San Mateo’s Countrywide Foreclosures - September 07 Update

So about a month ago I wrote about the Countrywide foreclosures in San Mateo County and now it’s time for an update on these homes.

So in Daly City we had the following brilliant home at 1125 Hanover . It’s still on the market and now the asking price is $574,900, a sharp reduction from the $639,900 price of last month. Unfortunately the current price still works out to be $610 per square foot, and it most definitely needs to be repainted inside and out.

Now in East Palo Alto we had this beauty at 208 Gardenia Way. The pictures really aren’t that bad and the price has been reduced $10,000 from last month to the current asking of $479,000. Well, would you pay $522 per square foot in East Palo Alto? I certainly wouldn’t.

In Menlo Park we have 1359 Hollyburne Ave, which also dropped $10,000 from last month and still unsold. It’s not very pretty though:

The Pacifica home at 641 Forest Lake Dr is still unsold and went through a $25,000 pricecut in a month. It’s listed as “neglected and needs TLC”. It looks like the other Pacifica foreclosure was sold for $613,000 a few months ago. That is about $6000 less than the Countrywide price.

The former million dollar home at 162 Coronado in San Carlos seems to be stirring up quite a bit of interest lately. It seems to have a lot of agents listing it that do not agree on the price. On Redfin it’s 779,900, but on Craigslist for the past week or so there has been a posting that read like this:

$749999 VIEWS on this foreclosed home 162 Coronado (san carlos)

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Reply to: hous-420306713@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-09-11, 10:57PM PDTHouses in this neighborhood begin at $1.1 - $1.9Call 1-888-769-9284 for more info

The Craigslist prices ranged from 729,999 to 749,999. If we assume that these ads are legitimate, then that means this house went for another $90k+ haircut in a month. It seems that it’s a unshowable fixer because there are zero pictures.

Over in South San Francisco, last month I pointed out that the condo at 930 Mission Rd #38 faced stiff competition from its neighbor which was priced at $499k. Well, it seems like the listing agents cut the price to $465k from $507k within the last thirty days, and the other listing in the same complex was sold. Could this home sell quickly now?

This update shows that most of the foreclosed homes are not sold and are still going through fairly drastic pricecuts. We’re not at the bottom yet kids.

So what are the new San Mateo foreclosures available at Countrywide? Lets take a look:

Daly City:

Address: 1905 Jameston Ln.
Last Sale Date: 07/27/2005
Last Sale Price: $654,000
Current Asking Price: $539,900
Size: 1230 Sqft
Comments: This is a condo with an HOA of $270 a month. The pictures on Redfin do not look so bad, but I’m betting that it won’t be sold within a month even though it’s below $500 per square foot.

East Palo Alto:

Address: 1245 LAUREL AVE
Last Sale Date: 07/12/2007
Last Sale Price: $492,750
Current Asking Price:$564,000
Size: 960 square ft.
Comments: This is an oddball on the Countrywide list. What’s going on here? Could it be an active flipper that already purchased the home from Countrywide in July? Usually it takes at least 3 months of late payments for a loan to go to default, so it doesn’t make sense that the home could be in foreclosure so quickly. The previous sale was for $670,000 in 2006 so it’s likely that was the mortgage that defaulted. Well, I think if it’s a flip, it will flop. Asking for almost $600 per square foot in East Palo Alto probably won’t fly these days, then again, what do I know, someone paid almost $700 per square foot for this same house last year. There only needs to be one person to fall for this.

Redwood City:

Address: 114 BROADWAY ST
Last Sale Date: 03/29/2005
Last Sale Price: $650,000
Current Asking: $549,900
Size: Disputed number. Zillow says 590 sqft while the listing on Redfin says 1007 sqft. It looks really small though.
Comments: It’s possible that the square footage posted by the realtor is inflated on this property. Bringing a tape measure with you to open houses is a good idea I think. It doesn’t matter if it’s 590 sqft or 1007 sqft, it’s still not worth it to pay that much to live 1.5 blocks from the 101.

Address: 615 Island Pl
Last Sale Date: 10/21/2003
Last Sale Price: $923,000
Current Asking: $1,125,900
Size: 2310 sqft
Comments: This home is a single family in a planned community so you still have to pay an HOA I believe. It’s actually in Redwood Shores, which is the part of Redwood City next to Electronic Arts and Oracle with some expensive apartments and homes built on an old Six Flags Marine World. It all looks really nice, but according to my mom who works in commercial real estate her company considered buying the business parks there and the surveyor found that the entire area is sinking so they didn’t buy it. The same sinking is happening in Foster City since it used to be a landfill and many of my uncle’s neighbor’s sewage pipes were broken by the ground sinking. My uncle sold his Foster City townhome quite a few years back because he was afraid his sewage pipes would break too. The Redwood Shores area is also plagued with electrical problems whenever it rains a bit hard and I have experienced this since I used to work there. If you don’t mind the occasional sewage spillage and blackouts then Redwood Shores is really a nice place to live, and this house looks pretty great.

Well, that wraps up this month’s San Mateo County Countrywide Foreclosures. I hope this was informative, and I’ll try to do another update in a month!

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