Lemon Rd Park

When it is cold outside it makes you think of going out to play in a park on a nice warm day.

Today we are going to look at one of the main selling features of 7301 Pimmit Ct., the fact it backs to Lemon Rd Park in Fairfax County.

Fairfax County has a Master Plan for Lemon Road Park that includes adding trails to the existing system, an outdoor classroom, and an apparatus area. Based on the Master Plan the current bike path is in truth a drainage culvert.

Chicken: Chicken, Chicken, Chicken

So I haven't posted anything lately on 7301 Pimmit Ct. so I figured I would drive by and walk up and down the street on my way home from work this week to see if I could see anything that might help me to figure out why the land is listed as Buildable-Poor. The weather was great for a walk, but while I didn't come across anything useful as far as the Buildable status in conserned I did notice that the neighbor has a chicken!

I did not know that Fairfax County allowed domestic fowl, but I found out chickens as pets are ok so long as you have less than 32 chickens per acre. While I only saw one chicken in the twilight hours that still means that the neighbor may have up to 12 pet chickens and still be Code Compliant!

Next time we will review the planned development plans at East Falls Church, so stay tuned.

Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!) Review

So the summer days and summer nights have flown by and during that time it looks like one of our case studies went under contract on August 1st, as I started to pull together the information needed for a closeout and recap the property got relisted at a higher price!

Considering the price history under Re/Max at 7301 Pimmit Ct. I don't think this is a greedy buyer looking at foreclosure, I am guessing that this is a Broker Price Opinion coming in at over the asking.

Here is a BIG question for you; does it really make sense to kill a deal over $10,000 or possibly less when the home has been on the market for over a year?

Now for the Review of 7301 Pimmit Ct.
Positive aspects
Siding appears to be in good shape.
Well manicured lawn, shrubs, and bushes.
It is a large 0.41 acre lot zoned R-4.
Negative aspects
There is no driveway.
Roof may need to be replaced in 3-4 years.
Windows are single pane glass.
Porch light is hanging by the wires.
Current addition is not permitted by the Fairfax County and would have to be removed.
Lot is in the shape of a pentagon so expansion would be “unconventional”.
Land is listed as Buildable-Poor Lot.

Questions left unanswered:
Why is the land listed as Buildable-Poor?
Did a discount of $49,000 make sense compared to FX6928567? This was the fully upgraded house down the street with mahogany, granite, and marble throughout.
Will a discount of $39,000 still bring in buyers?
With so little description about the inside of the property does it really belong in the high end of the lower cluster of property sales over the past year? The closest comparable for the size of the land was FX6853705 which sold in October of 2008 for a net of $318,000 but the house has a basement making it twice the size with a nice, but not polished, interior.

The property included in this chart contain lots from 0.23 to 0.39 acres and 884 to 1556 sq. ft.

Bing Maps and Permits

So I was never really liked Microsoft Live Search but now that Bing has come out I have been playing with the travel search functionality, which I really like, and the mapping functionality. Bing Maps has this thing called Birds Eye where you can see properties from the side, this is still from the air but at an angle it is not at all like what Google Street View is trying to do.

When I looked at the property from the side and then looked back at the Redfin Listing I noticed that the back addition was not listed in the sales information, and from looking at the neighborhood again from the Birds Eye View the "bonus room" for lack of a better term was an addition.

Time to check the permits. So in 2004 Fairfax County came out with their Fairfax Inspections Database Online, FIDO. It is a silly name but the functionality is great and goes back to 1985.

With that I hit FIDO up and look to see what permits have been pulled for 7301 Pimmit Ct. and find that the only item was in September of 2005 to a previous owner for a Multiple Work Permit# 052669632 that could not be issued. Three months later the owner decided to sell his house to the current owner.

Long story short, the current addition is not permitted by the county.

Buildable Status Continued

So I still haven't figured out what makes a residential property Buildable-Poor Lot in Fairfax County. I have found out by playing in the tax records that all of the parcels of land on the South Eastern side of Pimmit Drive, and all of the houses on Pimmit Court are listed as Buildable-Poor Lot while all of the houses across the street are Buildable-Average Lot.

