Housing Bubble, credit bubble, public planning, land use, zoning and transportation in the exurban environment. Specific criticism of smart growth, neotradtional, forms based, new urbanism and other top down planner schemes to increase urban extent and density. Ventura County, California specific examples.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
410 Avocado Place 93010 Inside Edition
Ahhh the "estate" life. More pics of the Countrywide asset basis.
Hey, the pool is at least (mostly) empty, that's a good thing. Easier to clean.
Seriously, this wouldn't be a bad fix/flip if you could get it for the right price. Looks like a lot of cosmetic stuff, paint, yard, etc. Nothing structural.
Would need to poke around a bit FIRST to verify that...
Would sell $800s quickly in market condition. Won't sell to investors as a long term asset. $60-$80k quickly just to fix and show. Current market says buyers need to have skin in the game and accept fat lender margins. The right price is $450k (20% aka $100k down) and $80k in fix-up funds.
Does everyone see the problem? I'm ready to take a chance at $450k and CFC is asking $1,199k.
Better for me, worse for CFC. I'm sure if this one doesn't work there will be 10 more just like it.
Exterior, paving, interior walls seem OK. As Flopper said, probably not significant structural damage; I'm no expert, but I don't see any cracks or water damage in the walls or paving. The trashiness of the place is very worrisome, at a minimum it means the whole place will need to be deep cleaned, and the house may also have "guests" of an insect or small mammalian nature.
I really hope you wore gloves and a mask when you visited the place. Did the real estate agent leave business cards on the counter? :D
Nice find! My wife and I bought a much more modest version of the same several years ago and we hold currently about 75% equity in it.
Your readers seem too focussed on the fix and flip aspect of the coming market conditions. Could you or your readers direct me to a blog where the discussion is more along the lines of "fix it n' live in it"?
The flippers are getting KILLED right now in SoCal.
The number of cancelled listings is higher than the sales numbers. They dont publish that. Some people can hold out quite a while due to enourmous multiple HELOCs and are waiting for next spring. Others cant or wont hold out and it gets cancelled and goes to foreclosure.
If you paid 800k for that house you better live in it 10 years, because there is no profit possible at that price point IMO, even if you are a realtor you have to pay 2.5%+closing costs+fix up/holding/loan costs.
> Would sell $800s quickly in market condition. > The right price is $450k (20% aka $100k down) > and $80k in fix-up funds.
If it would sell quickly in the $800s, why not buy it at $600? $80k to fix, leaves $120 to $180k profit. Deduct carrying costs, a bit of a margin for "oops" and such... still could be worth it at $600k.
Still WAY too far off from the 1.2 mil, but close enough that they might consider it. Of course, I'd prefer the $450 price as well, but this could still work at a higher price.
My guess is that Countrywide is in no hurry to sell this. Looks like they are going to take a big hit to unload this mess, why rush into doing a "mark to market" by encouraging bids by actually cleaning it up.
Could you or your readers direct me to a blog where the discussion is more along the lines of "fix it n' live in it"? This is that blog of a sorts. What you see here is the "time value of money" calculation. 410 Avocado would be a great steal-fix'n-live opportunity if you could get it for $450k now and forward or even $600k with patience. The difference is that you still need to put 60-$80k in to make this habitable so living there after you rehab involves living through the genral downturn to realize any benefit. I already showed a better house for less than asking here that doesn't require upfront money. Live on Ramona Ave and wait out the same cycle without the effort.
Exurban Nation doesn't care a tinker's cup for fix-n-flip or even great deals except as they throw into sharp relief the aspects of people living where they want and as they can afford. That's a huge mandate. EN doesn't like high municipal barriers be they taxes or HOAs or zoning. Still we expect all those to protect existing land use patterns. It is a tightrope but the same tightrope affords the best views.
@chickenlittle: I don't think you're going to find many good finds in the used home market, at least not yet. Owners are holding out for unrealistic prices, and even the banks are content to keep REO properties on the books at inflated values rather than realize the loss.
My recommendation would be to watch the new home market over the next year or so. When builders start hitting serious trouble, they will have to unload homes at whatever prices they can get, even if it's at a serious loss, just to reduce their leverage and carrying costs. If any of the homebuilders declares bankruptcy, the bankruptcy court could potentially put their inventory out to auction, and then you're looking at much more favorable prices, although you may need hard cash for that kind of a purchase.
