Wikinvest Wire

Our old SoCal rental house is for sale

Friday, March 26, 2010

In a bit of irony that is quite appropriate for today, the five-year anniversary of this blog (more on that in an hour or so), it looks like the rental home in Southern California - where we spent more than three years during the middle of the last decade as the housing bubble reached its peak and where this blog was first written - is now up for sale.
IMAGE If memory serves, the owners paid $555K for it in late-2003 while it was still under construction and we moved in not long after, following the sale of our house a mile away.

That was back in the days when homebuilders could, basically, do as little as possible and people would still come with their "loan pre-approval" papers to buy real estate.

In this case, there was no landscaping provided, no window coverings, and not much of anything else, so the owners must have put about $50K into it at the start, bringing their cost basis up to around the current asking price of $599K which is about what Zillow says its worth.

You probably shouldn't feel sorry for the owners though. Not only are they very nice people but they own a ton of property in Santa Barbara and the only reason they bought this one was to do one of those tax exchange deals to reduce the tax owed on properties they sold up the coast where prices had gone parabolic.

I remember looking up houses in Santa Barbara on Realtor.com back then to see that you could get a 70-year old, 900 square foot two bedroom house - something like this - for about a million dollars. They're about half price now, which still seems way too high.

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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

On average, homes only last about 75 years. They wanted $1M for a tiny home that only has a few years left? No wonder the CA housing market is so messed up. Its just a shame that the politicians are forcing taxpayers in the other 49 states to try and re-levitate the madness.

CA should get rid of non safety zoning, and let their youngsters build affordable homes that will last long enough to raise their families in. That's the way to build an economy that is sustainable in the long run. Forget about trying to property tax their residents into a lifetime of debt slavery, just so over paid bureaucrats can keep their phony baloney jobs.

Tim said...

I always thought so too, but, they do give you a general idea.

CrossFittin said...

A little off topic, but something I thought might interest you:

The Government Pay Boom:
America's most privileged class are public union workers.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704281204575003101210295246.html

Anonymous said...

About that property in Santa Barbara you linked to. It is not just a Single Family home. It also is Commercial Zoning with potential for mixed use and in Downtown (2 blocks from State St).

Tim said...

I like the tone of that WSJ piece: "It turns out there really is growing inequality in America. It's the 45% premium in pay and benefits that government workers receive over the poor saps who create wealth in the private economy."

gih said...

Wow! That's a nice house to live. It's worth the price.

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