Written by Jim the Realtor

February 14, 2011

18 Comments

  1. tj & the bear

    LMAO all the way through the video — the snark was so thick you could cut it! Of course, I about fell out of my chair when you put up the price. Classic!

  2. anon no mas

    A one sentence post was enough to send jim the realtor over the deep end. What is this world coming to? 🙂

    My point yesterday was that I remember in the early days of this blog there was a much wider variety in price and style. Remember the Oceanside REOs and the Vista pot house?

    What happened jim? Did you forget that not all of us need 4k sq feet and gated communities?

    You would do your viewers (and yourself) a service by expanding the scope of houses you show in this blog.

  3. Genius

    That price is insane for a lot in Cardiff; you could buy a decent house in LJ about 2 blocks from the beach for less. I know you were trying to make a point, but c’mon.

    You did, however, make me choke on my drink. File this one under ‘classics.’

  4. ewhac

    Jim softballed the point straight at you, and you whiffed it. Here it is again:

    The reason you are seeing so many McMansions on Jim’s blog is because that’s what’s coming up for sale. The big McMansion bombers are the ones that were most commonly over-leveraged, and therefore are the ones that are showing up most often on the market as foreclosures, REOs, short sales, and I-need-to-get-outta-Dodge-before-I-lose-all-my-equity sales. Jim’s not hiding anything from you; he simply doesn’t have that in stock.

    It’s like walking in to a store and saying, “All I see is vanilla pudding. Why aren’t you putting any chocolate pudding on the shelves?” To which comes the reply, “We didn’t get any. The moment we get some, we’ll put it on the shelves.”

    Also, the McMansions most clearly illustrate the Irrational Exuberance of the housing bubble, for which Jim continues to offer info (hence the domain name). Recall the sequence: First existing quality housing got bid up due to easy credit, then new housing (McMansions) was constructed to draw off some of the low-cost money, and finally complete hovels started flirting with $1,000,000 before people started to wake up and say, “Hey, this is nuts!” Thus, it makes sense that we would see the reverse sequence as the bubble deflates. (I am, of course, pulling this entirely out of my posterior, and Jim is free to elide this post at his option.)

  5. ewhac

    $1000/sq.ft.

    If you can spend $1000/sq.ft, this is the class of thing you should be looking at. (I’ve posted this link before.)

    Jim: You mentioned this is probably priced as a tear-down for a builder. Are teardown costs for brick and cinderblock more costly than wood frame?

    Some of the stylistic touches evoke mid-century design details. But the overall effect of the interior is of a county jail.

  6. local boy

    “Hey, this is nuts!”

    What is nuts is that the sub-2000sf track houses that are 30 years old are still selling around $600K–that makes the newer McMansions seem like a good buy!

  7. Art Eclectic

    I looked at one similar to this last year — CLEARLY a tear down — with around the same lot size. The price floored me.

    The house is nothing, it’s the lot and location. What makes my stomach churn is that a builder can roll in an put three houses on that lot instead of a single buyer putting up one modest sized house and having some privacy and a yard.

    I realize that it’s supply and demand, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t seem inherently wrong to keep shoveling huge houses onto tiny lots to maximize profit.

    It just sucks that this worthless house on a great lot can’t go to someone who would build custom and improve the neighborhood without turning the whole thing into another overbuilt sardine can.

    /rant of frustrated lot buyer

  8. Josie

    OMG. I almost puked in my mouth as you were going through that home. WTH are those people on? Really?! Over a million. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills again. No way it that place worth a million. As previous post said, there are some nice places in La Jolla and even Point Loma for that price.

  9. tj & the bear

    But the overall effect of the interior is of a county jail.

    LOL!!!

  10. Mozart

    Watch it sell for $1,050,000.

  11. GeneK

    A quick look at the home search on this site shows 281 detached listings under $400k on the NC map. Granted Jim is running “bubbleinfo.com” and not “homebuyerinfo.com,” the McMansions are the most obvious and often hilarious illustrations of the excesses of the bubble and its disasterflick-like bursting, AND the site is ultimately a tool to help bring business in to Jim, but there must be an interesting bubble-icious story or two in those under-400k listings somewhere. If I was in the market for a home and not just reading for entertainment, the site today would probably not be as informative as it was a couple of years ago.

  12. Josie

    If this sells for a million, then a million doesn’t get you much over there. But I’ve seen way better for even less than that. Maybe not in that area, but dollar for dollar, I’d probably pick PL or LJ over this place. No brainer for me. Fully awake.

  13. Jeeman

    Well, this goes down as a classic, as I thought you were touring some $250k home in old Vista or something. Wow!

  14. clearfund

    In the seller’s mind, you pay $300k for a lot (split parcel into 3 lots), spend $600k to build a decent 3ksf house, add in $100k of soft costs, and you got a NEW home by the beach for $1mm and just over $300/sf.

    Now that doesn’t leave much in the way of profit for a spec guy, but maybe he gets lucky and sells each lot for $400k to end users and makes $300k.

    Not saying its a good deal, just that the numbers are not totally out of bounds. Its a 100% 3 lot split and the house is just in the way.

  15. local boy

    These are 25 foot wide lots–we are NOT Huntington Beach–Best of luck to anyone who thinks they can make it make sence–Maybe $750K???

  16. Mozart

    Cardiff west of the 5 sells for about $500-$600/sf for an older re-sale.

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