Wednesday, February 18, 2009

"Fixer! Fixer! Fixer!"

Can I add to this description? No, I cannot. "Major fixer upper. Needs lots of work no bathrooms fixtures, toilets, tiles. No light fixtures, no kitchen cabinets, partial carpets, stucco needs finish. No landscape needs fence contractors. Dream major fixer sold as is. Needs some windows & new doors, may need some roofing & garage door, no exhaust fans present in kitchen or bathrooms & steps need repairs. Fixer Fixer Fixer!"

Just to make sure that you understand it's a fixer fixer fixer (to be read in your best "Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!" voice), the photo has been altered to make it look worse than it does in real life. Is it three photos stitched together? Or does someone really not want to sell the house?

I have no idea.

36 comments:

Lulu LaBonne said...

Actually this is my property so I can explain - the pieces were on the floor so they had to be photoshopped together to make it look as though it's a standing structure. I really don't think the fixing up is that big a deal but the realtor felt it needed flagging up

Anonymous said...

Those aren't three photos stitched together - those are transcription errors from when it was teleported back from the middle ages!

Jewels said...

The add reads:

"Unsold in 90+ days"

Huh. Who would have thought?

Anonymous said...

This is the type of thing that makes me sad about how home values differ so much across the country. That house...in CA as a FIXER!FIXER!FIXER! cost just a bit less than what my almost brand new house cost me here in MA. And that one's smaller and has less land. Sad. You'd never get that much for a house in that condition around here.

the three amigos said...

$200K for that.

*faint*

Patti said...

Also needs new foundation.

Anonymous said...

That house makes me sad just to look at it. They should tear it down and let it die in peace. No amount of rehab will get rid of the vermin that probably infest it.

What a sad, sad house.

Anonymous said...

That house makes me sad just to look at it. They should tear it down and let it die in peace. No amount of rehab will get rid of the vermin that probably infest it.

What a sad, sad house.

fleeting said...

$200,000!!! Holy cow... in my area you can buy something that DOESN'T look like it was hit by an earthquake, abandoned, and cared for by a loving, close-knit family of rats for the past 4 years.

Anonymous said...

$200,000 for property that should be condemmed? Stop the insanity!

Anonymous said...

Zounds! 200k for a derelict pile? It looks like it time hopped from the dust bowl, for starters, and then it's also centrally located amidst other derelict piles!

For 200 grand? It's not even fit material for a scrape-off because you can see that it's flanked by homes in the same condition.

Oh. My. God! I'm sorry to react so strongly but it's when you talk about inflated value of real estate having a ripple effect in the economy, the first ripple starts with something like that.

My toolshed is in much better condition.

Sara said...

Hey, Hi, I'm Erin, I accidentally deleted your comment. Sorry, but there's no "undo" on Blogger. Please post it again!

StefRobrts said...

Going to be hard to sell with that interdimentional rift running through the middle of it.

Anonymous said...

And to everybody who is saying "$200k for that?!"...this is also in a bad part of San Diego. I drove through there once with my parents during the day, and my dad swore he saw someone getting held up at machine gun-point.

Image what this home would have fetched in the good part of town!

Angela at Box of Unicorns said...

They could have saved a vast amount of typing time by simply stating, "Needs to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch."

Lisa said...

Good lord. Last winter that lovely residence sold for $350k! *Sold* for that amount! Some poor sod actually paid that much money, only to lose more than a third of the value a mere 4 months later.

Anonymous said...

Tear down! Tear down! Tear Down! - MidC Frank

TisforTonya said...

I'm voting for 4 photos stitched together... and I'm seriously thinking that my 200 grand has some better uses... like birdcage lining. (hey, it's easy to be flip about imaginary money)

Anonymous said...

All it needs is someone to cram it down that trash can. Shouldn't take much to do.

Anonymous said...

In fact I think it's *four* photos. I see at least three fault lines there. (I knew California had a lot of fault lines, but I didn't know they were contagious and would spread to photographs.)

"Partial carpets" is not really a selling point. Assuming a buyer didn't just tear this down, I can't imagine one wouldn't feel compelled to rip out and probably fumigate and then burn any carpet that is in there.

There are some wonderful, lovely homes from 1910 that are worth fixing up and preserving. This... is probably not one of them.

Anonymous said...

@Anon with the location information:

"Image what this home would have fetched in the good part of town!"

The thing is, it's not currently fetching even on thin dime.

@Lisa. What the heck? Is it on a Gold Mine? A teeny little oil field? 350k, for that? And...no one could have been living in it since that time, though, there's no working plumbing. Was it perhaps purchased as a potential development site? The house right next to it is for rent, I wonder if it's bank owned too, but there's no way to rent a home without plumbing. At least, I fervently hope there isn't.

Anonymous said...

Well, I argue that you actually could assist with the description; you could add proper punctuation where necessary. It is a scary description alone with all of its punctuation errors. Good grief!

Chris said...

Nothing a good bulldozer wouldn't fix ...

Anonymous said...

Sadly I have been in properties that were in worse shape than that. FWIW, that looks like about $45K worth of Vegas house, a price at which the new owner can decide at leisure whether to fix it up or tear it down.

Anonymous said...

"Buy this land! Comes with free trash!"

Linnee said...

Well, don't forget there's a guest house.

Joel T said...

This is further proof that California deserves what it gets.

Anonymous said...

I say this is four photos stitched together - and in such a way to make the property look bigger than it actually is. My guess is that it's actually half as big in reality!

Anonymous said...

Anon: re plumbing: it varies by state, but in many (I hope most) places you can't rent out a residential property unless it meets basic standards of habitability. A lack of plumbing would generally fail that test.

Anonymous said...

My guess is that they stitched photos together to make it look like the house was somewhat level. It's probably as level as a potato chip. You can clearly see that this shack is not sitting on a foundation but several improvised piers. Most likely the floor starting sagging in several places so someone went under and stuck some concrete blocks under the lower parts.

Now why someone thought this place would look nice with a stucco finish is beyond me. It like the mobile homes that have brick exteriors -- such a waste of material.

Anonymous said...

This is in one of the first parts in the entire county and also on one of the worst streets. Even in San Diego where housing prices are inflated due to the location, this house will not fetch anything close to what they are asking!

Adam and Charlotte's Sing-along Travel Blog said...

In my city we sell houses in that condition for that price and more.. we call it "land value". You tear the house down and build on the land, and you're essentially paying for that land. Doesn't that exist anywhere else??? These comments confuse me.

Downturn said...

What's truly mind boggling is that this house sold for $346,330 in September of 2008. That's right 2008!!

(First payment default perhaps?)

Marytoo said...

And only $200,000!!!!!

I'm with Callisto...just tear that poor thing down and put it out of our misery.

Erin K said...

Does anyone else read "fixer, fixer, fixer" and think of the hefty commercials?

wundermary said...

This just strikes me as funny: Style: A-Frame/Dome/Log.
Probably because it is none of those things.