20 years ago; strawberry fields and a toxic waste dump.
Today; bubblezone, money losing golf course on a toxic waste dump and poster child for why New Urbanism is a crock.
Here's a rough map:
Dot 1 is Riverpark. I've written extensively on this abortion that lives. Check out this gem:Sales History:
Jan 31, 2007 $641,000
Listing Price History:
Apr 02, 2008 $459,900
Jun 15, 2008 $395,000
Sep 13, 2008 $359,000
Still no buyer! Ten thousand dollars per month doesn't cover the losses since initial purchase. Thing is $359k isn't so bad. The property includes a seperate apartment that could rent for $1000 so what's the problem? The problem is HOA and Mello-Roos. Taking those into consideration the present value equivalent price is more like $550k. Ouch.
Dot 2 is the River Ridge Golf Course. How hard is it to lose money on a freakin' golf course? The City of Oxnard manages exactly that. Classic example of public meddling in the private market.
Dot 3 is the 1990s development zone. Starting "small" with 2800 f on 6000 sf lots the developer and city hubris inflated until we saw 4500 sf on 6000 sf lots and 6000 sf behemoths on whopping 10,000 sf lots. How are those doing? 3428 Glen Abbey Ln.
Sales History
Aug 12, 2003 $599,000
Sep 06, 2005 $919,000
Aug 18, 2008 $782,781
I love the "random number" last sales price. A dead giveaway that the bank owns it. 20% plus arrears and penalties. The "tell" is in the description: "BANK OWNED in Victoria Estates near River Ridge golf. Upscale community amenities including pool, spa and clubhouse. Last sold for over $900k. Custom wood floors downstairs. Oops, did I mention that the last occupants took the carpet and appliances with them. Well, they did, shame on them. Hence the bargain price for over 3600 sq ft in Victoria Estates."
Occupants, not owners. They need you to be the next occupant. So it goes.
25 comments:
be FIRST to watch this video
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheMouthPeace
explains it all
Curse you for your firstness, H Simpson.
NR
PS Montpelier and Burlington were quite nice this weekend. The mountains were wreathed with fog, so little to see. I had no idea that Montpelier had so many hippies.
On number 3 who owned that?
Pink walls
leapord print wallpaper/faux paint
low end HD/Lowes bathroom
None of the the windows have hardware or holes looking like they owned treatments/shades.
Only good thing about not having land is there no pool infecting the neighborhood.
Homer,
I shall not say anything of the previous "occupants" for fear of racist accusations. I will say that a very great number of "renter class" families were duped into purchases such as this.
NR,
I love Montpelier. Burlington is more a bit of nostolgia. Montpelier does not have hippies. It is well represented by the progressive avante guarde.
Glad you had fun.
Yeah the weather was something else.
I bobbed in the atlantic watching the storm from the west cancel the hurricane Kyle to the east. No wind for hours and they finally canceled the regatta.
Luckily I had hor dourves aboard the vessel to heat up for my crew. I pity those who do not have a full galley.
Nothing like sitting in a fog bank, no wind waiting for a band of wind & rain to kick your kister. But hot hor dourves and cold Henikiens take most the boredom away as you want the floatsam from the storm float by.
I hear this works well for financial storms too. Seeing how we have to wait until thursday, I suggest you all preheat the oven now!
h.
Actually Dawg,they do.
My S-I-L family is from a town about 15 miles north. Her uncle is a 65 year old pot smoking leftover hippie from the sixies.
Oh yeah, he is also a lawyer in the Montpellier area.
Burlington is really nice. Reminds me of Colorado Springs with water.
But the outskirts of town remind me of a lot of overbuilt complexes we mock in the SE, SW, and Las Vegas.
No land for such folly in Montpelier.
h.
Homer,
I said "Montpelier does not have hippies. It is well represented by the progressive avante guarde.
It was a joke. Hippies don't think of themselves as being hippies. Instead they are lawyers who pretend they've never abandoned their principles.
Sorry to overlook this.
I was working til 2am and am kind of zoned out today.
Need to head downtown and get a wheatgrass shot. Ha-ha-ha-ha
by the way, there is a Vermont guide for flatlanders so you are not mistaken for those hippies from NY.
h.
Homer,
Several lifetimes ago I was one of those insane people jumping into the quarries, climbing the granite walls and such.
I understand about the unusual hours. I've been up since oh dark thirty fixing a computer for a client.
We used to laugh at the weekend package visitors in their rental cars.
Never been to Montpelier or Burlington, but used to live in Brattleboro. There aren't any hippies there either.
