
Well, the first inspection was what I would call a preliminary inspection. I asked an inspector over so he could okay the no pressure treated wood walls and the waterproofing system I had already purchased to use for the shower stall. He was okay with both..such nice and friendly-helpful Alameda building inspectors...(obvious sucking up).

One thing he did have a problem with, was that he thought the drain lines for the shower were not sloped sufficiently...this scared me as if they were not sloped enough I would have to re-slope them and the level of the pipes above the floor would only increase.

After the inspector left I tested the slope of the pipes. Using my laser level I shot a level horizontal line above the pipe and then measured from this line to the top of the pipe. Turns out the pipes are exactly correct with a slope of 1/4" per foot. Hurray!!! What I figured out is that the floor in the area of the shower drain line is not level! So, when looking at the drain line it appears to not be sloped correctly. I'll have to pour out a self leveling compound before I build the shower base.... Hurray more work for me caused by shoddy pros...

Here is the new model for the bathroom. After reading a good book about wiring a house I decided that I was cheaping out on wiring the bathroom. I've decided to put a wall sconce over the toilet and a combo fan-light over the shower. I also added two 20amp GFCI outlets near the vanity, each on their own circuit. That way, two teenage girls can be blow drying their hair at the same time and not blow a circuit.
This model also shows the steps needed to get into the shower and the vanity moved to the correct wall. I forgot to run the wires from the switch to the lights...

Here's how it looks transferred to the floor. We went with 12" deep steps to get into the shower as we thought any shallower would be uncomfortable to stand on. The top step will be at the same level as the shower floor so you only have to step over a 4" curb to get into the shower.
You can see that things are a bit tight. There is only 24" of clearance between the vanity and the shower step. The toilet has 40" total of clearance so while not feeling spacious it should not feel cramped. There is 38" between the steps and the door which opens outward.
You can also see that we should be able to get at least a 2' wide shower door in there.

I cut out the bottom plate in the doorway and you can just barely see the ghosting of moisture that was trapped under the membrane. I put these walls up pretty recently after the slab was poured so I'm hoping that that was why there is some moisture there. That plate was there for almost three years so I'm hoping this amount of moisture is negligible...this is sorta crucial to the whole, 'fix up the bottom floor as nice living space' thing.

The bottom of the cut out plate. No mold, and it didn't feel damp. Hopefully this is a good sign.

Here is a closeup of the side view of the plate. Looks like the water proof membrane is doing its job. I don't have a moisture meter but it sure didn't look or feel wet. Ya, I know, not exactly scientific.

One of the things that we were concerned with in one of the previous posts about the bath was, how high could we raise the vanity and not have it be 'weird'. We started off at 40" and I LOVED it. Bending over to wash my face in the sink was a soooooo much easier on my back. Unfortunately, it was too high for probably anybody else not 6' and above....We compromised and are going to set it at 38" which is shown here.
At 38" we can still get the water lines in from the back.

This is the combo fan-light unit we decided to go with. This thing should suck greatly and be super quiet. The cover can be painted to match the ceiling and hopefully it will be pretty invisible as it doesn't exactly look 'vintage'.
One thing they don't tell you about this crazy thing is, if you want to have the light, fan and separate night light on their own switches you need to run 14-4 to it.....which doesn't exist..so I had to run another 14-2 line to it.
I plan to wire the fan so that the fan runs when either the vanity lights are on or the fan light is on but not when only the night light is on. I think that I have figured that out...

We Got Our Electrical Rough Inspection

And passed with flying colors!! Hurray. My first inspection ever for electrical work and I didn't apparently F anything up! Or, at least the kindly-helpful-wise city of Alameda inspector didn't see anything glaringly bad...

Exciting shot of the switch box ready for inspection.

Vanity light box..

And fan.

The inspector was concerned here about the wiring hanging out but I thought you HAD to do that so they could take a look at your connections. That metal plate screws to the top of the fan and covers the wires after you cram them back inside.

That's it for now, have to hurry and get the water supply piping in and roughed...

KnifeCatching 1339 St. Charles 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.

KnifeCatching 1339 St. Charles St.
Up for review today is 1339 St. Charles St. which has the official specs of being a 3-3 of 2571 sq ft on a 5600sq ft lot built in 1907 on sale for $907k. What they don't tell you is that one of those bedrooms and one of the baths is in the second house behind the main house. The house was built by Marcuse and Remmel (just like mine) so we were interested in seeing what it looked like on the inside. The house does have a good location on St. Charles st and is in the Franklin School district. Lots of pics and prose about the place on the Realtor.Com site.

We actually viewed the place a while ago but I am now just getting around to posting the review. We where initially excited about the place because we thought the main house was a 3-3 of 2571 sq ft, its in a great neighborhood and the lot was a decent size.