In any case, it may be possible to get a brand-new home at virtually the same price as an old run-down home, but without the costs of fixing it. But patience is the key, home prices are going to go down further before they stabilize.
Countrywide has a foreclosure in the most exclusive part of Bakersfield (yes I know) that was straw-purchased/flopped for $1 million a year and half ago. Been on the market after the foreclosure with little success. The price was lowered. The home is being sold for $630k.
A few more like this and CFC will start feeling some real pain...
I think if you're willing to spend a lot of time at home depot hand picking stuff out yourself and you're okay hiring unlicensed day laborers, you could clean that place up real nice for a flip for around $40k (if a lot of the FB's out there don't even know what kind of mortgage they have, I doubt they'll know the difference between a top of the line boxed Moen faucet and the blister packed $15 dollar Moen). To live in though, you'd probably need to spend twice as much barring any big ticket items.
Keep up the sweet birddogging and I hope to hear what eventually becomes of this property.
I think the only way you get this for $450K is to bus in the homeless, and tell them the plumbing's broke, but they can use the "swimming pond" as a cesspit instead.
Looks like they had to bug out on short notice. Sucks to be the bagholder or the family living next door.
There's a house down the street from me that's been vacant for 14 months now. Well, it's been abandoned. The seminar flipper who bought it is no longer listed on the HCAD records, and due to the Texas real estate lobby, HCAD no longer publishes the name of the owner.
The sucky thing? It truly is an affordable house, something a middle-class family could pay for with a conforming 30-year fixed. But the house sits there and rots, the lawn turning into a jungle, the pool turning into a Serin-like pea soup swamp. What a waste. Why is the bagholder sitting on it? I still can't figure it out. Clean it up and drop the price by a measly $10k and sell it. These aren't California prices around here.
@ Bill. Um, it pretty much looks like has already happened.
@Rob. Thanks for the pics and story. I'll try to rein in my curiosity.
We had a foreclosure next door and I thought it was abominable (recently sold after 4 months and at -123K of asking preforclosure and -90K of REO price) but it had nothing on this POS.
"It's really a great irony," Krowne says. By unloading his blog, "Casey finally was able to sell a piece of property at a gain."
It's been a long hard day, but that comment put a grin on my face about 3 feet wide. Oh yeah, Casey backpedaled a bit on the price he was paid for the blog. Now it's "around" 45K. Uh-huh.
Well, if Mr. Willy S. wannabe actually made inroads on She Who Shall be Un-named's debts, accolades are deserved. Or not. Doing the Right Thing, however, is what holds our society together.
Snark withdrawal is tough. Let's give kc the benefit of the doubt.
As an addendum to my recent links about the (long anticipated) slowdown in the New York City housing market, I thought that I would add this interesting tidbit. I suspect we'll see as many of these over the course of the next two years as we saw empty warehouse space ansty developers and holdout landlords were grappling over the past few.
Duuuuuuh...anybody know who started the fire? Does ayone here know what Bed-Stuy is like? It ain't the next up-and-coming Brooklyn neighborhood and this developer has finally figured that out. Or rather they have finally figured out that everyone else has figured it out. Actually you still take your life in your hands at certain times of day in this neighborhood.
New York's RE blogs are slow to pick it up, but in fact in Long Island City, an area whose development in the past 5 years has depended entirely on the presale of overpriced condos is now slowing to a crawl as finances dwindle. How many half finished condos will we see in half-developed NY neighborhoods? Potentially tons! But I suspect many of the little developers will have suspicious fires.
NYC and the bigger PacNorWest cities have been late to the party. It's been both annoying and educational to hear their smug arrogance build their bubbles to even larger proportions with "it's different here."
NYC is particularly vunerable and has no clue what's coming. The entirety of the top of their economic pyramid is ripe for disintermediation.
The empty or half-completed homes and condos will definitely be serious fire risks. That's one way to reduce the inventory. Also, I suspect we'll see an unusually large number of "accidental" fires in insured but unsold properties . . .
