
This house in Silicon Valley sold for $938,000 this week - ericras
https://twitter.com/ByRosenberg/status/994278935264284672
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cylinder
Ugh, these posts go viral everywhere.

Land has value, people. In fact, it’s usually the majority of your home value.

If you don’t understand this and are outraged by people paying money for land,
you probably have no business purchasing real estate.

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poulsbohemian
I understand your statement. That doesn't change the reality that most people,
even well-compensated white-collar software developer types, cannot afford to
spend a million dollars on housing, especially if all that is actually buying
is a piece of land with an uninhabitable shack. There is a real, potentially
destabilizing housing situation happening up and down the west coast right
now.

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chrischen
Well that land is expensive to prevent some guy from simply building a shack
for himself.

The more expensive the land, the more likely you’ll build a whole stack of
shacks.

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CodeTheInternet
[Here is the Zillow listing]([https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1375-Bird-
Ave-San-Jose-CA...](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1375-Bird-Ave-San-Jose-
CA-95125/19680166_zpid/?fullpage=true))

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jackconnor
It's just for the property value, they're just tearing the house down. The
"house" really had nothing to do with the transaction, as crappy as it is.

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s0rce
It likely had negative value since it costs money to demolish and would be
more expensive as an empty lot unless you can save the fireplace or something
that you can't build in a new build.

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cjhopman
I wonder if it's easier to get permits to build there if the current place is
in that condition.

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jackconnor
Interesting question, since California has so so many building restrictions
for eartyhquakes and whatnot. New construction on old buildings is very
expensive here, so maybe the price was actually boosted upwards because this
would be such an easy lot to build on, without the normal teardown costs of a
more modern building.

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entee
I'd love to know where it was, and what a house next door that wasn't
dilapidated would have sold for.

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mrkurt
You can usually figure that out based on the cost of materials to build + land
value. Building houses those size probably costs $250k in the SF Bay, so the
house next door is probably worth $1.1mm to $1.2mm.

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r00fus
The house is 1,100 sqft for a single story. You'd likely demolish and put up a
2-story 2k sqft unit with a cute small-ish backyard.

