53-55 Pomona Street

Purchased for $330,000 in 2012, the sale of the two-unit Bayview “castle” at 53-55 Pomona Street, which has just been listed for $995,000, will likely make a headline or two when it closes escrow.

But keep in mind the property sold for $880,000 in 2006 as well, a fact which is likely to go unmentioned as it doesn’t fit the “OMG!” narrative.  And the 2006 sale was prior to the property being remodeled, which isn’t to say there isn’t still room(s) for improvement(s).

39 thoughts on “Calling All Kings (And Queens)”
  1. A. You had me at crenellation.
    B. A man’s home is his ….
    C. Who would build a fortress in the Bayview? Oh wait.

    Good trade though. $330K in 2012.

  2. It’ll be delivered vacant. That’s a major value add.

    However, it seems a better idea to merge the small downstairs unit with the large upstairs unit so that you have a single family house with no rent control.

  3. Yeah saw it. The guy who brought for $330k in 2012 got an outstanding deal. I wonder what the issues where with it? Even in 2012 a decent duplex would hit $500k in BV. (Of course, I nabbed one in 2014 for that price, but I’m special 🙂 so maybe someone has the backstory on this from 2012.
    And btw, wrt castles in BV, there is a worse one on Newell, near Quesada. Street map it, you’ll see.

    1. The street is actually “Newhall”, near the intersection with Quesada. At the top of a steep hill, the ‘castle’ has a commanding view of its surrounding Bayview kingdom. I live just up the street from this grey fortress, and it’s interesting, to say the least.

      [Editor’s Note: 1540 Newhall to be exact.]

  4. I recall 2009-2010 when we were debating sub-400K houses in the BV based on how close they were from a recent murder. A price tsunami lifts all boats and suddenly crime doesn’t matter anymore. Until the next crash that is…

    1. Crime don’t matter anymore in the mission. It’s been commoditized-culturalized-hipsterized. $1400 PSF condos anyone? Lots of precious lil’uns running around. And they’re not all brown.

  5. Decent sub-300 houses in the Bayview just a few years ago. I called out the many who cried (then) that “SF is just too expensive” – what they really meant was that the really nice neighborhoods were too expensive. Not a whole lot of sympathy from me.

    A million to live here? Not for me, and I even like a few of the bars and restaurants around here. But considering places this size are going for $3M in my neighborhood now, I can’t say this price is out of line. Craaaazy.

  6. Some advice for the younger generations and others who complain about housing prices in SF now:

    Buy in Bayview now,you will never regret it and you’ll become wealthy in 15 years.

    1. Tell that to the guy who bought for $880k, held on for six years and sold at $330k.
      Advice to the young’ens:
      Things are never as good as they seem during the high times, and never as bad as they seem during the low times.
      Buy low, sell high, Diversify

      1. Buy low, sell high

        Well, someone needs to buy high and sell low for this to work. That would be… that house.

      2. Won’t happen like that again. BV and D10 have jumped the shark this time around. Weaker parts of Oakland? Yes, they may take a big drop. But D10 has become precious like the rest of SF.

        1. I wish that were true but it’s not. You’re talking your book with blinders on.

          Most hipsters and millenials skipped Bayview and headed straight to Oakland, bar owners and restaurateurs too.

          I like Bayview and see momentum but it hasn’t come close to jumping the shark.

          1. Ummm…you’re forgetting the Shipyard and Candlestick projects. They are game changers. 5-10 years from now it’ll be hard to recognize BV.
            When I said jumped the shark, I didn’t mean the neighborhood has already changed to that degree; but that it won’t drop 40-50% in value in the next downturn (like it did in 08-09.)

          2. Yeah, boots on the ground what’s happening in parts of Oakland is light years ahead of anything going on in Bayview.

            Gotta be selling something or smoking something to not see that.

          3. Right, naive fool. As if Oakland won’t crash much harder than SF in the next recession. People buying $700k condos left and right in Bayview. Why? Because more people want to live IN THE CITY.
            But good luck with your poor ass hipsters in Oakie…and whip me up a latte while you’re at it, bro.