New York has a very large latent demand for housing, especially in desirable neighborhoods. I don't think we'll see empty lots in Manhattan any time this century; same goes for downtown Boston, etc. Outlying areas, on the other hand, are definitely more vulnerable. That's what we're seeing in D.C., downtown and close-in neighborhoods are still growing, with demand above what's available, but communities thirty miles out are dying slow deaths.
The collapse of the Housing Bubble, combined with the impending loss of jobs and (horrors!) Wall Street bonuses, will put pressure on the buying market, but the end result will simply be units converted to rentals and downward pressure on rents. For those living in the big urban areas, though, don't hold your breath waiting for lower rents, as I think that dynamic will take a year or more to work out.
Dawg, I saw an incredibly scary graph this morning indicating half a TRILLION in ARM resets in the first half of '08! March alone shows $120 billion. It's just going to create massive strain. New York has traditionally had boom cycles which, when fizzling are saved by massive Wall St. bonuses. Those WERE here in '06 but not bloody likey in '07. In '08 who knows what the general state of the economy will be? I know Wall St. won't be looking to bail out housing, since housing is what got Wall St. in hot water.
All the time we were mocking Casey, and he was just a small time crook. It looks like -- to avoid the radar -- you need to scam in the $1 million plus range.
Nice picture. I like the dining room. It has trip and fall injury all over it.
BofA just gave CFC a bunch of the Fed's money. Don't worry, they have the printing presses.
It all seems like when in 1929 JPMorgan walked onto the floor of the NYSE, and bravely spent a few million, which helped for about 5 days.
Ahhh the "estate" life. More pics of the Countrywide asset basis.
35 comments:
Hey, the pool is at least (mostly) empty, that's a good thing. Easier to clean.
Seriously, this wouldn't be a bad fix/flip if you could get it for the right price. Looks like a lot of cosmetic stuff, paint, yard, etc. Nothing structural.
Would need to poke around a bit FIRST to verify that...
But asking 1.2 mil is nuts.
Here is my first cut:
Would sell $800s quickly in market condition.
Won't sell to investors as a long term asset.
$60-$80k quickly just to fix and show.
Current market says buyers need to have skin in the game and accept fat lender margins.
The right price is $450k (20% aka $100k down) and $80k in fix-up funds.
Does everyone see the problem? I'm ready to take a chance at $450k and CFC is asking $1,199k.
Better for me, worse for CFC. I'm sure if this one doesn't work there will be 10 more just like it.
Exterior, paving, interior walls seem OK. As Flopper said, probably not significant structural damage; I'm no expert, but I don't see any cracks or water damage in the walls or paving. The trashiness of the place is very worrisome, at a minimum it means the whole place will need to be deep cleaned, and the house may also have "guests" of an insect or small mammalian nature.
I really hope you wore gloves and a mask when you visited the place. Did the real estate agent leave business cards on the counter? :D
How much for just the pillow???
Mr Dawg,
Nice find! My wife and I bought a much more modest version of the same several years ago and we hold currently about 75% equity in it.
Your readers seem too focussed on the fix and flip aspect of the coming market conditions. Could you or your readers direct me to a blog where the discussion is more along the lines of "fix it n' live in it"?
Thanks!
The flippers are getting KILLED right now in SoCal.
The number of cancelled listings is higher than the sales numbers. They dont publish that. Some people can hold out quite a while due to enourmous multiple HELOCs and are waiting for next spring. Others cant or wont hold out and it gets cancelled and goes to foreclosure.
If you paid 800k for that house you better live in it 10 years, because there is no profit possible at that price point IMO, even if you are a realtor you have to pay 2.5%+closing costs+fix up/holding/loan costs.
Rob:
> Would sell $800s quickly in market condition.
> The right price is $450k (20% aka $100k down)
> and $80k in fix-up funds.
If it would sell quickly in the $800s, why not buy it at $600? $80k to fix, leaves $120 to $180k profit. Deduct carrying costs, a bit of a margin for "oops" and such... still could be worth it at $600k.
Still WAY too far off from the 1.2 mil, but close enough that they might consider it. Of course, I'd prefer the $450 price as well, but this could still work at a higher price.
Do companies like Countrywide neglect their REOs like this when the market isn't this bad?
My guess is that Countrywide is in no hurry to sell this. Looks like they are going to take a big hit to unload this mess, why rush into doing a "mark to market" by encouraging bids by actually cleaning it up.
