Don’t Hold Your Breath For Residential Real Estate

This gent certainly had good timing in the real estate market….

Don’t Hold Your Breath for Residential Real Estate. Every few weeks I get a warm and fuzzy feeling when I see my old house for sale in the Wall Street Journal. I’m sure you’ve seen it. It’s the 8,500 square foot, four bedroom, seven bathroom white elephant perched on a mountain peak, with a dramatic waterfall pouring into a marble swimming pool, and panoramic 360 degree views of the San Francisco Bay Area. I picked it up for a song from the Sultan of Brunei in 1998, when crude crashed to $8/ barrel, and he was dumping properties to meet a cash flow crisis. The actor, Steve McQueen, had owned the property once, and the local teenagers used to park out front and make out, taking in the stunning view of the Golden Gate Bridge and shimmering city lights. If I told you what went on in the elevator, you wouldn’t believe me!

But one day in 2005, my gardener, José, mentioned that he had just obtained a $500,000 loan to buy a new place in which to house his seven kids, along with a home equity loan to cover the first year’s mortgage payments. How would he make the next year’s payments? The broker said the value of the house would go up, and he could then increase his home equity loan to cover that too.

I knew I had to sell my home immediately, hitting the bid for a tidy $12 million, along with the rest of my real estate holdings around Fog City and Lake Tahoe. At the closing, I couldn’t help but notice that my broker, Olivia, was drunk with greed, with 360,000 dollar bills in commissions dancing in front of her eyes.

Regretfully, I had to let José go. I have been renting ever since. The last price I saw for my former “Xanadu” was $7 million, and I know that a cash offer well below that would talk. I could also lease it for $19,500 a month, which wouldn’t even cover the taxes and the maintenance.

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