            [Editor’s Note: As a point of fact, a total of 5 condos have sold for $700K or more in Bayview over the past six months (versus 23 in Oakland).]

          4. Fact is that wave after wave of gentrification and wealth has hit SF. And it sticks in some places and doesn’t in others.

            Seems like BV is just a T ride away from the city core, but it’s also been true that the tenderloin is just blocks away from greener pastures. So you gotta ask yourself why hipsters jumped the bridge?

            My money’s on that it isn’t the “in the city” that’s worthy of your caps lock key. It’s the walkable urban village vibe. Drop someone in these parts of Berkeley and Oakland and they’d easily think themselves in NV/BH/GP Don’t see that vibe in the BV/TL

          5. put me in the camp that doesnt believe BV will be very gentrified in 10 yrs. The point above about the TL and also Western Addition being in the core and not being very gentrified is important. BV more dangerous than both and further away than both and much less retail than both.

          6. Deals in the Western Addition disappeared about 2 years ago. Gentrification is in full swing there. Makes sense as that is a great location and it was a shame that it was such a no man’s land for decades. It’s still less, of course, than top neighborhoods but, heck, a condo on CrackAllister street just went for almost $2 million. You could get great deals there about 3-4 years ago (I have friends who bought a fantastic, huge flat in 2012 for 50% of today’s going rate). No more. No going back.

            I agree that this kind of gentrification in the BV is decades away, and maybe never. Don’t think we’ll see a NINJA/nothing down crash like we saw in 2007. But anyone who pays $1 million for a plain old house in the BV is a bit nuts imho.

          7. I think the BV should “gentrify” faster than the TL just through pure mechanics.

            A big factor in the gentrification is the proportion of rent controlled tenants vs market rate. The TL has more multi-unit buildings and almost no SFHs. The BV is the opposite, even though there were quite a few new rental buildings built in the past decade, which are not rent controlled due to recency.

            Now there’s the issue of section 8 and social housing in general, and these will not go away, which means the BV will still keep some its character whatever price the houses reach. And this means that during downturns prices will collapse deeper than anything else because of the speculative nature of buyers in the BV as was proven during the 2007-2011 downturn.

          8. 1- Whoa editor. Oakland is 10-12x larger in population than BV, so you gotta proportion those numbers out. Plus, Oakland already has expensive and gentrified areas like rockridge, lake Merritt, etc. Lets keep this apples to apples!
            2- BV is very walkable. 3rd st will become very quaint, as more shops, cafes and restaurants move in.
            3- I agree BV was passed over on the gentrification train last cycle, but this time it’s different. I mean, where was west Oakland in 2005? Nowhere.
            4-the housing projects in BV are getting totally redone, and mixed income housing is going in instead. It’ll make a big difference.
            5- Dogpatch is getting a lot of buzz, and BV is a quick ride away. Warriors stadium, UCSF campus, etc. all along 3rd st all make BV more relevant than years ago.
            6- the big reason tenderloin has gentrification resistance is because of the extreme concentration of SRO’s. Hard to get rid of them, and they are a constant nuisance to street safety, not to mention cleanliness. BV doesn’t have that.
            7- and yup, the western addition is done. Muy expensivo.

          9. prices may be high in parts of western addition, but is is definitely not gentrified.

          10. People can say what they want about BV but the changes are already well underway, it’s far better than it was 10 years ago and it will be completely different in 20. We recently bought near here and the new businesses and residents are slowly moving in and their presence is increasingly apparent but crime is still a very real concern here, ti’s not as good as the boosters want everyone to believe but it’s also not nearly as bad as most think either. It will be a slow change but not as slow as TL because lower income people here own their homes and the high value will be too tempting for those who have had very little their whole lives to pass up. Long term, the location is the main draw and key to the rise of SE SF. I think being just south of the job centers of Downtown/Soma/Mission Bay and on the way south to the even larger job centers on the Peninsula will be increasingly attractive to those sick of long commutes, not to mention, easy access to Caltrain, Highways, the Airport, Muni and Uber solved the Taxi problem here.