Could you or your readers direct me to a blog where the discussion is more along the lines of "fix it n' live in it"?
This is that blog of a sorts. What you see here is the "time value of money" calculation. 410 Avocado would be a great steal-fix'n-live opportunity if you could get it for $450k now and forward or even $600k with patience. The difference is that you still need to put 60-$80k in to make this habitable so living there after you rehab involves living through the genral downturn to realize any benefit. I already showed a better house for less than asking here that doesn't require upfront money. Live on Ramona Ave and wait out the same cycle without the effort.
Exurban Nation doesn't care a tinker's cup for fix-n-flip or even great deals except as they throw into sharp relief the aspects of people living where they want and as they can afford. That's a huge mandate. EN doesn't like high municipal barriers be they taxes or HOAs or zoning. Still we expect all those to protect existing land use patterns. It is a tightrope but the same tightrope affords the best views.
@chickenlittle:
I don't think you're going to find many good finds in the used home market, at least not yet. Owners are holding out for unrealistic prices, and even the banks are content to keep REO properties on the books at inflated values rather than realize the loss.
My recommendation would be to watch the new home market over the next year or so. When builders start hitting serious trouble, they will have to unload homes at whatever prices they can get, even if it's at a serious loss, just to reduce their leverage and carrying costs. If any of the homebuilders declares bankruptcy, the bankruptcy court could potentially put their inventory out to auction, and then you're looking at much more favorable prices, although you may need hard cash for that kind of a purchase.
In any case, it may be possible to get a brand-new home at virtually the same price as an old run-down home, but without the costs of fixing it. But patience is the key, home prices are going to go down further before they stabilize.
Hey this property was recorded back to the bank on 5/1/07.
Obviously they dont even clean trash out of thier foreclosures, and they had 5 months! ridiculous.
Countrywide has a foreclosure in the most exclusive part of Bakersfield (yes I know) that was straw-purchased/flopped for $1 million a year and half ago. Been on the market after the foreclosure with little success. The price was lowered. The home is being sold for $630k.
A few more like this and CFC will start feeling some real pain...
"Countrywide has a foreclosure in the most exclusive part of Bakersfield"
No 1985 or older pickups allowed in the driveways per HOA rules?
Not only garbage, there are probably snakes there too...
Seeing this latest set of pics, a phrase popped into my head. Is "swimming pond" a commonly used term? If not, that sure is a nice swimming pond©™®. How about sliming pool . . . never mind.
I think if you're willing to spend a lot of time at home depot hand picking stuff out yourself and you're okay hiring unlicensed day laborers, you could clean that place up real nice for a flip for around $40k (if a lot of the FB's out there don't even know what kind of mortgage they have, I doubt they'll know the difference between a top of the line boxed Moen faucet and the blister packed $15 dollar Moen). To live in though, you'd probably need to spend twice as much barring any big ticket items.
Keep up the sweet birddogging and I hope to hear what eventually becomes of this property.
I think the only way you get this for $450K is to bus in the homeless, and tell them the plumbing's broke, but they can use the "swimming pond" as a cesspit instead.
Irrelevant, outdated, and more than an hour old.
OMFG.
Looks like they had to bug out on short notice. Sucks to be the bagholder or the family living next door.
There's a house down the street from me that's been vacant for 14 months now. Well, it's been abandoned. The seminar flipper who bought it is no longer listed on the HCAD records, and due to the Texas real estate lobby, HCAD no longer publishes the name of the owner.
The sucky thing? It truly is an affordable house, something a middle-class family could pay for with a conforming 30-year fixed. But the house sits there and rots, the lawn turning into a jungle, the pool turning into a Serin-like pea soup swamp. What a waste. Why is the bagholder sitting on it? I still can't figure it out. Clean it up and drop the price by a measly $10k and sell it. These aren't California prices around here.
@ Bill.
Um, it pretty much looks like has already happened.
@Rob.
Thanks for the pics and story. I'll try to rein in my curiosity.
We had a foreclosure next door and I thought it was abominable (recently sold after 4 months and at -123K of asking preforclosure and -90K of REO price) but it had nothing on this POS.
@wagga.
Best Casey comment EVER from the story:
"It's really a great irony," Krowne says. By unloading his blog, "Casey finally was able to sell a piece of property at a gain."
