waaay OT...my old haus is onsale fer a buck!!!! *cries into paws*

[Guest guest]

oh man..pill hill zoo haus is onsale fer a $1..ya just have to move it!!

go to SF Gate to see a pic.

man..lived there fer..umm..8 yrs...

*sniffle*

anyone have a spare plot of land??

fraggle

 

 

----

This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SF Gate.

The original article can be found on SFGate.com here:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/09/17/carolllo\

yd.DTL

----

Tuesday, September 17, 2002 (SF Gate)

Buy a Home for the Price of a Popsicle

by Carol Lloyd, special to SF Gate

 

 

 

Vines crawl over the stately century-old house. Peeling paint and a roof

warped with age don't diminish the potential of its classically columned

portico, its overhanging second-story sunroom, its spacious rooms and

vaguely colonial grandeur.

 

Once this was a very lovely home. It could be again.

 

I know what you're thinking. Not another column about an overpriced fixer!

 

Not by a long shot. I can guarantee that even though I don't know your

finances, you could buy this 1,800-square-foot piece of history without

going into a penny of debt. Heck, the little girl selling lemonade down

the street could as well.

 

Why? Because the price, clearly stated on a xeroxed sign over the front

door, is $1.

 

That's right. The sign says, " House for Sale $1. "

 

How many things can you still buy for a $1? A candy bar? A small bag of

peanuts? A cup of bad 7-Eleven coffee?

 

Is this some kind of joke?

 

That's what people seem to think as they wander by one sunny afternoon on

McClure Street, a short mixed-use lane of apartments and medical offices

between Broadway and Telegraph in Oakland. First, their mouths hang open

as if they're seeing a miracle, then they murmur to each other and

snicker. One cheerful woman sees me taking pictures and cracks, " You gonna

buy it? I'll double your price. "

 

A driver in a car sees the sign and slows to a crawl, squinting to read

the fine print.

 

And, of course, there is fine print to be read. Not a lawyerly excess of

abstruse clauses, but one short, simple phrase: " House to be removed from

property at buyer's expense. "

 

What exactly does this mean? You don't get the land -- you get the house,

and only the house. In an area where real estate is hyperinflated, the

differential between land value and building value is always a drastic

one. Even so, not this drastic. The phenomenon of free houses occurs from

time to time when people have other uses for the land and simply don't

want to deal with the existing structures. (Demolition isn't cheap --

roughly $5 or $6 a square foot.) Last year, a three-bedroom Craftsman was

free for the taking down in Pebble Beach. I know a guy who obtained an

old-fashioned barn built without nails then dismantled it and stored it

for the day when he buys his own plot of dirt.

 

Gazing at the house through my rose-colored real estate glasses, I

envision a butter-yellow paint job, coral roses and a rocking chair for my

old age. I whip out my cell phone and call the owner.

 

" I'm trying to save my demolition costs, " he says in a thick,

Russian-inflected purr. " That's all. If somebody wants the house for a $1,

they can move it and have it. "

 

" I would love to see the inside, " I say while peeking through what appears

to be an old towel hung up like a curtain over the front window. " Are you

living there? I could drop by. "

 

" No! " he exclaims, clearly horrified at my suggestion. " I'm the developer.

I've never even seen the inside. There are people living there. "

 

" How much will it cost for me to move it? " I ask, figuring the tenants

might give me a tour.

 

" About $10,000 to $15,000, " he tells me.

 

Okay, so not everyone has both a piece of property and 10 or 15 grand, but

if you did happen to have a plot of unused land, wouldn't this be an

incredibly inexpensive way to put a house on it?

 

Searching for a second opinion on the obscure subject of house moving, I

call Jana Trost, co-owner with her husband, Matt, of Trost Construction, a

firm that has been moving homes and other heavy stuff for more than a

decade. Over the years, they've dredged bays, rolled a freeway and moved

ranch houses in Brentwood and a streetful of little Victorians in San

Jose. Moving a building, Trost says, usually takes about a week and

involves securing the walls, putting it on dollies or a trailer and then

trundling it through the city streets at first light Sunday morning.

 

" If you're just on dollies, you can only go as fast as you can walk, " she

explains. " So it can be a long day. "

 

And the price?

 

" Well, there are a lot of things involved, " Trost says. " But generally

it's going to be about $10 to $12 a square foot. That means about $18,000

to $25,000 for a house that size. But there are a lot of other possible

costs. "

 

Ka-ching.

 

If you take a house into another city, she explains, you can get hit with

taxes from the new municipality, which considers the house new

construction. Even if you manage to stay inside the city limit, the

planning department will sometimes insist that you bring the entire

building up to code, unless you get the building declared to be historic.

Even if you escape those expenses, Trost adds, there are still others to

watch out for.

 

" Such as? " So far, my dream of a free house is dead. Still, it all seems

relatively cheap.

 

" Well, " Trost says, " if the house is two stories, then you have to make

sure you don't hit any TV cables or telephone wires as you're moving it

through the streets. "

 

Ka-ching. Ka-ching. " How much does that cost? "

 

" It depends. I couldn't even guess, " says Trost, adding that she and her

husband have moved four of their own homes, but are currently on a break

" just to recover. "

 

But some people really seem to like the process, she adds. One woman hired

the Trosts to move three homes -- two of them during her ninth month of

separate pregnancies. " She's quite a character, " Trost says with a laugh.

" She has a lot more energy than anyone I know. "

 

Curious about the real price of raising power cables, I call Jeff Boutch,

SBC Pacific Bell's engineer for downtown Oakland. Although he can't name

an exact price either, because a route might have several wires in the way

or only one or even none, he estimates that an average wire raising might

cost four workers a day's labor at between $100 and $200 an hour.

 

Boutch recommends that anyone interested in moving a house should create a

map of the proposed route and then contact the city planning department,

PG & E, SBC Pacific Bell and the local cable-TV company. " It might be

relatively easy, or it might not be possible, " he tells me with the weary

but confident air of someone who often is asked to do difficult things.

" We will try to accommodate the owner, if it's possible. "

 

The sound of a cash register ringing suddenly swells to a cacophony in my

head. I tell him the location of the building and ask for his advice. " So

this would this be crazily expensive, right? "

 

Suddenly, he doesn't seem so weary. " I don't know, " he says. " There's a

lot of empty lots in West Oakland. You could go down 29th and then use

overpasses to get over the freeway. " He begins to talk of cable splices

and installation crews, which company owns which poles and the difficulty

of undetachable wires that provide no slack. And, as he speaks, my idyllic

vision of the house, its rose garden, its newly painted facade and its cat

rolling on the lawn begins to fade into the ether.

 

Suddenly, it's just a house for a dollar. A house I don't really want --

not even for 50 cents. It may be the steal of the century for someone, I

think, someone with a deeper appreciations for logistics and a better

imagination than me.

 

Carol Lloyd is currently at work on a book about Bay Area real estate. She

teaches a class on buying your first home in the Bay Area, and another

class based on her best-selling career counseling book for creative

people, " Creating a Life Worth Living. " For more information, email her at

surreal.

 

 

----

Copyright 2002 SF Gate