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Saturday, September 26, 2009
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23 comments:
Check out the listing price history. It's like watching a tennis match:
PW7003809
The Redfin listing for PW7003809 gives you a more detailed history.
I think this place has been under contract at least 4 times. Every time it comes back as active at $599K. Then, it goes back up to $650K.
Looks like a very nice house. Purchased for $583K in 2001. Assessment went from $916K in 2006 to $600K for 2009.
TBW: never assume that Texas is undervalued. Texas eats outsider realestate investors for dinner and spits them out. Texas has a near infinite supply of land and 3% taxes.
Kaine deserves credit where credit is due:
Virginia Now Owns Three Top National Business Rankings
That WaPo fraud/rooming house article was crazy--the picture of the closet bedroom was easily worth 1000 words.
Here is one of the houses, look at the sales history.
http://icare.fairfaxcounty.gov/Forms/Datalets.aspx?mode=sales&taxyear=2010&ownseq=1&roll=REAL&jur=&sIndex=2&idx=1&LMparent=138
and here's the listing--what kind of floor is that, linoleum in the living room?
http://franklymls.com/FX6992253
Here's another one of the fraud houses. No interior pictures and THIS PROPERTY IS CHEAP BUT NOT FOR EVERYBODY makes me dying to see the inside. Looks like the realtor was on some kind of bender when he listed the property, then sobered up a few days later.
http://franklymls.com/FX6893481
"Sold" for 800k in 2006.
ok, one more random house. Do you think the tenants on Hockett St moved around the corner to this fine, fine property?
Check the no. of bedrooms and bathrooms. Its like a Clown Car house.
http://franklymls.com/FX6976944
Robert: Much of Virginia's top business ranking was built on and will be continued to be built on the backs of people who rented the closet sized bedrooms in what Meshell calls clown car houses. Virginia does not just have skilled technical works, it also offers a good supply of unskilled labor to fill the service and construction jobs on which Virginia's economy depends. The loose regulatory climate is a broad brush which covers local County zoning requirements too. Other than parking, Arlington Co. did not do anything to address overcrowding issues during the middle of the decade when these fraud or otherwise boarding houses where packed with people. I used to see several houses in Nauck where the grass was never cut but there were two rolling cans and always around 20 bags of extra trash each week. When these houses went to foreclosure, I looked at them and they were carved into 7 to 13 rooms all of which had padlocks on them. These were not the big houses in the Post article but small houses with 3 bedrooms originally. One of the houses also ran a catering service out of the kitchen for a truck that sold food to the workers who wait for pick ups down on Four MIle Run. My sister in law complained to Arlington about that illegal kitchen and over-crowding for years, but nothing was ever done about it.
Reecon-
someone in the comments section of that WaPo article posted links to a blog about a neighborhood in Maryland with the same kind of complaints-overcrowding, code issues etc, and from reading the article it seems like it took FFX Cty quite awhile to respond to the complaints, also.
I don't get that dynamic. Local govts have teams of people just to address code enforcement. You'd think they would be happy to have some of the work done for them in a way (people calling and identifying problem houses rather than having to do the investigation themselves). Why the local foot-dragging in Arl and FFX for clear-cut violations? I don't think these rooming houses were stacked full of registered voters.
Meshell,
Obviously the priorities of the local jurisdictions were very lacking. They were aware of these issues and failed to deploy the necessary personnel; all the while, spending our huge increases in property taxes like drunken sailors. Now they moan about budget cuts? What did they do with that 10-25% increase in property taxes every year while inflation was 2 or 3%.
They should all be out the door.
Re: lax enforcement, possibly because Arlington and friends would rather deploy those enforcement people to write parking tickets for a $50 fine each (and ignore appeals)?
The Springfield and Annandale neighborhoods where most of the boarding houses exist in Fairfax County are amongst the most affordable and solidly middle class. Gerry Connolly and his cronies never cared about the middle class people of Fairfax County. They only cared about who was lining their pockets with campaign contributions especially all the Real estate developers.