It's been a long hard day, but that comment put a grin on my face about 3 feet wide. Oh yeah, Casey backpedaled a bit on the price he was paid for the blog. Now it's "around" 45K. Uh-huh.
Well, if Mr. Willy S. wannabe actually made inroads on She Who Shall be Un-named's debts, accolades are deserved. Or not. Doing the Right Thing, however, is what holds our society together.
Snark withdrawal is tough. Let's give kc the benefit of the doubt.
Every morning I cruise
http://www.mortgagefraudblog.com/ waiting to see Snowflake has finally been hauled into court.
There are folks going to prision for long periods for a lot less of some of our zero's scams. Though most have been in Ga, Minn, & NY so far.
Then again, the last of the theives from the dot com era scams are just getting sentenced this month. Justice can be slow but sure.
tick tick tick...
So, uh, Rob. Since I believe everything I read on the internet, I didn't know what fliptard sold his blog and paid off Galina's credit cards.
Sac Bee story...
http://www.sacbee.com/103/story/337692.html
"that fliptard", not "what fliptard"
And wagga totally beat me to it. Bastages!
Bastages!
A little more Handel & box wine & I'm off to the sack.
Reporter can be reached at bullshit@sacbee.com or maybe bshallit @sacbee.com. Sorry, Betsy.
As an addendum to my recent links about the (long anticipated) slowdown in the New York City housing market, I thought that I would add this interesting tidbit. I suspect we'll see as many of these over the course of the next two years as we saw empty warehouse space ansty developers and holdout landlords were grappling over the past few.
"
Duuuuuuh...anybody know who started the fire? Does ayone here know what Bed-Stuy is like? It ain't the next up-and-coming Brooklyn neighborhood and this developer has finally figured that out. Or rather they have finally figured out that everyone else has figured it out. Actually you still take your life in your hands at certain times of day in this neighborhood.
New York's RE blogs are slow to pick it up, but in fact in Long Island City, an area whose development in the past 5 years has depended entirely on the presale of overpriced condos is now slowing to a crawl as finances dwindle. How many half finished condos will we see in half-developed NY neighborhoods? Potentially tons! But I suspect many of the little developers will have suspicious fires.
NYC and the bigger PacNorWest cities have been late to the party. It's been both annoying and educational to hear their smug arrogance build their bubbles to even larger proportions with "it's different here."
NYC is particularly vunerable and has no clue what's coming. The entirety of the top of their economic pyramid is ripe for disintermediation.
The empty or half-completed homes and condos will definitely be serious fire risks. That's one way to reduce the inventory. Also, I suspect we'll see an unusually large number of "accidental" fires in insured but unsold properties . . .
New York has a very large latent demand for housing, especially in desirable neighborhoods. I don't think we'll see empty lots in Manhattan any time this century; same goes for downtown Boston, etc. Outlying areas, on the other hand, are definitely more vulnerable. That's what we're seeing in D.C., downtown and close-in neighborhoods are still growing, with demand above what's available, but communities thirty miles out are dying slow deaths.
The collapse of the Housing Bubble, combined with the impending loss of jobs and (horrors!) Wall Street bonuses, will put pressure on the buying market, but the end result will simply be units converted to rentals and downward pressure on rents. For those living in the big urban areas, though, don't hold your breath waiting for lower rents, as I think that dynamic will take a year or more to work out.
Dawg, I saw an incredibly scary graph this morning indicating half a TRILLION in ARM resets in the first half of '08! March alone shows $120 billion. It's just going to create massive strain. New York has traditionally had boom cycles which, when fizzling are saved by massive Wall St. bonuses. Those WERE here in '06 but not bloody likey in '07. In '08 who knows what the general state of the economy will be? I know Wall St. won't be looking to bail out housing, since housing is what got Wall St. in hot water.
Peripheral: It's the latter I was implying.
All the time we were mocking Casey, and he was just a small time crook. It looks like -- to avoid the radar -- you need to scam in the $1 million plus range.
Nice picture. I like the dining room. It has trip and fall injury all over it.
BofA just gave CFC a bunch of the Fed's money. Don't worry, they have the printing presses.
It all seems like when in 1929 JPMorgan walked onto the floor of the NYSE, and bravely spent a few million, which helped for about 5 days.
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