Just hitting Redfin today is 1700 New Jersey Avenue for 1.2 million. It can be a restaurant, with an apartment above and outdoor seating.
So if you happen to have a million, please, please, please, please, pretty, pretty please with sugar on top buy this and open my fantasy French bistro. That or my fantasy tandoori carry out. Or a fantasy wine bar. And since we’re talking about my fantasies, throw in my fantasy trophy husband while we’re at it.
Yes, the picture is old, but I don’t want to anger the MRIS gods.
Please buy it and open something nice. I beg you.
Tag: Real Estate
Fun with Redfin: Houses Under $200K
Seven years ago, when I started looking for a place to buy, the RE market was starting its roller coaster ride up to crazy. In the “better” neighborhoods houses didn’t stay on the market very long and there were bidding wars. I was looking for fee-simple places under $125K, which was hard but not impossible. The third house I looked at, was way less than $125K and on a street I liked, so I bought it.
Fast forward, the roller coaster has gone up, and now it is heading down. Playing around with Redfin I decided to see what was out there and lo and behold prices that start with a ‘1’ are back. Just not a lot of them.
There are a bunch of under $175K condos over in the Petworth and Fort Totten area, if we want to limit this to NW DC. Bump the search up to $200K and a house will appear in Columbia Heights.
Expand the under $175K search to NE DC and more houses do appear in Frozen Tropics’ Trinidad.
The point is that the affordable house I believe is coming back. Right now it’s a handyman special or a about to be foreclosed condo. It’s not luxury for cheap but something to start with.
Real Estate Agents Back on Crack
I swear some Real Estate Agents are on crack. And it has been a while since I’ve written that phrase. I was going to ponder the minor mistakes of location listing, like listing a house that is clearly in the TC as being in Eckington. But then I spotted a LeDroit Park house listed for over 4 million dollars. 1-2-3-4 Million! Yes, it has a huge lot, and 8 bedrooms, but great googgly-mooggly.
The days of houses in the hood selling in a matter of a few days gone. Gone with the $400,000 mortgages, no down payment loans given to unemployed. Gone, hopefully, is the army the get rich quick flippers and hysterical buyers descending on the next new thing.
We were the next new thing. The hot hip neighborhood. We were like the bright newly graduated student, full of potential and promise. In the 7 years I’ve been here we have come a long way, but there is still a ways to go. Still more untapped potential and promise. But it’s not going to be released any time soon with the fury and near mindless abandon we experienced, until we are once again rediscovered.
Until then lets continue to add value, real value, to those who live here now. Let us improve our homes, not for some faceless unknown buyer, but for ourselves. Let us fight for usable parks and recreational facilities. Let us encourage businesses and non-profits we will actually patronize and support with our dollars and our time and our hearts, not just to heighten our property values or to have something to mention on the MLS as an amenity, but to improve our quality of life.
NW TC houses 4Sale
Mrs. Gibb’s house is no longer popping up on Redfin so that leaves me to gather that it is under contract. I hope that goes well. The house next to hers (yellow house in picture), 1628 3rd Street, is up for sale for the sweetheart price of $284,900, I wonder what’s wrong with it? It’s advertising itself as a 3 bedroom 1 bath “bayfront Victorian showing age and in need of a redo. Classic floorplan, everything painted, but orig mantels, 2 sets of pocket doors in place.”
The two 4th St NW houses that were on the market, then went off the market, are back on. This time it says that the renters were given right of first refusal. Now even though the renters can’t and don’t want to buy the houses, it’s nice (and legally required) to be asked. The prices for the rentals, still high, and I’ve been told about some ‘issues’ with one of the houses, that would need to be addressed. Knock the price down by $30- $50K as they will both eventually need work.
There is another house in the hood that I really want sold. Ok, not just sold, fixed up but owner occupied. But what can I do as a 3rd party? I’m seriously thinking of making up fliers to try to get that damned house sold, as it is becoming a nuisance.
DC is 1st time homebuyer friendly
Well, not in terms of prices, but programs. So in order to do something useful with my $50 Manolo housing rant, let me tell you of why I know DC is a great place to be a first time homeowner.
$5000 Tax Credit (pdf form)
OK, five grand is just a drop in the bucket, but I found the refund I got back for the two years after I bought my home (I didn’t pay enough in taxes to collect it in one lump sum), helpful. Besides every penny counts.
Below Market Rate Loans From The Housing Finance Agency
I was working with a councillor from the now defunct non-profit who steered me over to the DC Housing Finance office over on Florida Avenue. At the time they were offering 30 year mortgages at a rate so low, it was almost like an interest free loan. They were offering something lately but the 5.6% rate with 2 points was only good till Dec 15, 2007. The process was not without its headaches. I thought the woman administering my paperwork was slow and a bit mean. But in the end I got the loan, which will be forever called the 1st mortgage that will not be touched.
Tax Abatement
My housing councilor and my Realtor pushed the tax abatement, which in those early years made my house payment affordable. If you’re low-moderate income, you’d probably qualify. I was making what I’ll call a starter salary in my profession, so I wasn’t poor, but I wasn’t completely economically stable either, and the year before I made half of squat. So I qualified, with about $10K between me and the cutoff.