When looking at Google Maps the only thing that I can tell is what looks like a bike path behind the houses and Lemon Rd Park, so maybe the county has some easement for the path.


View Larger Map

Buildable Status

I was poking around Redfin now that things seemed to have settled down again and came across 3212 Glen Carlyn Rd, it is a lot that consists of two parcels totaling 1.78 acres that is bank owned for $600,000.

The bank says it appraised in 2008 for $900,000 which seems high considering it sold in 2006 for $1,040,000. I may have to add this one to the blog for being out of market. If we get one or 2 price drops expect to see data for this one later.

The reason I bring this up is of the two neighboring parcels one has the site description of Buildable-Average Lot and the other is Non-Buildable-Flood Plain. This caused me to wonder what impact the site description has on the houses value if any.

Lets look at one of our test cases, 7301 Pimmit Ct., which has a site description of Buildable-Poor Lot. Scouring the Fairfax County website only comes back with a Validation Request, which basically says that when the lot was originally zoned, in 1954, it was determined that a house could be built on the lot.

If the status in 1954 is poor for building I think I will have to do more digging to see why with 0.41 acres it is a poor lot for building. It really makes you wonder if lots were zoned according to the standards of today if houses would still be allowed on the lots.

If anyone knows any more about the site description field feel free to leave a comment in the comments section.

Green Shoots, Now Back to Housing

Hopefully you haven't minded the stock market research for the past few months too much but I am going to attempt to delve back into the real estate, the true point of this blog.

With the talk of "green shoots" in the financial markets, I am going to head back into the wide wonderful world of real estate. Even searching the financial markets gives you clues for real estate. Some of you may know about the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices. That is the leading measures for the US residential housing market, that tracks changes in the value of residential real estate both nationally as well as in 20 metropolitan regions including the Washington DC area.

Speaking of Washington DC area, I plan on taking a very local look at real estate by taking a long lunch one day, in the not to distant future, and going to the courthouse steps to watch a Trustee Auction and talking to some of the people within Fairfax County records to see what I can find.

In the mean time here is the new drive by short sale picture for 7301 Pimmit Ct. that is currently on the MLS.


And the repost of the old MLS short sale drive by picture for 5111 North 19th St. that is now on the market as an REO. Now that it is bank owned they got smart and FINALLY competitively priced the property.


My last 2 cents on the stock market are that the S&P will move diagonally from here for at least the next year, as we are in a trading range.

Short Sale Again?!?!

I expected it to be a few months until 7301 came back on the market as a REO. Apparently the owners did something to stave off foreclosure and the house is back on the market as a short sale again!

This time 7301 Pimmit Ct. is under the MLS of FX6888001 with Homeequity Realty LLC.

Re/Max is gone and the plot thickens as Homeequity Realty LLC doesn't even seem to have a website to reference.

On the upside I did find a new and useful website to play with called FranklyMLS where you can see all the houses sold with Homeequity Realty as the listing agent. The search functionality at FranklyMLS works for any agent be it listing agent or buyers agent. When going over the notes it seems like they have a decent amount of experience selling short sale homes so this might be a very good move for the buyer.

The most impressive thing to note is that they lowered the price to $300,000 which seems competitively priced for the area.

When you head over to FranklyMLS be sure to check out his blog FranklyRealty.com and his FranklyRealty YouTube Page he definitely has some cool stuff on both and has his finger on the pulse of the market.

As the stock market seems to be in freefall I may throw in some information about stocks as I will likely be doing more research on that to make sure my own assets are in proper order.

Foreclosure

So the Pimmit Ct. property was delisted from the MLS at the end of September. I was wondering what happened to it and came across an excel spreadsheet listing the owners names and the property as going to the Fairfax County courthouse steps in September. It looks like even at the lower price the bank was not able to find a willing buyer.