Sorry for the quality and lack of pictures I guess I'm just rusty....

A google street view of the front of the house. Its always fun to compare the street view and satellite views to what you see after its all fixed up for sale....
The house presents well from the street and has a nice front yard for Halloween. If anyone isn't 100% sure that I'm not a total crackpot don't you think that having one of my official 'good house criteria' being how good the front yard is for Halloween decorations puts me into the crackpot category?

From talking to the listing Realtor, it appears that they have spent quite a bit of money making the house ready for showing. I believe that the entire outside, inside was painted and it looks to me like they put new sod everywhere.

Side yard is nice.

Here is the 'back house' which is a 1-1. It was actually kinda nice inside with more of a 50's rustic feel. As far as I can tell this is a legal 2nd unit.
We were thinking , 'Hey rental income to help pay the mortgage.' If the main house is awesome this might be doable. Besides the house being there the backyard still seemed pretty usable for outdoor entertaining.

The bottom floor of the house is uh, well, fugly. Actually it reminds me a lot of the bottom floor of our place when we first bought it....that's not necessarily a good thing..
One side of the bottom was this big long wood shop looking room. The ceilings in this area might be legal height I can't remember.

The other side of the downstairs is a little more rough. Its cut up into ~3 smaller rooms. It looks like that at one time it was probably a separate unit.

This is the middle room...with those big lights and the window covered with paper I immediately thought of one thing....Grow Room.....

The walls here appear to be original lathe-plaster but in rough shape...and dirty.

Shot of where someone had torn into the ceiling to access the plumbing...
If this is the state of all the plumbing in the house then its going to need a new water and gas re-pipe.
Sorry guys I don't remember if I checked the panel to see if the place is still on fuses or what...see I am rusty...

The back part of the bottom floor. We were told that at one time there was a full kitchen and bathroom down here but I couldn't really tell where they would of been.

More exciting bottom floor pics.

This right here was the coolest thing about this floor of the house. An original clinker brick fireplace which to me really points to the fact that this bottom level was originally intended to be legal living space. I believe that now though the city does not view it as such.....too bad, woulda added 1000 sq ft to the place.

Okay I apologize for the lameness of this next part.
I was running after the baby and forgot to take pictures of the main floor.
I do remember that it had nice wood floors, 2 nice looking fireplaces formal parlour and dinning room and a kitchen that looks like it was redone in the 80's with fake wood Formica counter tops....there was a weird half bath outside the house where you had to go outside from the kitchen to use it. It would be great for garden parties but not so great in the winter time. The kitchen was big enough to be an eat-in though.

Going up the stairs to the top level of the house. you have a nice stairway and nice landings on both ends.

On the landing is the only full bathroom in the house. Its a split bath so one side has the vanity and claw foot tub and shower. This bathroom was surprisingly big.

I can't seem to rember there being another full bath anywhere else in the main house...so I don't know where the 3-3 spec comes from...I only counted a 3-2.5.

the other side is just a toilet without a sink...This looks kinda claustrophobic to me. The toilets sorta close to the door so it seems to me that you'd feel like you were pooping in the landing....

One of the bedrooms on the top floor...not super big but with a decent closet.

Other bedroom on the top floor. Also not real big....

Conclusion:
The main house is only a 2 1.5.....that's just too small. There doesn't seem to be any easy way to get a second full bath for a master bedroom kinda thing on the top floor.

To Make The House Work For Us.
The house is on a brick foundation which has to be changed....figure a easy $100k to do it right.
The plumbing is going to need to be redone.
The realtor had a great idea for how to make the house livable for a modern family.
Rejigger the back half of the house and bring the weird bathroom into the houses envelope, then put a stairway down to the bottom floor and turn the room with the cool clinker brick fireplace in it into a family room.

Realistically you're going to have to gut, the bottom floor, blow out the existing brick foundation and concrete slab dig down to give yourself reasonable ceiling height, then somehow convince the city to let you turn it back into living space...put the master suite on the bottom level along with the family room and be okay that there is an entire floor between you and your kids...

That's the only way I can think of getting the space and usability out of the house that a modern, family will demand.

So, that's a new foundation, slab, complete remodel of a master suite and family room and a kitchen remodel plus probably re-plumbing and rewiring the house...my guesstimate for that much workwould would be in the $250-$300k range...maybe more.

How does the price stack up...
Ya know, I don't know...having that rentable unit in the back is throwing off my internal value meter....If you bought it for $900k, sunk $300k into it and in the process added ~1000sq ft of legal living space....still though being into the place for $1.2M I don't know if it would be worth that much at the end of construction...