2912 Sacramento: Sitting Area
With built-in bunk beds even we wouldn’t mind sleeping in, a couple of wood burning fireplaces and anything but a cookie cutter interior, we had to take a peek.
∙ Listing: 2912 Sacramento (4/3) – $1,600,000 [MLS]

39 thoughts on “Please Don’t Burn The Built-In Bunk Beds Or Desk (2912 Sacramento)”
  1. I agree, very good location, nice yard, garage, and enough bedrooms and baths. Though it is old, it seems to be a “good value” for $1.6.

  2. Without seeing the disclosures my guess as to pricing could be due to any/all of the following: 1)a motivated seller 2)two bedrooms at the front of the home directly off the hall as you enter & 3) the kitchen is dreadfully boring and lacking the usual high-end finishes.
    Could we actually be seeing a fair-priced listing for a change?

  3. my great, great, great grandfather did those bunk beds.
    my prediction – magic photos. no way this home is any where near as large as it appears, and probably in much older condition than it appears.
    i personally can’t wait to see it on tuesday

  4. I went to an estate sale in this house on a rainy day in the fall/winter. Back then it was weirdly laid out, cramped, dingy, and seemed to be lacking sufficient heat. they spruced it up nicely, but it still seems cursed with oddball heating arrangements (hence the multiple stoves).

  5. Isn’t the Fire Stove a little too “Retro” compared to the rest of the house ?
    Or is this the new “in thing” ?
    🙂

  6. Notice how the agent doesn’t list sqft? If you’re wondering why the price seems so low, this would be the first place to look!
    I pretty much reject any place that won’t list sqft outright. Seems a stupid thing to omit. What are the selling agents thinking? Maybe I won’t notice the place is small before I sign the loan docs?

  7. MLS Pet Peeves that agents do/don’t do:
    1. Not listing the square footage
    2. No photos
    3. Confidential sale price therefore assigning the dreaded * symbol

  8. The problems with tax records is that they can be low or high in square feet.
    In France, it is legally required to list the square meters under the legal measurement system, which can be less than the actual size. They should do the same here.

  9. Isn’t the Fire Stove a little too “Retro” compared to the rest of the house ?
    It’s the new “Pride of Ownership” Stove, optimized for burning benjamins.

  10. It’s a trust sale, odd garage layout w/ 2 G-doors flanking the stairs. The home across the street was the mystery sale/non-sale recently? I’d say that this place is fairly priced. Open home on sat/sun from 2-5 indicates they expect this to sell fast and probably for over; but I think $1.6 is probably about right considering this is going to need some work. This is a better location than than the Vallejo home that sold for 700 psf, but that was a far superior home. Short of 20% over asking, not gonna happen, this is going to set a new recent low for a D7 SFH. This is the 4-5th home on Sac to list recently. What’s going on there? Whoever buys this is going to need some major inspections prior to closing escrow.

  11. All the stoves leads me to think there is asbestos everywhere. The inspections on this place will be a nightmare.

  12. a lot of talk at the open house was negative and feeling is the price declines or does not sell at all … I agreed, but kept my mouth shut as I am just an on looker at these things … my daughter also said it “smelled funny”

  13. I do not think it smelled funny, but it is a peculiar house. Almost anywhere else in the world one would expect quite a proper upper middle class home for 1.6, but in Pac Hts what you get is a Victorian cottage, with extensions, garages, and a few outdoor spaces. The rooms are odd, especially the two small bedrooms as you walk in left and right. I doubt that it is 1500 square feet, but it is divided up enough that it feels bigger. It has a certain charms, and they have tried hard, with nicely stained hardwood floors and carpets to make it appealing. I think a single person or a couple might find it fun.
    Its location is good, although it is near the bar on the corner of Sacramento & Divisadero.
    As a SFH it is much superior to many condos at the same price in the neighborhood.
    I suspect it will put a floor under the price of SFH north of California.