I know people who used to call and report overcrowded houses in Springfield. The County would come out and because everyone in the house claimed to be "related", the County would say the house was not in violation.
I suspect though it's a stretch to say land is unlimited. Each major city in Texas only has so much land in a 5-, 10-, and 20- mile radius of downtown.
There's quite a bit of apples and oranges there. There were homesteaders in D.C. back to the 1700's. There were only Indians ('scuse "Native Americans") in Texas during the same period.
150 year old cities in Texas are the exception rather than the rule. The development of housing in Texas was very different, even in the "big" cities like Dallas, Houston, San Antonio.
There are 1 acre lots less than a mile from downtown Houston with 3/2/2 ranches. Go a bit further and you won't be surprised to see goats or cattle to this day within the City limits.
For Houston, the other big advantage is those extra lanes. I-10 is now 18 lanes wide from the inner loop to almost the beltway. And the speed limit is still 70mph in many places. 55 is just ignored. There are three loops now, 610, Beltway 8, and now the Grand Parkway. On a good day I could blast out of the Woodlands (Spring, TX) and hit the Beltway, whip around the west side and take 45 South to Galveston and be on the beach inside of 75 minutes.
It isn't unusual to have folks take 30 minutes to commute from the Woodlands to downtown via the Hardy Toll Road. And none of that B.S. all HOV on the Interstate. A 30 minute commute in the DC metro gets you from one side of Arlington to the other...:-^
Apples and oranges between here and there man.
:)
For anyone interested in this house I posted about a while ago, it is under contract for I hear $1.25M to a newlywed couple on their honeymoon that wanted to be able to move in right away when they return. That's 50k over what I thought it would go for, and the owner is happy (and surprised) to have sold so quickly.
Geez Jermey, Do you remember what I said? I know I "thought" it would sell high. You know these people? Is this the same place? Its beautiful. I know some thought it gaudy or some such. I don't want to put words in others mouth.
Yes I know the family and have been in the house several times. It is beautiful and I like the neighborhood (for the 6-700k homes around it). I didn't think homes at that price were selling at all though, much less in only 3 months. Good for them that they found a motivated buyer. I can say that with a straight face since this home is so far out of my price range.
Jeremy,
Wow. I'm very surprised. 3 months for a over $1.2 million house. That's record time. Guess we'll see in September or October's numbers whether they were extremely lucky in snagging one of a handful of buyers or if the $1.0 million + market has picked up in general in Loudoun County. Hard to know which. Hopefully the rest of the process will be just as smooth of sailing for your friends.
(I was the one who said it was gaudy, and I still think it is, but since I can neither fathom wanting that much space, or wanting to allocate that much money towards a house, I'm not the target market for that kind of product, so of course they don't build them in a way that would appeal to me, why would they?)
Hi Cara, I understand its not your cup of tea and with you saying it was gaudy isn't an insult to the house just reflects your honest opinion. Have you heard anything on your place. I bet your nerves are on edge by now. I wouldn't spend that much either but I thought it was beautiful. The workmanship was wonderful and the pool was a real healthy chunk of change.
Arkey,
Murmurs. It's been moved to the "second stage negotiator" who will present "it" to "the investors". Whether "it" will be our contract price or the BPO or what, I don't know. How one even contacts "the investors" I don't know. We just heard this on Thursday, maybe? So for now, we've been appeased. Three weeks from now when we haven't heard anything more will be another story.
There have been a trickle of move-in ready places at/near their 2004 prices, but nothing tempting for us, since we'd really prefer a blank slate that we can update to our own tastes (and then have a hell of a time selling some day...). On the other hand, if any of them had been done to our taste/needs then the prices were not far from what I might be able to convince my husband to pay. (emphasis on the might). In any case it's comforting to see some real listings from real sellers at realistic prices, not just the continuing endless stream of short sales in my price range.
If we don't get this one, I think we'll hold out for a rec room/finished basement. We'll have to pay more for it, but that's fine.
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