Foreclosure Alert: 45% Off in Historic Oakland: 4125 S. Berkeley
The Oakland Landmark District is located on the south side of the city, just north of Kenwood. Often also called Bronzeville, the Oakland neighborhood is close to the lake and still contains at least 50 historic structures.
This 1888 vintage 3-bedroom home at 4125 S. Berkeley is right in the middle of the historic district. It’s been renovated and is in “move-in condition.”
It’s also priced about 45% less than the 2007 sales price and is now bank-owned.
Is this single family home a deal?
Alex Sowa at Arc Realty has the listing. See the pictures here.
4125 S. Berkeley: 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, no square footage listed
- Sold in October 1988 for $2,350
- Sold in December 2002 for $74,297
- Sold in February 2007 for $489,000
- Lis pendens in October 2007
- Bank-owned in August 2008
- Originally listed in January 2009 for $281,000
- Reduced
- Currently listed for $265,900
- Taxes of $2888
- Central Air
- No parking
- Bedroom #1: 15×12
- Bedroom #2: 10×10
- Bedroom #3: 12×10
That is not a renovation, that is a bad plastic surgery job (the smaller windows, the aluminum siding…). It looks like it needs about $100-150K in work to make it livable to re-install the historic character.
So the real price is closer to $400K all said and done.
Congrats to the people who bought in ’02 and left in ’07.
That “reno” is heartbreaking…
paulj- I agree, let’s not call that a renovation! That is so typical in that area. Those amateur flippers buy a house for 75-100k, give it a 50k half a** renovation and expect to make 300k profit. You can tell they all watch those HGTV and TLC reality shows and think that making 6 figures off a property in 2 weeks can happen in real life….HA. The thing that’s so irritating about this is that the flippers can just walk away if they don’t sell and we are left with the tab. grrrr
Speaking of which- how long does it take to get FICO scores stable again after foreclosure? It seems like soo many homeowners today don’t mind walking away from their properties instead of paying what they can to keep their house/credit.
Looks like the house to the right is boarded up. That should do wonders to this beautiful unit’s property value.
Lauren, the late pays and the foreclosure will reduce a FICO to the 500’s; from that point forward, pay all your bills on time all the time, and you can improve your score to the 600’s within three years (old debt doesn’t count so much with the FICO). However, IIRC either the GSE’s or FHA or both recently changed the rules and in order to qualify for a mortgage you have to be a minimum of 5 years post foreclosure judgment; 3 years if there are special circumstances. You may want to double check my accuracy but it’s something like that. So what that means is that even if you pull your credit scores into the 600’s and have a large down payment you will still qualify for a mortgage until the foreclosure is long in the past. But IMHO so few of these flippers/goof are even paying their bills on time right now; I doubt 90% of them would qualify today for mortgages even if lending standards returned to 2006! At least back then you needed to be only 2 years out of bankruptcy or foreclosure with a 700 credit score to get 100% financing (Thanks Indymac!)
HD: Just to double check – do you mean even if I have 600 FICO & large down payment I *will not* qualify, or *will* qualify, for a mortgage in under 5 years?
If I can then wow. I honestly haven’t kept up with bankruptcy / foreclosure rules as I am not looking to need to rely on them but good to know.
I’m pretty sure HD unintentionally left out the word *not* based on the previous two sentences.
You know, the rules change on a daily basis I can’t tell you what’s going to happen tomorrow. But as of today I know you need more than a 600 FICO! Three years ago a 600 would have probably gotten you 95% financing. I don’t think a 600 will get you anything today.
I guess what I was trying to say is that even if your credit score improves in the future, the foreclosure in your past will haunt you longer than it would have just a few years ago.
280k to get shot at, no thanks.
That renovation is freakin fugly! 200k max
The good news about the house next door is that it’s just that one window boarded up. The bad news is that there’s a lot of plywood in the neighborhood: Streetview: http://tinyurl.com/dccelq
These little cottages are cute, but the vertical vinyl siding is atrocious. And double kudos to the 2007 seller, even if there was $200,000 in renovations (unlikely) from the 2002 condition, they still made out like bandits.
Ok…no vertical installation of the vinyl siding, but the vinyl siding there at all is ugly. Could nice cedar shakes really been that much more expensive?
Good info homedelete. Thanks for insight. I wanna own again someday, but in this market and economy, I don’t think it will happen anytime soon.
I used to live on 47th and Woodlawn a few years ago in Kenwood, which is adjacent to Hyde Park and the Oakland neighborhood. I had always heard such great things about the area, and I was excited when I got a chance to live there. Pretty quick I discovered there is minimal shopping/dining/clubs in the area (it has gotten a little better recently), and if you did wanna walk or bike, some streets were OK, but really easy to veer off into shady/suspect sections. Berkley is one of those not quite ready for prime time streets.
Very true JJ,
I used to live 14 blocks south 5 years ago and learned quickly that “quickly gentrifying” was a salesman’s term.
When you can’t go into the BP on Lake Park after 11pm and they even need to fetch Doritos for you and pass it through bulletproof glass, when addicts will walk up to you sitting INSIDE a restaurant on 53rd and hit you up for money at 1pm, you know it can’t be a great area.
I was lucky I was never a violent crime victim there, but I know multiple (at least 4) stories from people who were. Only my car was broken into and my stereo expropriated about a month after moving there is all.
Still yet, where I lived was much better than 63rd street, despite being only a skip away. Its where drug dealers were/are brazen enough to shoot back at the cops. Once I read in a campus magazine that the 63rd st/cottage grove El stop was manageable so long as you went with a group of friends and I had to LOL at that. Despite being close to campus you’d be insane without going with at least 4 friends.
Noone will admit its the government subsidized housing in the high-rises. Eliminate the government subsidized housing and 10-20 years later the crime rate drops. Its not hard to figure out: people (single moms) unfit to breed aren’t creating criminals en masse.
Update: This property was REO and then got the copper stolen from it. Sold in Jan. for $62K and then resold for $218K. Neighborhood is very nice….gentrified and things are selling now that prices are more reasonable.