How Low Will Prices Go? 50% Off in Edgewater: 1717 W. Granville
It wasn’t just condos that soared in price the last few years. All over the city, single family home prices sometimes doubled, tripled, or more.
Question is: what is the “true” market for single family homes now that the market is correcting?
Take 1717 W. Granville in Edgewater.
It’s a 4 bedroom, 1.5 bath house with a two car garage.
Here’s its history:
- Originally listed for sale in August 2005 for $525,000
- Reduced to $450,000
- Sold in December 2005 for $392,500
- Sold again in October 2006 for $475,000
- Foreclosure
- Now bank-owned
- Listed in November 2007 for $374,900
- Reduced multiple times
- Finally lowered to $239,900
- Just went under contract
I don’t have pictures of the interior. Here is the listing:
4 BEDROOM FRAME 2 STORY. BANK OWNED-SOLD AS IS! EARNEST MONEY-CERTIFIED FUNDS ONLY! NO SURVEY OR TERMITE PROVIDED BY THE SELLER. PRESENT PRE-QUAL LTR OR PROOF OF FUNDS WITH OFFER.
Maybe this house needs some TLC but is the low $200,000s going to be the going rate for houses in this neighborhood?
Anyone with any idea of which bank took the hit? I get gleeful when its a non-local megabank. 😀
One full bath is a relic of the past. Families nowadays demand two full baths when buying a home. I know a couple that just bought a home, and they plan to have children, and they refused to look at any house with just one full bath.
Homedelete: Obviously two bathrooms is preferred, but if that were so not many homes would ever sell in Oak Park, LaGrange, LaGrange Park, Evanston etc.
Many of the homes priced under $500,000 in those cities have only the one bath (or 1.5 baths.)
What a great deal! I missed this one, but have NOT looked much in that neighborhood.
That’s a great deal, assuming it’s in presentable shape. Figure the bottom will be in that ballpark; the land value alone is probably close to that from a long-term development-potential perspective.
Also, it’s often pretty easy (albeit a bit pricy) to turn a .5 bath into .75 bath, especially if there is some adjacent closet space that can be absorbed for a shower stall.
This makes me howl with laughter.
I’m familiar with this house, walk past it frequently. The 2005 price is the best price this fugly old dump is likely to get for the next 50 years….. if it isn’t torn down before then.
This neighborhood is very nice, but not any nicer than West Ridge, where you can get a PALACE for $500K plus.
I’ve seen worse properties in worse neighborhoods listed for higher prices, believe it or not. I’ll send a couple of doozies along that I found on the multilist..we all need the humor.
Here’s some history, this one is something else.
5/2/86 purchased by Milt & Ruby Jackson $n/a
years pass with 9 new mortgages (more than 1 per yr)
4/12/04 listed for sale for $365K
7/30/04 listing expired, but not to fear the 10th refi is here!
7/30/04 $295K mortgage with First Franklin Fin
8/22/05 listed for $525K, lowered to $450K
11/08/05 lis pendens filed by JPMorgan Chase
11/10/05 contract for purchase
12/7/05 sold for $392,500 to David Tu
12/7/05 100% financing ($314K + $78.5K)
No listing found in mls.
8/3/06 sold for $475K to David Nham
8/22/06 100% financing ($380K + $95K)
3/2/07 lis pendens filed by IndyMac Bk (that was quick)
10/16/07 judicial sale to Saxon Mtg Serv Inc
Cheers, Bob.
Correction: it isn’t “something else.” Not at all. Common, actually.
– per the mls, this property is already under contract (in the financing contingency stages) – as of June 2.
– the foreclosures definitely affect the market; they add stock and bring average prices down, BUT, houses like this? . . . houses that have gone ALL the way to foreclosure and out the other end? . . . they’re sh*tholes.
when a house sits vacant, there is NO ONE there to notice water seeping in through the roof or into the basement. . . the freezing and thawing . . . nobody stops the raccoons from moving into the basement, etc etc. (winterized or not!). it is tragic what can happen to a structure when unoccupied for a length of time.
buying a foreclosure is often a GREAT bargain/opportunity – BUT, one will pay for it in time spent dealing with mold and lots of repairs. if one is up for that and has the experience/skills/balls/financial reserves to deal, then, this market is DINNER TIME! for the average buyer, however, dealing with the lenders and their refusals to warrant title, allow inspections, provide condo docs (if it’s an attached, of course), etc. etc., and on and on, and in addition to all of the repairs required (expected and unexpected) is a big burden. some peeps are up for it; some peeps are NOT able to handle that.
and this is kindof a poop-hole anyway. a gnarly old frame house? when there are greystones and brick buildings available?
a tear-down costs money, but it might be the right thing. he he.
