Author Topic: House next door razed. Giant mcmansion to be built. Sell now or wait?  (Read 20338 times)

Cassie

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Re: House next door razed. Giant mcmansion to be built. Sell now or wait?
« Reply #100 on: July 17, 2019, 09:26:37 PM »
Wow that’s truly awful!

Goldielocks

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Re: House next door razed. Giant mcmansion to be built. Sell now or wait?
« Reply #101 on: July 24, 2019, 12:19:22 PM »
^Oh how my former neighbors (person behind them has it almost as bad...maybe worse) wishes it would be lived in by a single family who works all the time or never uses any of the fancy rooms. But the 9 bedroom/bath combos are all very small and all appear to have individual doors to the outside (even the ADU bedrooms). Sounds like it'll be a large rental house, student housing, monk housing or (most likely) AirBNB. I took some photos of the back house and ADU that the person (who I know well) who lives directly behind the house experiences. Its pretty huge from that perspective too but at least she has a yard space of about 30 feet seperating her house from the other place.

Yikes.  California, I guess.... but yikes when it is obviously not built to be a "home" for one or two families.   
I have a concern with a monster going up near me that maxed out the floor area by building a huge cube of a house (complete with flatish roof to max out the ceiling heights inside), and then put what must be 2000 sq.ft of roof covered deck (1000 sq.ft per level) on the Front, which is very intrusive as it projects far past the neighbor houses.... and will likely be enclosed living space in 2 years, against building codes...

Goldielocks

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Re: House next door razed. Giant mcmansion to be built. Sell now or wait?
« Reply #102 on: July 24, 2019, 02:13:12 PM »
Okay, I got a picture of the house.   I think the deck is at least 50% of the area of the house, and that house is likely 4500 sq.ft.

Note the (now typical) projection of the house far beyond the frontage of the neighbor.  I think the enclosed wall area is around the same distance from the road.  The city does try to make the frontages fit in, but because it is an "open deck" they likely allowed the projection forward.   In the past, they did not allow for second floor decks that could be easily enclosed like this, without counting them as floor area.

The issue here, is the massive bulk of the roof over the upper deck.   No roof and this would have been fine.   Pergola roof with shade fabric or a clear rain cover would be fine.   

Nothing close to the challenges of the monster home in your pictures (9 bedrooms with doors to the outside!)

MayDay

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Re: House next door razed. Giant mcmansion to be built. Sell now or wait?
« Reply #103 on: July 24, 2019, 03:14:26 PM »
Does the roofed porch not violate the building code setback requirements and permeable space requirements?

Goldielocks

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Re: House next door razed. Giant mcmansion to be built. Sell now or wait?
« Reply #104 on: July 25, 2019, 09:20:55 AM »
Does the roofed porch not violate the building code setback requirements and permeable space requirements?
Yeah,  10 years ago it certainly would have....   Now I think they just default to "lot coverage not more than 40% of the lot" and "total sq.ft (enclosed) at around 4500 to 5000 sq.ft across all levels.  This house is on a large lot, so the (hidden) backyard is deep.  They should have placed it further back, IMO.

Telecaster

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Re: House next door razed. Giant mcmansion to be built. Sell now or wait?
« Reply #105 on: December 01, 2019, 11:17:54 PM »
Welp, the $770K demo and new build just went on the market.   Asking price is $2.1 million.

House sold for a cool $2.0 million. 

ChpBstrd

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Re: House next door razed. Giant mcmansion to be built. Sell now or wait?
« Reply #106 on: December 02, 2019, 09:12:07 AM »
Welp, the $770K demo and new build just went on the market.   Asking price is $2.1 million.

House sold for a cool $2.0 million.
I wonder what the profit was after all construction costs and buying/selling costs were included? I can't imagine the place I ranted about in the OP selling for that much because of the location but maybe I'm wrong. I saw it up close the other day while visiting former neighbors and it's HUUGE. It's taking forever to build and no roof or siding on or anything else so imagine construction delays or problems with permits etc as well as sitting vacant for a long time will add a significant amount to the end price.

