104 Funston was purchased for $2,750,000 in May of 2007 and returned to the market this past March asking $3,150,000. Reduced to a “lucky” $2,988,888 on April 15, the price was further reduced to $2,875,000 eight days later. On Friday it was reduced to $2,750,000.
According to the listing the property “appraised at $2,850,000” and you can “move in with equity.” Who are we to suggest that its three weeks on the market at $2,875,000 without a sale would suggest otherwise.
Oh, and it’s also another property with “$400K of recent upgrades” which won’t be accounted for when it comes time to be counted in any industry “appreciation” (a.k.a. median sales price) reports.
∙ Listing: 104 Funston (4/3.5) 3,963 sqft – $2,750,000 [MLS]
∙ A Newly Renovated 355 Bryant #308 Returns [SocketSite]
∙ Medians Are Up, But Don’t Confuse That With Increasing “Prices” [SocketSite]
This place must’ve been a real dump in 2007 because I’m not seeing 400K worth of upgrades. Must be behind the walls and/or put in halfway decent fixtures.
I’m definitely no expert in this area, but that’s a big house (~4000 sf) so it seems like you could dump $400k into it by just updating relatively small portions of it. The heated towel racks are the dumbest eff-ing thing ever — I would reduce my offer by the price of ripping out such an idiotic energy-wasting item.
It is actually a pretty house from the outside. The down side is that the owners bought in 2007. I feel for them.
The reality is that homes have depreciated in price.They paid 2007 prices then added nearly 20% in improvements and are trying to sell it in 2010. If things worked out better for them, there would have been an appreciation of price that would have covered their improvements.
I don’t think this is a matter of critiquing towel warmers…
$5000 per week, every week for 3 years. Sigh. If only they had waited. All that money! Such a waste of your life’s savings.
At least they had toasty warm towels.
The carbon footprint of the area cannot be offset by the burble of the noise reducing fountain.
When this first came back on the market I thought the location might turn into an issue. You’re basically at the intersection of Park Presidio and Lake. I don’t think noise would be a major problem, but you do have a freeway in your front yard. Also, the side garden is really awkward and doesn’t really have any privacy from the street what with that tiny fence and all…
http://tinyurl.com/2542gfs
It may be foggy west of Presidio quite a bit, but “it’s always a sunny day with blue sky” (when you are a Realtor with Photoshop)…
@A.T. The towel racks are not such as stupid idea. They also provide radiant heat for the bathroom. They are not as energy wasting as central forced air heating which in most houses blow heat in every single room of the house; even when you just want to heat the one room you occupy.
towel warmers rock. try them before you pan them…
Denis, I agree with you. That house just feels really exposed. You’d have to keep your curtains closed all the time, and passers by going into the park can see every nook and cranny of that garden.
You can do a lot better for the price in that neighborhood, I think.
Regarding living on Funston Avenue, I’ve heard one person who rented an apartent there tell me that they can hear the traffic noise from Park Presidio despite having the greenbelt separating them. Is that true? Anyone else with direct experience?
Otherwise, Funston Ave has some very nice looking homes compared to the rest of the Richmond area.
you can definitely hear the traffic from this house, although the windows, if upgraded to something more soundproof (compulsory, IMHO), may help mitigate the issue.
apart from the noise, the house is poorly suited for a young family, in that the yard is more objet d’art than refuge for children.
i liked the look and layout of the interior, fwiw.
I think that socket sites comments are shortsighted. An appraisal was done for $2,850,00 less than 1 mo. prior, indeed making the purchaser gain equity at the sale price of $2,750,000., unless of course, Dennis, you are now an appraiser to. Have you visited the property? I doubt it. You are welcome to view the upgrades list at the property website which include a room addition and roof garden, new heating & air filtration, and 3 more pages of upgrades coming in at over $400K. You will not find this square foot or scale of home for sale in the Lake district at this Square foot price or sale price. Please note – that the high end properties in Lake and Sea Cliff districts that came to market in Jan, Feb or early March have ALL had price reductions across the board due to a down turn in the high end and this property made their reductions last and as a result of the appraisal. So before publishing comments which make you look informed, try looking at the statistics, visiting the home and then make realistic comments. Your cavaliler sabotage of a beautiful property is under appreciated, shortsighted and avaricious.
Erika – Please know that the concept of “instant equity” has been somewhat of an inside joke here and it isn’t just this property that is singled out.
Promoting a property as having instant equity implies that the buyer receives this benefit and therefore can include that into their personal valuation of the property. Of course the reality is that if the property really did have “instant equity” then it would sell for a correspondingly higher price. So “instant equity” is somewhat of an oxymoron.
I’m not an appraiser either. However I do know that the appraisal process is not an exact science and that appraisers are human and hence fallible.
