Adam has been gracious in sharing his time and experience about buying at the court house steps, and flipping properties for profit, the least we can do is keep an eye out for him.
It’ll be easy to dismiss this one because of location, but this is where you’ll see the first signs of flips turning to flops – with the outliers:
Cute house!
Agree with you on the apartments, but some of us really, really love tree-lined streets. There are plenty of barren, moonscape-like streets in San Diego County for those who like that look…please save the trees! 🙂
If I didn’t know that was Oceanside, I’d have sworn it was my neighborhood. Luckily, we don’t have those horrible pine trees on my block, mostly Jacaranda and Ficus on this street. Two blocks over has those ugly a** pines. Those things are just about the least attractive street tree to plant.
The apartments are what is killing that house. No one in their right mind wants to live next to something like that. We have similar a block over and the cops might as well set up a station house there, they are called so often. You can see the house prices drop in relation to proximity to the apartments.
Only an amateur would have thought they could flip post-bubble with cracker box apartments next door.
Tree-lined is one thing, but those big (Torrey?) pines aren’t good trees for a street. They get too big.
I know those pulley action windows all too well from an 1888 house I owned for awhile. It’s a surprisingly good design, actually, but not quite the same as what they make nowadays. What puts the fear of God in me in an old house is lathework and horsehair plaster walls. I still have nightmares about stratigraphic layers of wallpaper and paint atop cracked horsehair plaster walls.
That neighborhood might be a lost cause, but it is indeed sad what they did to that house. The one-size-fits-all, must-have travertine/marble/jacuzzi tub features just scream “flip this house.” If you want to fix that house up and sell it for that kind of money, you need to restore it, not renovate it. Of course, that would take knowledge, diligence, and some aesthetic sense. It’s way easier to slap some marble down.
That house in West LA or Hollyweird would be 800k and 10 miles to the beach and in San Pedro Wilmington 225k and only 2 miles to the beach!There are some real nice ones in old San Fernando and they are considered Historic and must be remodeled a certain way.They where built very well as long as you have updated the wiring and plumbing they will never fall down,they used timbers to build them not crappy 2×4;s.
what’s the history with oceanside – i’ve heard it was very nice in the 1960s/70s? why did it go downhill?
I’m the neighborhood watch block captain and at a meeting a few years back our city council rep stopped by. We ended up having a long talk about the problems in the district, the apartments in particular. He said that the city wishes to hell they have never approved construction on those apartments (the ones near me are EXACTLY like the ones in Jim’s video.) I think there was long term redevelopment plan to buy out the buildings and tear them down, but who knows where that will end up with the budgetary nightmare we face city/state/nationwide.
I agree with Blissful on the restoration point. You have to go one way or the other. Either you restore or you update with quality materials that will last another 30 years. There’s a nice middle ground between cheap crap and excessive upgrades that make no sense.
San Diego has lots of old houses like that. The housing stock is … difficult.
I just don’t understand 900 ft 2 bd homes. How can you have a family there? 300 more sq ft and then you have something livable, at least.
Stocks of smaller homes is true for even the nicer areas. Think Kensington, although those houses are usually remodeled tastefully.
And no matter what, don’t say bad thing about trees in SoCal! SoCal needs each and every tree it can get, of any variety!
Back off the tree bashing!
Brian, you gotta remember back when these were built (1939 for mine) two bedrooms and 900 sq ft was plenty of space. People didn’t need home offices, they didn’t have wardrobes any where near the size of what we have today (just look at the closet space, that tells you.) They didn’t have big screen TV’s and overstuffed living room furniture. They used their garages as garages, not as a storage unit for all the junk that won’t fit in the house.
In most markets these little houses are starter homes. In that aspect, they aren’t much different from raising a family in a two-bedroom apartment – which is what people do when they can’t afford a house. You work with what you can afford to pay to keep a roof over your head. In SoCal, the price difference between a 2/1 and 3/2 is enormous, with the latter being beyond the reach of a lot of people.
Our lifestyle today is very different from what it was when these older houses were built.
That’s almost $400 a square for a depressing, window barred, micro existence….no thanks. It’s nearly 2010, almost 3 years past peak, and they still want prices like that? Wonder why it’s not selling? Honestly, I would rather rent next door at the apt. building, at least there would be some hope for the future in getting out of that neighborhood.
Those pines drop pretty huge cones, at UCLA they had a pine tree problem, it was blowing out back windows in cars (rear car windows are almost paper thin) as the pine cones were falling from 50′ or more high. UCLA had to cut them all down.
Art,
It’s entirely possible that our lifestyles will once again return to the way that they were when these homes were built. At least in some ways.
Chuck
I think there are going to be alot more of this happening. We lost out on a condo at Sabre Hill awhile back and I was thinking no way these guys make money on it. Same thing for a home on Frame Road in Poway. Then there was a home in Mira Mesa as well. I don’t even think that guy put it on the market.
Where is the toliet in the bathroom? Is it hiding behind the door?
That’s way too much dinero for a little house the size of an apartment. I bet there are street vendors selling corn on the cob in the neighborhood from shopping carts, your video just reminds me of “that kinda neighborhood.”
I’d say it will sell around $250,000, tops.
Its good to see flippers eat a little humble pie, makes them seem flawed, like the people who paid bubble prices for the homes initially.
Hope they lose a lot of cash-ola,
Seachrist Out…
9 and 13, I agree on the price being way too high. It’s a starter home for sure, should be around $199,990. Is that freeway noise in the background?
How about pine needles collecting on those flat roofs–they trap water and become VERY heavy–are the trees close enough??
How about pine needles collecting on those flat roofs–they trap water and become VERY heavy–are the trees close enough??
I think this concern is WAY overblown, but if you are really worried how about cleaning your roof once a year?
Are people so lazy about home maintenance that they would prefer barren streets to having to clean their roof once or twice a year?
Just go live in a parking lot in front of Target, Costco or 7-11 if you don’t like trees.
The minute I see bars on any windows, there is no price low enough to get me to live there. $379k, I laugh, but some moron will pay that, this is San Diego.
The apartments aren’t the problem, the residents of those apartments are the problem. If that house was in Encinitas, even with apartments next door, it would be over $500k and would sell in a heartbeat. The resident profile of Oceanside is improving; in another 10 years, I’d bet that there will have been a significant improvement in the neighborhood.
To comment on the topic. Yeah, good question. Adam could lose half he’s made so far on one sour transaction. It’s not like he has the option of owner occ as a fall back (the only way I’d ever flip).