Condemned home in Fremont fetches $1,230,000

It’s hard to feign surprise when a teardown home in the Bay Area sells for well over the asking price. This real estate narrative is no longer an anomaly. It’s de rigueur. It is, by design, the norm.

Politicians and longtime homeowners continue to collude to keep zoning exclusionary, which results in astronomical housing costs that price out low- to mid-income residents desperate for habitat.

On that note, let’s take a look at yet another house that fetched above and beyond its initial asking: a condemned property in Fremont’s Mission neighborhood that nabbed $1,230,000.

To state the obvious, the money for this uninhabitable home is for the 9,408-square-foot lot upon which the teardown sits.

Realtor Larry Gallegos listed the home in January for $1 million. In one week, he received five offers before closing the sale—all of them cash.

Gallegos cites the job market and the good schools as the primary reasons people are flocking to the area as the dearth of affordable housing in Bay Area cities—see: Cupertino, Palo Alto— has pushed interest to outlying cities. It’s also near a BART station, making it even more desirable to those with jobs in San Francisco.

“It’s typically an expensive area, but I’ve seen houses almost double in price within the last two years,” Gallegos tells Curbed SF. “This is happening all over the East Bay.”

Most recently, a charred San Jose teardown landed on the market for $799,000. According to NBC Bay Area, the realtor of that pile of rubble “has six offers in hand, all well over asking price.”

• What is exclusionary zoning? [Vox]
• Blame Zoning, Not Tech, for San Francisco’s Housing Crisis [CityLab]
• Cupertino mayor says housing crisis ‘not dire’ [Curbed SF]
• Marin County’s anti-growth mindset keeps minorities and low-income residents out [Curbed SF]
• Berkeley’s zoning laws wall off communities of color, seniors, low-income people and others [Berkeleyside]
• Cupertino teardown sells for $2 million [Curbed SF]