909 Franklin St., Santa Monica
5 br/5 ba, 4,583sf
0.35-acre lot
YB: 1974
SP = $4,967,500
Several records were established here!
- Our highest sale ever.
- Our longest escrow ever (8 months).
- The most times a deal was dead and needed resuscitation (50+).
Congratulations to seller and buyer (who plans a major remodel)! It took a tenacious collaboration between all parties to get this one closed!
Jim, congrats on the closing. Can you comment on why such a long escrow? Assuming buyer was developer. Why such a variance between SP and LP?
Can you comment on why such a long escrow? Assuming buyer was developer. Why such a variance between SP and LP?
The initial agreement took weeks to iron out, mostly because the buyer didn’t want us to make any commission. Zero. Fortunately, he did not prevail, but it took a while to convince him.
But once we got to the repair requests, he wanted a discount that took more weeks to solve and by the time we went that long, the seller decides to drag out the closing date past the holidays so he would get into spring here and have more properties to consider for his 1031 exchange.
This was the property that we hoped to take advantage of the super-high zestimate. There was a stretch where the zestimates were so over-inflated that this one got up to $8 million, so we listed for $7 million to see if any buyers were putting stock in the zestimate. But then a day or two before hitting the open market, they revised the zestimate to $4 million!
We went ahead anyway, but didn’t get one call, and cancelled after two weeks.
The buyer called me a day later.