And on the original subject, I can't see why they don't have any bids on that second house. I've always wanted a driveway to call my own.
"Flooring features: wood / wood like"
Indeed... I guess there was no checkbox for "lauan."
Hell let 'em call me an occupant, call me whatever they like as long as I get to live there for next to nothing for a while.
Hey, look at that... no bailout and Wall St. manages to post a major gain today. Standard bounce back from yesterday's over reaction.
Why do I think anything the gov't does to help this situation will only make it worse?
Dawg
Before you read this link, make sure you took your medicine.
So Cal housing and how the illegals rigged the system..
http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/24/illegal-immigration-and-the-mortgage-mess/
Random Sarah Palin Thought Generator says:
That strategy that has worked in Iraq that the dealings with Freddie and Fannie to get caught up in this evil, in this terror and tentacles for Jesus.
That house on Glen Abbey must be a joke. It's tax appraised at $500K for land alone? Just because you can't grow strawberries on it any more?
This is really, really nutty. The land is worth maybe one tenth of that. And the structure might be worth $100k at best, since you would have to spend serious bucks fixing it up to live in. And you'll have dirt and that nasty green mossy mold on your tile roof due to the strawberry fields up wind. It's built on a slab, which is probably already cracking due to the soil conditions there. If it's like the other houses I have been in nearby, the second floor needs to have flooring pulled and re-attached to the joists. No good for families, due to Oxnard schools.
Wowowow. Long way to go.
On that Nines Lane home, why are there 2 photos of the basketball court?
To show there is things for the kids to do?
Or a sutble warning there are drug dealing, shootings, and gang activity nearby?
do not know the area, but this is strange
I checked out a house I recently saw advertised in my region for $24K. Turned out to be in the middle of a nearly abandoned neighborhood / industrial area ... you could drive ten blocks down Main Street and not find a single open business, everything is just boarded up. Which would be okay except that the house (a colonial with boarded up windows) happened to be stuck between two really nasty looking brick tenements and across from a local "needle park." I also picked up some bad looks from the local denizens who saw me checking out the property. Not my thing, but don't let anyone tell ya there ain't any bargains out there. It just needed someone gutsy enough to take on the neighborhood politics as well as the fix-ups needed for the house itself. A perfect ACORN project.
sm_landlord, I always thought it was ridiculous that land in the middle of nowhere magically appreciates just because it's been zoned residential. "Developers" have been making money on zoning arbitrage for years; buy the old farm, have an informal chat with friends on the zoning board, break up into residential parcels, resell, profit. Building homes on said parcels is optional. I think one thing we're going to see is land revalued for cash flow potential rather than for zoning.
PM, there are some great deals in the inner city out there. You are spot-on in identifying local politics as the barrier; there is tremendous resistance to cleaning up the bad side of town, primarily from politicians whose constituents live in that part of town, and from community groups who are extremely resistant to changes to neighborhood demographics.
For the politicians, it's easy to see what the motivation is: if the bad side of town gets cleaned up, their constituents will move out and they'll be out of power. For the community groups, it's more subtle, and there are more motivations; some sincere (if misguided) concern for the people in question, but, like the politicians, there may also be an unspoken sense that if things actually got fixed they wouldn't be needed any more.
Consequently, any time you start talking about buying up and redeveloping a neighborhood, you run into a lot of resistance worded in concerns about affordable housing, community cohesion, etc. That redevelopment might actually make things better does not seem to be much of a priority.
11 pm news.
City of boston to close 5 schools.
all of these are inner city. Same places Mayor Mumbles twisted bankers arms not to red zone, so the money flowed and the prices soared until last year when they all got foreclosed.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2008/10/school_reorgani.html
Word is city populuation is off 8,000 within the city in the past 2 years, hence the closings.
The next news story is the fact Mass tax is off $200,000,000 because of the slowdown. Gov Patick to slash the state budget by 7% to make up for this.
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/politics/17601867/detail.html
the hangover is here in full force.
Warren Buffett on Charlie Rose tonight on bubbles.
Every knows what is going on,but like Cinderellia, everyone thinks they will leave the ball before midnight. What they forget is there is no clock on the wall..
Hey, but it's not ALL bad news:
KC just got thrown under the bus.
KC just got thrown under the bus.
It is a Top 5 classic post. The petulant whining was quite fun to read. Nigel was going to put Casey on a BUS! Casey only travels via airline. Buses are for the little people.
my favorite part was when he went all Paris Hilton on us:
"I don’t deserve to be treated like this!!"
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