            I do think though, the better buy for single family home shoppers are the residential neighborhoods immediately adjacent to BV, slightly more money for now but much safer, no projects, same sunny weather and still walking distance to Third plus their own amenities, in the near term these areas are a much nicer place to be while the BV rises and once it’s there you can take advantage of all things good and not deal too much with the rest.

    1. I forgot to mention the place has a pool, your own river and a detached servant’s quarter larger than this Bayview beauty

        1. Telecommute: no time at all. It’s the 21st century. Being untethered has its perks, believe me. Quality of life arbitrage is fantastic when you play it well.

        1. You have a Million Dollar castle. You can certainly afford the help. j/k

          Seriously, think about spending a million dollar into a fake castle in the BV and having to ride the T to go to work like Hoi Poloi.

  7. Loving the floors in this place. They are breathtaking. I hope they’re real, not laminate nor engineered.

  8. The sustained prices over a long period of time and the overall health of the markets are having a profound effect on SF. Rapid gentrification is happening all over the city in areas I’d had thought would take 15-20 years to get traction are already happening simultaneously. Usually the gentrification bug hits town by town but the demand is so strong across the board we’re seeing some pretty insane pricing on the high end comps $5k / $3k psf on a few properties; and big ticket prices. It’s like everywhere is the “New Noe” in SF.

    I’m not convinced the Bayview and Parkside areas are smart investments. A lot of crime and bad stuff in large parts of the Bayview and Parkside is pretty far out. I’d buy tenderloin, mission bay, portrero, western addition all day before making the jump to BV. Parkside is pretty nice and there are some great areas with good pride of ownership.

    I agree that over the long long term BV is probably going to turn but a lot has to happen and there are much much better places to put your RE investment. A good buy today in the sunset, richmond or ocean beach could yield a nice safe home with lots of ‘potential’ upside in the near term.

    I hope whoever buys this home opens a white castle. 🙂

    1. Big Big mistake confusing prices with on the ground changes.
      There’s feeling like Noe and there’s being priced like Noe.
      People paid round $880 for Noe fixers and one guy paid that for this BV fixer. The guy paying near a million for this fixer didn’t make BV into Noe though.
      Slim picking out there now, so people pay what they’ve gotta pay.

      Five new households over $700 in half a year, ten per year. Only a hundred after a decade. Thats not enough for real change.

      1. Perhaps I wasn’t clear but that’s not what I was doing. Old Noe was working class hood. New Noe is the 2005-2009 when it was really showing signs of full gentrification; and we’re now in the “New New Noe” of fully gentrified. Basically, I just saying that there are a lot of areas that are turning the corner. When talk of removing a dead and decaying body from a home is met with real estate enthusisiam its a sign that things are a little frenetic. Furthermore, we’re seeing homes selling at high prices (relative) in places that are showing signs of gentrification far earlier. The window of finding that magic spot is closing more quickly than it has previously for up and coming places before prices start to get rise. See Richmond and Sunset as prime examples of areas where homes traditionally seen as “too far” or “too foggy” are quickly being snatched up at decent prices. The Inner Richmond is basically as hot as it gets right now.

        It remains a curious time

        This is all anecdotal and based on a decade of close market observations so it’s all very opinion based.

  9. But you just did it again.

    “See Richmond and Sunset as prime examples of areas where homes traditionally seen as “too far” or “too foggy” are quickly being snatched up at decent prices”

    You’re not saying these hoods have gotten closer or less foggy, Right? Just higher priced. Redfin Recon only gets you so far, some hoods are actually changing from “warn your out of state friends when they visit” to “brag about to your out of state friends when they visit”

    Dropping a five spot for Arco coffee doesn’t make it Blue Bottle.

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