Angela Bassett sells in Hancock Park -- at a big discount

So you tell me the high end of the L.A. market is holding up? It did not hold up well for actress Angela Bassett, who has finally sold her Hancock Park home (pictured) for $3.8 million -- more than $2 million less than she first asked for it.

Bassett first listed the house for just under $6 million last summer, as Ruth Ryon reported for the L.A. Times. That listing expired, the house came back on the market this spring for $4.99 million, the price was then dropped to $3.9 million, and it finally sold for $3.8 million, as Ann Brenoff reports.

Total discount from original asking price, by my math: 36%. That's real money.

Posted by Peter Viles
Your thoughts? Comments?
Photo Credit: George W. Carroll

Comments

[JPG]

Don't worry Westsiders, Hancock Park is so ghetto.

Anybody know what she paid for it and when?

[Drew]

Did the $6 million asking price include a "celebrity premium"? Or was the $3.8 million selling price more in line with comps in the neighborhood?

Or to paraphrase the old Watergate line: "When did she buy the house, and how much did she pay for it?"

[RZ]

Peter,

Too bad she didn't ask 20 million, because then you could write that it only sold for 19 cents on the dollar, which is worse than Lancaster, IA, etc.

I actually thought you're much smarter than that and would know by now that wthat crazy sellers ask for is irrelevant. Why don't you use your brain a bit and try to find apples to apples comparisons, such as same properties that turned in the last couple of years. That would be the best comparison and you wouldn't have to sensationalize it, because it would be a fact.

[MyLessThanPrimeBeef]

I don't have time to make a long comment as I am on my way down to the border to make my own historial speech (for me at least): Mr. Obama, tear down this wall!

(I assume, if you are not against it, you are for it. That's Mr. Bush's logic - hey it's all about equal time/equal opportunity/equal everything here.)

[Kathy]

Yes, but what did she pay for it? I read elsewhere she's owned it for many years, so she still made a reasonable profit.

[It All Happens on the Margin]

the WSJ reported in this morning's paper that GSE's are funding 90% of all loans (vs. about 50% just 1 year ago).

There's just no funding for jumbos; at this level, the haircuts are steep.

The mid-upper tier (say, $700k - $1.5) is getting squeezed as the lower end has fallen off a cliff, and now the folks that want movement in the tier above are acting swiftly.

When you start doing the math, the $800k house is a huge premium on a $350k townhome, and not much of a discount on something potentially in a nicer area.

Something has to change.

[Laker]

Peter,
Tell that to shockg or even puckhead that claim that high end will never go down.
This type of house in the 4-6Million is mostly likely bought for cash and not mortgage, sure not Fannie mortgage...
So you might think it is not related to the mortgage "crisis" or as Paulson calls it rightfully - Housing correction.

However, the housing is like a huge chain that starts from renters, go to first time buyers, move up buyers, retired people, cash buyers, investors, very rich people, super duper rich, milliners, etc.
If you remove any link from that chain, it will collapse. It will not happen in one day or even one year...but by the end when the dust settles, it will hurt as much everywhere....which brings back 2000-2001 prices even in best areas like Hancock Park...Patience please.

[RZ]

I'm with some of my fellow commenters: how much did she pay for it? That's the true indicator of "real money." I could put a house on the market today for $10 million and then lower it to $500K but that doesn't mean I've lost $9.5 million in "real money" unless I had paid $10 million in the first place.

[RZ]

Hmm, it looks like there's another RZ out there. I'll have to come up with a new posting name.
- Not RZ @ 11:12am

[sfvrealestate]

Peter, RZ is right. Perhaps it was just 36% over-priced to begin with. All sellers always want to get more than what the comps tell them they can get. This was true in the accelerating market, too.

[John D.]

IAHATM,
I don't know what your source is, but I have several co-workers buying on jumbos w/ decent rates. Granted, they have very high incomes and solid credit, but so would most people buying $1+ million houses as their first homes.

Laker,
You are a dreamer. If you are right, and I can buy a 4 bdrm house for $1 million in the Palisades, I'll buy 3.

[puckhead]

Laker,

Find one of my posts where I said that the high end will never come down. If you can find it, I'll never post on this blog again. If you can't find it, just SHUT THE H#@L UP, get you panties unwound and stop putting words in peoples mouths.

As for the disount on this house, as another poster said, the info is useless unless we can do a comp on what other houses in the neighborhood are selling for. The $6M could have been way too high to begin with.

[l.a.guy]

According to Zillow ( http://snipurl.com/bassetthouse ) the last sale price was for $1,030,000 in 1994. From the Property Shark records it looks like they may have taken out some equity, but not too much ($600K?), so it looks like they'll survive on the $3.8M. Clearly the house was never worth the $5.9M they were originally asking. Is it possible they would have been able to get more a year ago? Definitely But to suggest this is evidence of the high end taking a big hit is stretching a bit.