Maybe now I will get to follow it as an Real Estate Owned (REO). If I controlled the world, I would probably call them Bank Owned (BO) as they stink for everyone involved.

Another Price Drop

So it has been a while without any price movement on the Pimmit Ct. house, FX6640385, but it looks like Re/Max is finally headed in the correct direction by pricing the property at $350,000. The price is lower than what Zillow estimates but given as houses in the area have been selling under the Zestimates I question if a Zestimate really means anything at all.

On the upside the house is only now out of market by not having any upgrades compared to the other properties we have watched in Pimmit Hills. As they didn't keep up with their price drops, at this rate it might end up in foreclose before it sells.

Adding another foreclosure to the books of the banks will not help the Credit Crunch.

I wonder how McCain is doing with HIS multitude of houses in this market.

Zoning

So today we look at zoning ordinances and what zoning means for property. Before we looked at zoning issues in Arlington County, VA now we will look at zoning issues in Fairfax County, VA. The Zoning Ordinance for Fairfax County is fairly comprehensive and would take ages to go over so we will use the case study of 7301 Pimmit Ct. to look at simple setbacks as part of the Residential District Regulations.

The property is zoned R-4 (Residential 4 DU/AC) and has more than the conventional minimum lot requirement of 8,400 sq. ft. The increased size may be due to the odd shape of the lot.

As the lot is in the shape of a pentagon there are two rear yard setbacks to consider. The front yard must be 30 feet, the side yards must each be 10 feet, and the rear yard setbacks must each be 25 feet. With these requirements this should give ample room to expand on 0.41 acres.

The Prices Keep Dropping

So it took me a while to get out and do a drive by of the property with work and birthdays this month. From the outside the property has a cute house, looks to be a standard Pimmit Hills home with what looks like a huge lot.

The house has had consistent price drops about every two weeks since it was listed to drive people to go through the property. I didn't see anyone that went through in the 15 minutes that I hung around the neighborhood.

As I all I did was a drive by viewing I am posting what you see from the curb.

This is the obligatory short sale drive by photo now published on the MLS.

The basic facts are there is a space for a driveway but no driveway, the siding looks to be in good shape, the roof looks like it might have 4 or 5 years until it needs to be replaced, the windows look to be the original single pane glass, and the porch light is hanging by the wires. At the current time the only way I can see justifying the price is if the inside is immaculate with an upgraded kitchen, but from the outside that does not seem promising.

If they keep up with the price drops I may need to dig deeper, or find another property to watch, before it goes off the market.

Very Interesting

So in my daily pull of Redfin I came across a property at 7301 Pimmit Ct. in Falls Church VA between the West Falls Church Metro and Tysons Corner Center. It has a MLS listing of FX6640385 and might be a nice house to watch as it is priced high for the Pimmit Hills area. I will take a look at it on my way home from work some time over the next few weeks and if it sticks around I will provide an update.

If you don't know about Redfin it only has the best mapping and sorting functionality I have ever come across. Even if you have a Realtor I would recommend using Redfin if only to get an idea of the location and prices for a given area.

The Search Begins

So my New Years resolution for this year is to blog on something I find useful, as I have been following real estate casually since 2004 I think I will dip my toe into that area.

I have come across a number of useful real estate blogs in my searches. I would say 95% of the blogs are from Realtors marketing their services, or telling about how they can get a property sold. I have decided to see if I can find a few properties that looks to be out completely out of market given the financial conditions of the day and see about following their stories.

I am considering starting with 1941 North Culpeper St Arlington VA 22207, it has been on and off the market since 1996 and looks far to small to be usable, and 1911 North Cameron St Arlington VA 22207, as it has been on the market since 2007.

My only sticking point is I really want to see about finding things that comes out this year so I can follow them from the start, instead of doing a lot of historical research.

If I follow land only property it usually has a long story to follow, but if I come across something with a house it might make for a more interesting story to tell. If you stumble across this blog and have a suggestion for an out of market property in the Northern Virginia area leave a comment and I might add it to my search.