  14. “I suspect it will put a floor under the price of SFH north of California.”
    There is no such thing as a “floor” in this market. I know this house and it is not a no-brainer for this price. If they think they are selling this at an attractive price, I think they will quickly discover that is not the case. I don’t think that just b/c it’s technically “Pac Heights” that this is going to be an easy sale.

  15. The few SFHs on Sac that just recently sold in this sub $2M range, plus another on Washington were far superior and could be occupied with no improvement. I’d argue that this home is not livable by anyone with $1.6M to spend on a home and this place is bordering on shack-status. I earlier stated that $1.6 was a fair price; I’ll change that statement to say that it’s probably market price. This would be a real challenge for anyone that buys it. It’s not out of the question that this sells for under asking.

  16. Almost anywhere else in the world one would expect quite a proper upper middle class home for 1.6
    I was jeered by some here a while back for suggesting $400k/year salary was upper middle class for a family of 4. But no family of that size with a household income of less than $500-600k/year has any business buying a $1.6M home. (P.S. $1.6M gets you an all-out mansion/estate almost anywhere else in the world.)

  17. Still shows active on MLS. If someone paid $2M and got into a bidding war on this place, I certainly hope there is an oil field on top of it. Thank goodness there are conservators willing to restore our historic homes.

  18. Looks like I may end up eating my works on the 20% over comment. Still, god bless anyone who takes this on with a $2M starting point.

  19. I was jeered by some here a while back for suggesting $400k/year salary was upper middle class for a family of 4. But no family of that size with a household income of less than $500-600k/year has any business buying a $1.6M home
    So you have to rent and save and live on “only” $100k take home for a few years while you save $1M.
    3/4 of the families in this city live on less than $150k, I am sure someone making $400k can do it to, if they try.

  20. The problem is, after scrimping for years, do you want to dump it all on a rickety 109 year-old wooden structure in the middle of an earthquake zone? Something that bleeds 2-3% of its value every year in maintenance? Something that will most likely not be standing 90 years from now?
    Nothing wrong with buying lovely housing — but if you’re making 400K, then you should be able to live like someone in the top 1%, rather than like just an upper middle class guy.

  21. Yeah, and we all should have Pac Heights mansions with legions of slave girls to do our bidding. For some reason there don’t seem to be enough of either to go around for all the people who think they deserve this lifestyle.

  22. Yeah, and we all should have Pac Heights mansions with legions of slave girls to do our bidding.
    To each his own. But for most people, being wealthy means that you don’t need to spend 1/3 of your income on housing, or 12% on food, or 18% on transportation. It’s the poor who spend even more, and as you get richer, you spend less on less on these things, proportionally. So, for the top incomes, price to income trends towards 2. That frees up money for private school, investment, or travel. Even in San Francisco — at least, historically.
    What you are saying is that someone in the top 1% needs to overconsume housing, which is a pretty dumb thing to do, financially, but again to each his own. That is, unless a lot of people decide to overconsume, in which case the consequences are pretty severe, globally.
    So its a bit strange when in the midst of these consequences a voice of reason comes up saying “no way should you buy this house with a 400K income”, and your advice is “well, tighten your belt, you can swing it!” And then add that if you don’t overconsume, then you are an self-entitled prig who wastes money on orgies.
    Well, I say let the people making 800K a year buy this house, if they want to. They can afford to maintain it and won’t care too much about the market risk. That would also be in-line with historical spending patterns as well.

  23. This is hardly “my advice” as you put it. It is just obvious that someone with a regular income stream of $400k/yr can easily afford a $1.6M house and it is kind of silly to claim otherwise.
    Anyone who can expect to make $400k/yr for a substantial period of time can afford to “overconsume” as you put it on any number of things. If they would prefer luxury goods to housing that is their right, don’t you agree?
    You hardly have to worry much about “market risk” if your expected career average income is in the $1/2M range.
    Housing in the Bay Area has always been expensive and it has gotten more expensive over time, as the relative desirability of the area has improved. Many cranky renters who post regularly on this site like to claim otherwise, but they have so far not been able to come up with any other reasonable explanation for the continuing outperformance of the region economically.

