Inside a $1 million fixer-upper listing for sale across the bay from San Francisco that might actually turn out to be a bargain
The listing at 1818 Adeline in West Oakland is "shovel-ready," according to Cunningham.
The property sits in West Oakland. The lot is specifically located in the heart of the residential district on a semi-main street with a large park nearby.
It's also close to a West Oakland BART station, which is just one stop away from San Francisco's Embarcadero station across the water.
The property has been in the owner's family for 60 years. He would rather develop the property himself, but Cunningham said at this point he's selling for personal reasons.
"It's just kind of in that in-between space where the traditional sort of fixer-flipper market, it's too big of a project for them but not big enough for the bigger developers like Lennar or Toll Brothers or whoever else," Cunningham said.
The city-approved plans detail that the existing 1890 house will be lifted up and inched over to make way for the three townhomes that will be built beside it. There will also be a second unit built beneath the Victorian home.
The seller has already taken the painstaking route of getting the approved plans from the city, which is not an easy feat in the Bay Area.
"The structural design, landscaping, parking, layout — it's really, it's totally done," Cunningham said.
Now comes the part of waiting for somebody who can take the plans and execute them.
"Everything has been done except for paying for the building permits and getting started with the actual building process," Cunningham said.
The owner had originally planned to live onsite in the very back unit. So that one is the nicest of the bunch, with a full rooftop deck on the top and a private yard and detached garage space.
Cunningham said a ballpark estimate for the value of the five units collectively would be about $3.7 million once it's all said and done.
The home is in what Cunningham calls an "opportunity zone." The full tax benefits of the zone pertain more so to rentals than to resale.
"So to kind of capitalize on the opportunity zone, it would sort of be best for somebody, whoever does the development, to rent it out," Cunningham said.
Most of the prospective buyers would be thinking along the lines of splitting it up into five units and leasing them individually, but just because there are plans included in the listing doesn't mean future buyers have to follow through with them. Cunningham said they could certainly change it up.
"I've heard a couple of potential buyers talk about trying to get a demolition exception and not save the existing house and just tear it down and start over," he said. But he said that may not be a possibility since the home, a Victorian built in 1890, has a minor historical designation to it.
The home has those "good redwood bones" that are virtually extinct nowadays (redwood trees are native to California, but its supply was swallowed up by home building use until the 1960s and 1970s when conservationists stepped in.)
Cunningham said it would be a shame to lose to the home, especially since the city approving the plans partly hinged on the fact that it would be maintained — originally, only four units were outlined to sit on the lot until the city granted a variance to go up to five.
Source: National Park Service
As far as how potential buyers are responding, Cunningham said he's getting calls regarding the listing every day, so he's cautiously optimistic. "We're hoping with the spring market picking back up, we'll find somebody," he said.
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