I still don't think they plan to sell but to rent individual rooms.  It still appears it's going to be an AirBNB or student housing  (or both) because of the tiny size of each of the 9 bedrooms/bathrooms (around 9 x 10 room with a 5 x 8 bath and tiny closet about 3 x 3). Plus each room has a outside access door. I just visited my former neighbors and got a look at the houses up close and I still can't see it being anyone's private home.

Sounds like a fraternity house?

former player

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Re: House next door razed. Giant mcmansion to be built. Sell now or wait?
« Reply #107 on: December 02, 2019, 09:40:25 AM »
Welp, the $770K demo and new build just went on the market.   Asking price is $2.1 million.

House sold for a cool $2.0 million.
I wonder what the profit was after all construction costs and buying/selling costs were included? I can't imagine the place I ranted about in the OP selling for that much because of the location but maybe I'm wrong. I saw it up close the other day while visiting former neighbors and it's HUUGE. It's taking forever to build and no roof or siding on or anything else so imagine construction delays or problems with permits etc as well as sitting vacant for a long time will add a significant amount to the end price.

I still don't think they plan to sell but to rent individual rooms.  It still appears it's going to be an AirBNB or student housing  (or both) because of the tiny size of each of the 9 bedrooms/bathrooms (around 9 x 10 room with a 5 x 8 bath and tiny closet about 3 x 3). Plus each room has a outside access door. I just visited my former neighbors and got a look at the houses up close and I still can't see it being anyone's private home.

Sounds like a fraternity house?
Brothel?

Cassie

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Re: House next door razed. Giant mcmansion to be built. Sell now or wait?
« Reply #108 on: December 02, 2019, 01:41:26 PM »
My husband had a 6 month contract job in San Jose and we thought he could take our RV but all the parks were full. This couple built a ton of rooms with bathrooms and separate entrances onto the house going into the backyard. It was way cheaper than renting a apartment but a money maker for them.

dougules

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Re: House next door razed. Giant mcmansion to be built. Sell now or wait?
« Reply #109 on: December 02, 2019, 02:53:06 PM »
Any updates from your former neighbor, Spartana?

dougules

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Re: House next door razed. Giant mcmansion to be built. Sell now or wait?
« Reply #110 on: December 03, 2019, 10:52:49 AM »
Any updates from your former neighbor, Spartana?
I was just over there checking out the place. Looks a lot bigger fully framed and just seems to loom over the 2 houses next to it and behind. Both the side house neighbor (with the disabled kid) and the rear neighbor plan to try and sell and move this spring. The construction is going very slow and quietly so it won't be done until then most likely. 

Now seeing it mostly built they are both worried it will be housing for a larger number of people then they thought if it is student housing or the like. We have a thing here called a "Density Bonus" which allows developers to by-pass current density limits and build extra units if they a certain percent of the units are rented to lower income people. In the case of a SFH and ADU being newly built as a rental then the Density Bonus applies to the number of people/beds per room. Normally the city codes allow 2 people per room but the density bonus allows you to have up to 4 people per bedroom as long as a certain percent of the rooms in the house are rented to lower income people - usually students but can be rehab places, nursing care, homeless shelter, religious groups, etc. While I think that can be a good thing for a tight housing market, uunfortunately usually only 20% of the rooms are rented to low income locals and the rest are used as AirBNBs for tourists. So the neighbors are pretty concerned that a 9 bedroom place could be a crazy party house.

ETA: No one knows anything about the owners who seem to be an international (likely Chinese) investment firm of developers.

She's still taking a wait-and-see stance?  I imagine if all that's going on then the property could sell for quite a bit. 

norajean

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Re: House next door razed. Giant mcmansion to be built. Sell now or wait?
« Reply #111 on: December 03, 2019, 11:44:31 AM »
There is always risk the builder/owner runs into financial strife and abandons the construction part-way through.  This could lead to years of neglect of an unfinished structure which becomes a blight on the neighborhood.  Friends of mine lived next to one of these for about five years.  I know of two in my immediate neighborhood and two a couple blocks away. 

Sell now!