patrick.net

Wow. Can ya buy it and make it a stable for the horse?

I wish elllie... At this point the mortgage payment would cost LESS than my monthly board bill for my horse here in the Bay Area.

I tell you what, it's rough now thinking I am probably paying $600 more a month for my mortgage payment than I would if I bought today.

I would say to those housing bulls on here, I don't think we've seen the worst yet. I am a bear that just got a lot more bearish.

sorry to hear about that. I was looking at properties in the east bay last year. I looked at a foreclosure listed for around 100k
which is probably mid 90's price. About 2 blocks over the houses were selling in the 500's.

really amazing but there's a number of reasons why that was the case.

If I were in your shoes I'd take ellie's advice and try to buy the house across the street so you can control who lives there.

What city might this be, roughly ;) ?

What kind of condition is this house in? A house empty that long surely is not in good condition.

It's in El Sobrante, it's actually a nice little neighborhood with nice people, love all my neighbors. They came in and did some fixing up, could use "updating" but it's in move in condition.

Seriously, this totally bifurcated market can't last forever. For example in this area, the low end was low 100k or so, high end was upper 200k or so. Now even in this area you have house prices ranging from 180k to 600k within blocks. In the late 1990s the high end was 350-800k, those houses still are double that. It's weird...

Looks like a recently completed development (2009?) on Spanish Trails has several priced at +600K.

LOTS and LOTS of traffic at the open house this weekend and tons of drive by traffic all week. It seems El Sobrante has found bottom, and as most people have said, it's when the buy/rent ratio favors buying over renting... It will be interesting to see what it sells for. Homes rent for $1400-$1600 around here.

Tude, thanks for the field report. The numbers still appear to be shocking for El Sobrante; roughly speaking, 221 homes in some state of foreclosure (NODS, NOTS, bank owned) to 61 homes currently for sale. Still plenty of pent up supply out there.

Tude says

LOTS and LOTS of traffic at the open house this weekend and tons of drive by traffic all week. It seems El Sobrante has found bottom, and as most people have said, it’s when the buy/rent ratio favors buying over renting… It will be interesting to see what it sells for. Homes rent for $1400-$1600 around here.

Bottom at mid 90s prices and current/future REAL comps for sellers/buyers down the road.
Any rush to buy today, when pretty much everything down the road will be the same.

I don't think it's a rush to buy for anyone, but the realtor said that this is a desirable lost-cost neighborhood, and at 179k, it's literally priced at about what it cost in the 1980s. My next door neighbor paid around 160k in the late 1980s.

There are still way overpriced neighborhoods in El Sob, as there is everywhere. I think the real low end is near bottoming out, and the "desirable" areas will follow suit soon enough.. I mean seriously, why would you pay 300-400k MORE to have a few extra square feet on a little bit nicer block?

The Bay Area is weird.

I would agree with your point, the BA has turned weird.
People just keep believing in that unsustainable hype.

Darn right it's weird.

If Garrido is convicted he'll join a long string of weirdos like the Zodiac, Symbionese Liberation Army, Richard Wade Farley, etc.

sybrib says

If Garrido is convicted he’ll join a long string of weirdos like the Zodiac, Symbionese Liberation Army, Richard Wade Farley, etc.

LOL! im just worried im gonna get into a auto wreck because some broad was pepped up on pharma-narcotics driving their SUV while chating it up on their cell phone.