Depending on your point-of-view, the butt-ugly fixer-upper house at 412 Nevada that just sold for $725K is either a ridiculous symbol of our grotesquely overpriced housing market, or it’s an entry-level bargain for an ambitious home-buyer looking for a way to get a foothold in Bernal Heights. CurbedSF has the details:
The latest very expensive fixer-upper to sell in San Francisco is a seemingly unlivable Edwardian filled with piles of rubble on the south side of Bernal Heights. Its final price of $725,000 may not be as high as some of the fixers in neighborhoods like Noe Valley or the Mission, but given the state of the home it’s certainly enough to make heads turn. Windows are boarded up, the old tile in the bathroom is nearly destroyed, and there are holes in the wooden garage door.
The place was on the market for just a week before going into contract. It currently has two bedrooms, one falling-apart bathroom, a bonus room, and a garage that “possibly” could house a vehicle, according to the listing. Of course, it’s likely that none of that will matter, because there’s no way the new owners are moving in as-is.
PHOTOS: via Google Street View and CurbedSF
Bernalwood 
Get in where you fit in, I guess…
We looked at this place in 1990, when it was in much better shape — but still hideously impractical. Even then the garage door was blocked open by tree roots and erupting concrete. And what the seller’s agent called a “whimsical floorplan” included stairs to the top floor that were far steeper than standard and too shallow to put your whole foot on — a trip-and-fall waiting to happen.
“Whimsical floor plan” = Winchester Mystery House in realtorese. Minotaur included.
So, how does this work? Do we do an over/under on what it sells for after the flip, or do we buy squares on how many weeks until it is back on the market having been gussied up? Can we do both? I’ll take $1.3M and 25 weeks.
I’m guessing this can’t be “gussied up” and someone who knows what they are doing bought this for a complete teardown.
+1, it would probably cost more to repair then to teardown and rebuild a few condos on the lot for a profit of $2m+
Clearly neither of you has ever dealt with Planning in SF. Save a good fire or other disaster, you cannot get a permit to tear down anything. Re-frame an entire house inside the existing siding, maybe. But even doing an addition outside the existing structure is easily 6-12 months of Planning review. I know, I just went through it. There is no way a flipper wants to carry a mortgage for a year to do that.
Kevin, did you pay for a permit expediter?
@Kevin, based on the “driveway” my guess is that the home doesn’t even have a concrete foundation. If the foundation is dirt or brick, the new owners will have a much easier time getting permits to tear down. There’s NO WAY that home is seismically safe.
I had the same experience as Kevin. My house looked almost this bad when I bought it. And Kevin is right: A tear-down is extremely time-consuming and costly in SF. (When was the last time you saw a single-family home torn down here? I don’t recall ever seeing that, frankly.)
A complete gut-and-remodel seems like a far more likely scenario. FWIW, that’s what we did. We replaced everything in our house except for the roof, 3 exterior walls, and the hardwood floors. Everything else —literally, everything else— is new. New foundation, interior studs, plumbing, electrical, sheetrock, etc etc. I would have preferred to do a tear-down, but our planning regs make that infeasible. So instead we built a new house inside the shell of an old one. (And even getting permits to do that take a very long time.)
Alternative headlines:
Neighbors celebrate sale at top dollar of sorry excuse for a house, look forward to improved structure
Neighborhood celebrates revitalization of dumpy house after years of neglect
Make me sad to see a home like this. I imagine what may have happened for it to have been let go. Often times, the dumpy home belongs to an elderly person/s on a fixed income with no family around to help them keep the property up, or to help them find alternate housing options. Once a house starts going downhill, the problems begin to snowball. I remember a nearby neighbor of my grandparents in the Excelsior, whose home was in disrepair, was visited by a group of people – possibly from a neighborhood parish – and worked on the home for about a month, cleaning, repairing and painting it, at no charge to the elderly owners. They were lifesavers in that they kept the home from becoming like the one in this article, and elderly couple now had their safe and clean haven back. In this case, the house has so many problems, it seems a teardown would be in order.
That house was not owned by an elderly person.It is not going to be torn down.I live across the street.
I agree, L — even if the house looks pretty tumbledown from the outside, someone was actually living there. I don’t like to think of that person reading this article and feeling that he/she is being mocked.
Let’s say, for sake of argument that the home was owned by an elderly person. Elderly people aren’t stupid. They may not have the physical or financial capacity to make big improvements to their home, but they certainly know when the glory days of the home are in its past. I don’t think we need to sugar coat anything on the off chance that the former owner was, in fact, elderly, is reading this blog, and somehow interpreted these comments as mocking them. This house is in ruins. It is what it is.
“Has great potential” is, I think, the real estate broker’s parlance for such a place. I’ve walked by it daily, as I live on the same street, and have always been fascinated by the decrepitude of the place. Never once have I seen anyone in a window, inside or outside of it. Of course, it must be done away with as it’s an offense to property values. But I will miss having something “real” with which to compare the rest of the houses to, never seeing anyone in any window or in any yard or even outside of any other house – only the flickering glow of giant TVs and an occasional kitty, hiding under the cars. Little boxes….
It sure didn’t take long for the Dumpster to arrive. I drove home last night and there it was.
We would drive by at night and see a light on occasionally. Made me sad to know that someone was living there in such conditions. And the house was a danger to all of us in the neighborhood if it did catch fire, given how close our homes are.
I am happy to say I do know my immediate neighbors, having made it a point to introduce ourselves when we moved in. We all need to step outside our boxes and at least say hello. I will be glad to see this house improved.
The person living there was a very nice neighbor.The person who bought it was this woman who also bought another place up the block which is also getting fixed to sell.She has bought several here in Bernal that she flipped and sold.
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