(no offense, house!)
all this translates into the following:
for the relatively limited pool of buyers/investors who ARE able/willing to handle the purchase and revamp of a foreclosed/damaged property, the market is full of deals. however, for the average buyers – the buyers who are not willing to deal with the time, effort, cost, drama, unexpected problems of purchasing a foreclosure, the market/pool of available properties does NOT include the foreclosures and, thus, the “average cost of a home” should be calculated excluding the foreclosures – or with a limited inclusion re the foreclo-s.
don’t get me wrong: the foreclosures AFFECT the avg price of a non-foreclosure, but not directly — NOT if one is not willing to deal with a foreclosure anyway.
a foreclosure costs x.
a non-foreclo costs x+y.
if one is not willing to deal with a foreclo, one should expect to have to pay the additional y.
oh my. i think i just did algebra on a blog. 😉
Plenty of houses sell with only one full bath, but they stopped building new houses that way years and years ago. I grew up in a house with one shower and it totally sucked in the morning when four people had to be out of the house at the same time.
Anyway, I work with foreclosurse and they are generally full of problems. There might be some ‘deals’ out there but generally be prepared for the worst.
HOMEDELETE
Can you drop me an email at falco_esq@yahoo.com? I have some questions for you.
why can’t you ask me here?
Laura, I’ll check out west ridge…thanks for the suggestion. However, the lack of train access makes it a LOT less desirable for me when compared to Edgewater or east Roger’s park. I actually emailed Sabrina a few days ago about this house because I was hoping she’d do a post about it and everyone could weigh in on whether or not it’s a steal. I’d really like to find a place along the red or brown line that I could rehab, and in this market, it seems the only way to make a good investment is to buy something like this that is half the price of anything within a few blocks of it. Even if it needs to be completely rebuilt, you could put 200K into it and still barely reach the list price of the next cheapest house within less than a mile of the red line.
In response to the “gnarly old frame house” issue raised by “forrealestate”, I have wrestled with my vinyl/aluminum-sided bias for a while and I don’t know if it makes sense when you’re considering the potential of a major fixer upper. There are a lot of good deals around the city if you’re willing to see past some bad siding. I’ve seen a lot of places near me in oak park that have been resided with wood or hardieplank or shingles and they look great. As someone who would like to rehab a place and live in it for a few years, I wonder if I should be more open to the modest little vinyl boxes out there.
Danny, I can surely understand your preference for Edgewater because of the transportation, as I do, too. I also love Edgewater because of its combination of urban “buzz”, relaxed atmosphere, high level of public safety (which was not always the case), friendly people of every type, great architecture, variety of retail and restaurants, and different types of housing, AND modest prices. Edgewater has become my favorite Chicago neighborhood, and I’ll almost certainly buy in East Edgewater.
However, it doesn’t approach West Ridge in the types and quality of single family homes, or the really beautiful three-unit flats in West Ridge that are unlike any others in the city. That is a truly beautiful neighborhood. Yet it is, I agree, extremely inconvenient and is almost TOO quiet. Very conservative area. If you live in West Ridge and want convenience, best to stay close to Devon Ave. Avoid the area near Howard St, which is experiencing big problems these days. I don’t blame a young person for avoiding this area, because it utterly lacks “hipness”- even though that can change rapidly.
with regard to a bias re frame houses/vinyl siding/etc.
i look at it this way: if i have a bias, and you are wrestling with a bias, then we are not the only ones.
RESALE. think resale.
people DO buy frame houses.
obviously.
people also buy garden units.
i’m just not sure i’d ever want to be in the position of trying to sell one.
with exceptions, of course.
Thanks for the feedback! I’ll have to do a little tour of west ridge at some point. As for the frame vs. brick debate, I wouldn’t hesitate to buy a frame house that was sided in something like hardieplank, which (as far as I know) doesn’t require painting and looks just like wood until you get pretty close. I guess everyone would still rather have brick or stone if given the choice and the cost was equal, but I think you can definitely get a lot more buyers to consider buying your frame flip if you just replace the vinyl/aluminum/asbestos siding with something else. Are there other options I’m not considering? Can you put stucco on a frame house?
“Can you put stucco on a frame house?”
Yes.
One thing in favor of frame houses–exterior remodeling (e.g. windows) is a LOT easier.
Putting stucco on any house is a really bad idea unless you live in Arizona or some other very dry climate. ALL stucco houses in the midwest will eventually have mold problems. Once mold sets in, the house will be unsellable at any price until it is fixed, which isn’t cheap. When it comes to stucco siding, take Nancy Reagan’s advice and just say No.
Seem to me like there are tons of stucco places here in Oak Park…lots of four square houses and bungalows. But maybe it’s not really stucco and I’m just confusing it with something else. Or maybe it is stucco and they have mold problems and it just sucks to be one of the hundreds of people around here who own one of them.