The abatement is a five year period of not paying real estate taxes. The money I saved, allowed for an emergency fix-crap fund. It seems that I could have extended the abatement if I hadn’t made $400 over the cutoff amount. So in year 6 I got hit with the full assessed amount, which was a lot, as the assessed value was 4x as much as it was when I bought it. I just got my tax bill and I praised G-d. My taxes have readjusted so it reflects what I would have been paying had I not taken the abatement. So I wasn’t punished for taking that deal. I can’t find an earlier post I made about how the RE tax system rewards long-term homeonwers who stay put AND take the Homestead Exemption. Long and short of it is, people who have owned their homes for a number of years (basically prior to the Real Estate boom) tend to pay less taxes than their neighbors who bought recently IF (big if) they have the Homestead Exemption.
There are other programs for 1st time homebuyer available to DC residents like the HPAP, but I didn’t use those, so I cannot testify to their goodness or badness. Also I think there were some real estate transaction costs that were dismissed because of my status, but I’m fuzzy on that. And there is a caveat to the loan (and/or maybe another program), in that if I sold my house within 10 years of purchase I’d have to pay the city back some of the benefits.
DC looked like a better deal when I was first looking because it has various programs like I mentioned above, that I could not find for Maryland or Virginia.
Mrs. Gibbs house up for sale
I blog this with a bit of sadness, because I’m not sure about the details. I met Mrs. Gibbs at the G2 bus stop. She is a small elderly slender woman and last I spoke with her she was caring for her husband in the home they’ve lived in since the post war period. Their house was filled with a life long and well lived. Logic tells me that time has caught up with them and so the house is up for sale.
1626 3rd St NW is being advertised as an “inherited home priced to sell.” I knew the Gibbs had children who lived out in the burbs, and I gather they have no interest in moving back into the city to live in the family home. $350K is an excellent price. If they include “stuff” in the house, that is a steal. The interior is large, it faces the quiet side of the Northwest Co-op, its right on the Georgetown/Howard bus line, and it has a rear yard big enough for a minivan. Please don’t let it go to an investor, but rather someone who wants to live here. The interior is well preserved and loved (well from what I could tell sitting in the living room), seriously, if you have an interest in trying to preserve interiors, buy this house, you will not regret it.
Info Government May Provide
During one of the usual weekend calls I have with my mother, my mom was complaining once again about her property tax. Without getting too detailed, my parents divorced but Dad’s name is still on the land, and thus, Mom says her homestead exemption is not as great as it could be. So the other day I wandered over to her Florida county tax assessor’s website, which is embarrassingly amateur looking, to see exactly how Mom’s getting taxed.
I wasn’t expecting much, maybe just an assessment pulled out of thin air. What I got blew me away. I got the usual, the assessor’s idea of property worth, the homestead exemption, the tax, and a general description of the property. In addition, there were links to vital records like my parent’s divorce judgement. Clicking around, for other properties, there were links to PDF copies of death certificates (with SS#s blacked out), quit claims, certified titles, maps, tax deeds, and building permits issued if the documents were produced in the last 10 or so years. The public information about things relating to property was linked right on the assessor’s page.
This made me wonder, could larger cities have the same sort of traditionally public information (deaths, divorces, permits, quit claims) available on line? Links to permits would be exceedingly useful. Not even the copy of a building permit, but just even the building permit number, date issued, would be very helpful. Right now I can only find permits issued in the last few months.
But I realize this is only a dream because it would mean different agencies actually working together to serve the citizenry.
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Additional: I just dug deeper with the example permit, it shows the inspection. I would kill for this depth of detail with permits issued in the city. No more trying to read tiny writing on a stair of a rickty house.
1st & Q.
55 Q Street NW is up for sale but I was not entirely sure this was the same house. Why? Because the photo being shown on ZipRealty is a crappy magneta colored ugly thing from 2003. I’m encountering a lot of bad re-used photos on Ziprealty. Redfin is better. Anyway this house on the corner is going for 1/2 a milllllion dallahs, $500K.
It is a two unit building, a trend I noticed with some of the turn of the century homes that were built as investment properties. The rental units are bringing in $1340 & $1215 a month, $2555 in total. You’d need a big down payment to get the rentals to cover the price of the mortgage. People you wonder why renters get kicked out? Because their rent don’t cover the mortgage and taxes.
Sorta on the other side of the street is 1537 1st St NW at the much cheaper price of $299K. And, it has parking.
34 Q St NW 4Sale
I’m not sure which house is 34 Q. Actually, I’ve been flipping through my flickr collection and trying to match up houses for sale, and I really need to take more pictures…. and do a better job of taking the addresses.
From the description, I am guessing it is a short sale as the bank has to approve the price. But what you get for your $305,000 is a 10 bedroom 3 bath, 3500 sq ft vacant building with taxes high enough to make you cry if you keep it vacant. The price is a significant reduction from the $550K it started off as back in July of 2007. And the seller is taking a big hit as it was purchased in 2006 for $685K. *wince*
1225 1st St NW for sale
Okay last house for sale of the day. I will post no more till, maybe Friday or next week. Red house is for sale. Red, not vacant house, is on the market for $599,900. It is a two unit building with a paying tenant in one unit. The other unit I guess could go to the new owner or be rented out as well. But honestly, I rather have owner occupiers. Not that there is anything wrong with renters. Sometimes renters become owners.