  24. NVJ — who are these “cranky renters”? Seriously — let’s hear some names — as I often hear these types of strawman arguments from you. E.g. The Bears, who have predicted 50% falls in Noe Valley Prices by 2010 will be in for a surprise...
    In any case, housing in the bay area has appreciated in line with wages and interest rates, just as anywhere else in the country. As people earn more, the consumption value of housing increases, and as the cost of capital decrease, the benefits of borrowing that consumption up front become more attractive. San Francisco is in no sense an outlier when you adjust for incomes and interest rates.
    The one exception was a brief post 2000 period when people went crazy with IO and funny loans. 70% of loans in San Francisco were IO loans, remember? But that was just the local expression of a national fever, although other areas had more of a sub-prime issue than an ALT-A issue.
    Moreover, it is ridiculous to chastise someone for not wanting to overconsume housing. The fact of the matter is that people in the top few percent pay less for housing than the rest of the population. They underconsume. You may believe that they should spend more — but the data shows otherwise. In fact, it’s a nice exponential decay. If I have time I will plot it for the board.
    And to accuse the majority of wealthy people, and those who hold similar views, of being self-indulgent would-be sex-slave accumulators — I mean, really — who is the cranky one here?

  25. ” for the continuing outperformance of the region economically.”
    What ARE you talking about? Unemployment statistics, housing price declines?, average incomes (it depends on the industry you work in)?
    NVJ, if you are going to include Palo Alto, Mill Valley and Piedmont, PLEASE make sure to include Richmond, Oakland, East Palo Alto or Union City (all cities nearby). Or, just walk 10 blocks from Noe Valley to some of the dirtiest dangerous streets on the west coast.
    The high cost of housing in San Francisco has nothing to do with incomes. Similar high density neighborhoods in larger cities with higher income zip codes than Noe Valley have housing costs 1/4 of your neighborhood.
    NVJ, many people in other large high density cities choose to not spend nearly the percentage of income on housing that San Fanciscans do. My brother is a doctor at Northwestern in Chicago and earns about 350K and owns a 2bd condo in that city that cost him about 400K. He wouldn’t dream of spending more, why should he? Plus, he is putting about 1/5 of his income into retirement accounts.

  26. I told you people that it wouldn’t sell for 20% over asking! Ha! It actually sold for 31% over asking. $2.095 is the officially recorded price in the MLS. I’ve long said there is a $2M floor in PH but I was fairly certain that this home would set a new low. Honestly, I can’t see how this is going to have a happy ending for the buyer. This home was quite the disaster. Godspeed.

  27. eddy, This home was a disaster, but its nothing 200k in cosmetic and 80k in foundation upgrades can’t fix. And I am assuming the buyer paid all cash, or at least 50 percent down, so they probably have more where that came from to fix the place up.
    I quite liked it, but I have to agree with the little girl who said it smelled funny.

  28. The economics are bad, that is all. Anything can be fixed, but 2 other homes sold for less than this one, and were in much better condition with a much better floorplan. A 3rd home sold for just under 2 on Clay / Steiner that was also very nice but needed work. I’d prefer it over this home. Barbra Callan just sold an awesome home on California for $2.2 that is so beyond compare to this home that it’s sad. I don’t see how this got its final bid. This goes on my list of worst deals in recent memory in this district.

  29. This one is back too. Should be interesting. Looks fairly applish; but I don’t think this will end well. Still not sure how the buyer justified their price-paid on this one. But they didn’t touch the bunk beds from what I can tell.

  30. Guess I’ll have to eat my words for real this time. Sold for $2.165. 70k OVER its 2009 price. This place is a hot potato.

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