980 Cromwell St, Livermore, CA 94551
By anonymous Tue, 4 May 2010, 12:48pm 1,228 views 9 comments
In Livermore CA 94551
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We looked at this house more than a year ago, when it was listed at $425k. We made an offer at $380k, which was declined. It's not listed here yet, but I just checked the price on movoto, and it's down to $380k, and at a much better interest rate.
This isn't statistical in the sense of involving a lot of houses, but it *is* in the sense of involving many potential buyers. I'm glad we waited, and we're going to continue to wait.
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San Antonio, TX
jvolstad's website
I see this gem sold for $640K in 2005. What were the banks thinking when houses like this were being sold at these prices? And more importantly, why don't we jail some of these banksters? Maybe throw in a Realtor or two.
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San Carlos, CA
Don't forget it takes an idiot buyer as well. The bay are is full of people more than willing to overpay. Common sense is not so common here.
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Palo Alto, CA
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And sometimes is takes a fraudulent buyer and seller who work with an appraiser to over-appraise the house and get an unreasonably large loan, which the buyer then defaults on. Buyer and seller split the extra loan money, appraiser gets paid, and bank shifts the loan onto the rest of us via Fannie, Freddie, or the Federal Reserve. And the neighbors are all happy because this fraud means their own houses can demand higher prices via comps.
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I have no idea what to think about some of the numbers I read. For instance, Zillow claims that there were 182 homes sold over the last month in Livermore, with some 265 listed.
http://www.zillow.com/local-info/CA-Livermore-home-value/r_32540/#metric=mt%3D24%26dt%3D1%26tp%3D5%26rt%3D8%26r%3D32540%26el%3D0
I don't know what they're actually counting, but it sure isn't legitimate (not banks or flippers) home buyers. Presumably it butters Zillow's bread to measure a hot market.
Generally, it seems very few of the numbers one sees are worth much. My anecdotal observation has been that price per square foot per unit quality (admittedly subjective) has been coming down - in particular, there is a new catch phrase in the listings: "move-in ready." Buyers are holding out for higher quality.
Although it's not generally mentioned, another subtle factor in the housing malaise is the depletion of thoughtless buyers. Once the marks are in, the only buyers left are value hard-liners. There are cash speculators as well, but if there is a rush to the exit, these guys will be seriously burned. Heck, I hope that *most* of these homes are owned by flippers! They don't have implicit government support, and can't hold out like banks. I doubt your typical flipper would be willing to hold on to an empty 980 Cromwell for 1.5 years.
Anyway, if you're buying in Livermore: wait, and watch.
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Just responding to myself at this point, but for the record: movoto now claims there are 281 houses (or whatever, let's hope the definition isn't changing) for sale in Livermore, up from
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Princess says
Bingo, you got it. no one wanted to sober up during the mania. Many today are still drunk.
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Again, just for the record...
I don't see the total number of homes sold in Livermore shown on Zillow anymore. It's grayed out, and if I click the link above, then I get the chart for decreasing values, even though the grayed out "Total homes sold" is enabled somehow.
Probably this is some obscure problem in Zillow's data gathering, but I find it odd that this (would-be) information would vanish just as the number of buyers is falling off a cliff.
Cromwell seems to have been sold.
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Just looked up the price... sold for $365k on 9/30, ~15% lower than the list when we made our offer last year. A cautionary tale for doubters of Patrick's "Anyone who bought a 'bargain' this time last year is already sitting on a very painful loss." That could have been us!
Thanks, PK!