Buying In The Bay Area’s Playground Just Got Cheaper
With home ownership providing more stress than serenity these days, second homes are hardly a top priority.
If you have always lusted for one, it’s likely you’ve put that fantasy on the back burner. If you own one, you might be trying to offload it — I was in Tahoe last week and I can testify to the fact that there are “For Sale” signs everywhere — or at the very least make it pay its way by finding people to rent it over the holiday months.
Tahoe, the Bay Area’s winter and summer playground, has seen residential sales decrease by about 40% according to Shari Chase, president of Zephyr Cove real estate firm Chase International, quoted in a piece in today’s Chronicle. And at least 60% of homes in the area are vacation properties.
Even luxury homes in the area, which are generally immune to even steep real-estate downturns, are finding it hard to find buyers — to the extent that 18 high-end getaways in Kirkwood, originally priced from $1.5 million to $3.6 million, are set to be auctioned in Palo Alto on September 14. Some minimum bids will be nearly half the initial list price.
The five-bedroom Kirkwood home pictured above, for instance, will be on offer with a minimum bid of $2.5 million, down from $3.58 million.
Long term , however, it is predicted the second home market will grow rapidly during the next 10 years, driven by the swelling number of high-net-worth individuals around the world — according to the 2008 Annual Wealth Report produced by property Knight Frank and Citi Private Bank.
With that in mind — and I appreciate we are in la-la land here given how little spare cash most of us have right now — I picked out two weekend homes I wouldn’t turn my nose up at. I’m partial to the ocean rather than the mountains, so both are beach bound:
250 Kale Road, Bolinas: Classic A-frame home is located on the Big Mesa, above Duxbury Reef. The Sand Castle is a 30-minute walk to downtown beaches, restaurants and shops and a 10-minute walk to Agate Beach State Park. Ocean views from front deck. Price: $780,000.
162 Seadrift Road, Stinson has been languishing on Redfin for 157 days. Perhaps the fact that this 3/2 “shabby chic” oceanfront cottage costs a staggering $2,269 per square foot has something to do with it. (If you need to know the price, you probably can’t afford it.)
[Photo credit of Kirkwood home: Don Stasenka Canon USA - Editori.]