Ms. Burke, thanks for chiming in. The fact that an appraisal came in at $2,850,000 one month prior (to what?) is indeed useful information for a listing. But you must realize you are being disingenuous. That some appraiser pegged the value at $2,850,000 does not indicate a buyer will “move in with equity” when the home doesn’t seem to be actually selling for $2,850,000. You may have said “recent appraisal at $2,850,000 indicates a lower chance of financing problems due to the appraisal” or something of that nature. That would be fine. But the editor properly called you out on the “instant equity” sales malarkey.
What in the world does an appraiser’s price have to do with a good selling price? A good selling price is one that a BUYER and a SELLER agree on. If there is no buyer, the price is sit wrong.
Now with that said, this is a lovely house. Socketsite has been around for a long time, tracking homes that sell for much more than asking and now, selling for less than initial asking.
In all fairness, I really hope this property sells at its price. It looks unbelievable at under $700 a sq foot!
I don’t need a house right now. I just bought one. But, as a recent buyer, I can tell you that I had choices that were unseen just 2-2.5 years ago. Given my choices, I could care about busy streets, etc…
It looks like they took the back porch and beautiful shade tree:
http://www.mapjack.com/?sq9mWHUnbFZB
expanded it into the back yard (after tearing out the shade tree in the back yard):
http://tinyurl.com/2bnoq4e
to create a small den off the kitchen in photo 14.
http://sfarmls.rapmls.com/scripts/mgrqispi.dll?APPNAME=Sanfrancisco&PRGNAME=MLSPropertyDetail&ARGUMENTS=-N367355644,-N244434,-N,-A,-N23515982
Whether that created value or destroyed value is up to you. The proximity to highway 101 probably ruled out very small children, but now you have no private play space even for school age kids:
http://tinyurl.com/2746fhl
Think of the traffic noise as the ocean.
Agree with all the comments about instant equity – it’s purely theoretical (based on one appraiser’s opinion) unless the buyer gets a suitcase of $100k in cash at closing.
Erika – it’s fair enough to defend the property that you are selling. However, how exactly would Denis (one ‘n’) possibly be considered “avaricious”? I see no evidence of greed from simply offering an opinion about the property, which is, after all, the purpose of this website. And if you are going to call him cavalier, it does help to spell it correctly.
Of note is that the current owners also paid over asking (+100k) in 2007 and closed escrow in under 45 days. No one is bashing the home, but it’s location is certainly undesirable and the improvements to the property are not being valued at par. I’m personally interested to see at what price this home sells and I do wish the sellers and agent all the good fortune in this process.
This is a great home and I love this neighborhood. I live in sea cliff and this home is very similar to mine and had great street presents. The weather is truly not as bad as people say it is. I think it is worth the price giving that this same home in my exact neighborhood would be much more!
I’m a little confused by the repeated references to Sea Cliff. This home is in 1d, not 1f, right ? That’s the Lake neighborhood, not Sea Cliff.
If you’re going to compare 1d to an adjoining district then Central Richmond (1a) is a lot closer.
What’s going on here ? An attempt to get the Sea Cliff panache to rub off on this home ?
My guess is that Aa is the listing agent. Her post contains a number of spelling and grammatical errors and coincidentally Aa doesn’t know the difference between street presence and ‘street presents’.
the street presents IS impressive. but why limit ourselves to sea cliff as a comp? if this house was located at 72nd and CPW, the move in equity could be worth millions! imagine.
I bet the current owner thought he or she had “instant equity” too. Should’ve have called it “distant equity.”
I’m not disparaging the house at all. It looks nice inside and in move in condition. The changes of the garden, however, seem bad for resale. It looks from the sidewalk like public green space, not a private sanctuary. Also, the home itself may be large, but it’s currently competing with homes in Laurel Village and the cul-de-sac streets off Lake whose homes are much more desirable and are priced lower. Regardless, I also hope a buyer come along very quickly! Of course, a lot of potential buyers do look at ppsf very closely and from that perspective the home may look more desirable. Good luck to everyone!
I get street presents all the time here in the Castro. Luckily the guys from the CBD usually get them cleaned up pretty quick.
Has anyone been keeping track of the inventory levels in D1? Anecdotally, it seems that there has been a significant uptick in the number of SFH in the +$1M range.
Just checkin’ out the neighborhood. The duplex at 204 Funston went back to bank on July 11, 2008. Wait, the name of the foreclosed party looks familiar. Ah, yes, same as the owner of 3271 Baker Street — which, BTW, is back on the market listed at $2.385 million (congrats Paul).
“new heating & air filtration”
Presumably you need that filtration when you’re on the Park Presidio freeway. I’m not sure why you need to use a wide-angle lens on an almost-4K sqft place, but this place does seem pretty nice. I would definitely be interested in what the rest of that $400K was spent on. Nonetheless, “instant equity” notwithstanding (which just asks to be mocked), the price seems a little high.
UPDATE: Will 104 Funston Return With Even More “Move In Equity?”
Mistakes like ‘street presents’ don’t inspire confidence IMHO. I expect precision when I’m going to drop $2 million+. “Instant Equity” is another red flag for me. People are a little less willing to accept BS in this market. Erika should consider AT’s advice.