If you read RealStalker (http://realestalker.blogspot.com/) regularly you'll find plenty of "celebs" losing money on houses (Denise Richards comes to mind), but it's as much due to incompetence as the state of high end real estate.

[Fred]

The idea that prices anywhere will hold up is an obvious fallacy. History tells us that all prices fall back to their pre-bubble levels. In this particular bust, some areas will fall BELOW their pre-bubble levels (outlying areas, due to an external factor: rising oil prices), but nothing will maintain value above 2001 prices. Why? Because it all comes back to incomes.

[Fred]

Wow, attacking Peter for making an accurate statement? He's not sensationalizing anything. He said quite simply that the house sold for a 36% discount off its original asking price. Sure, some sellers have ludicrous original asking prices, but to say that the drop isn't indicative of a buyer's market is fooling yourself

[It All Happens on the Margin]

SFVRE:

Funny, when I suggested a couple of days ago that the info on "how much someone paid for a home" should be on the MLS, you shot the very concept down - saying if someone really knew the market, they should know the value of a given home.

We all know value is relative. E-Z financing and lower monthly payments pushed all values to the moon. The former 2 are gone, now the markets are correcting. The buyers are extrapolating value not based on 4-6 month old comps (sheesh - the whole world has changed since then) but based on a reasonable return / inflation since the markets were in equilibrium - 2001. Period.

If we were greedy, as shockg would have all believe, we'd be after 1994 -1996 values all over again.

[puckhead]

Fred,

So if Angela Basset had listed this house at $2M and it sold quickly for $3.8M then the headline would be "Angela Basset Sells House with Multiple Offers at Almost Double the Listing Price" and everyone would be screaming that this is misleading because we all know that the high end market is not doing well and that the listing price was lowball to begin with. So yes, I would say both this and Peter's headline are misleading w/o knowing more facts.

[WatchingInMalibu]

My former neighbor is an interesting example. Here's his house:

http://www.zillow.com/HomeDetails.htm?zprop=20556934

Sold for $12.3m or so in the last year - but he started off asking ~$17m. Shows how the high end in Malibu has collapsed, right? Wrong. When you dig in, he actually bought the land in 1998 for ~$900k, built a house that was assessed at around $3m in 2002 when he finished it (though he had closer to $5m all in). When he listed it, he listed it at ~20% (4-4.5m) more than the previous year on a sq ft. basis - just like everyone else was doing.

So realistically this says prices have been more or less flat - regardless of what listing prices have done.

Really, the only thing that really matters is sales prices

[Laker]

It All Happens on the Margin wrote: "...Something has to change..."
It All Happens on the Margin,
According to specuvestors like shockg, Townhouses will shoot up in price to $700,000 to match...
I think that by the end of the day, that $800,000 house will be worth $400,000 and the townhouse will be worth $150,000.
I guess we shell see who is going to be correct.

[MyLessThanPrimeBeef]

The best and highest (moral) use of Malibu may be that of wind farm.

I can just see it, now...all those giant, high tech wind mills with their white, aerodynamic propellers.

It's a lot of sacrifice, tearing down those nice houses, but imagine the moral authority that would bestow on the beautiful people there to advance their Save-The-Earth campaign.

[sfvrealestate]

IAHOTM, you have totally misunderstood me. What matters is what a house is worth NOW, under current market conditions (which may include price declines OR increases depending on the market), and yes, comparing it to similar homes that have SOLD in the neighborhood. Not what somebody paid for it. Why would a seller, in any market, take less than what they can get regardless of what they paid for a house? The original price a seller paid for a property, to my way of thinking, is pretty irrelevant unless they paid more than they're asking and it's a short sale. Do you understand me now?

And just to put a fine point on it, and repeat myself and other posters here, perhaps AB listed the house way too high for the market it's in. There's no law against that.

[Buyer]

Up until recently, $800,000 houses in Pasadena were holding their prices pretty well. However, during the last three months the asking prices have been dropping very quickly. Nice 2000 sq.ft. homes in good neighborhoods have dropped from the mid $800,000s to the mid $700,000s. Even my agent says I should wait until Oct because these same homes will drop down into the $600,000. Yes, an honest real estate agent! He told me bluntly that today's lower prices are still not low enough. Wow.

[It All Happens on the Margin]

Hey puck, it just takes one neighbor to sell at a cut-rate to send values in your neck through the floor. If you're telling us there's no homes for sale and that stuff around the way is getting snapped up, fine. Remember, when that ONE house sells, it becomes the comp and the whole chain is broken. That's what happened during the bubble to justify values, that's what's happening now to justify values. The stuff getting posted on irvinehousingblog.com over the past few weeks is groundbreaking - for our visiting friends, Irvine is a town with great schools, low crime, historically good jobs (center of employment in OC), master planning, and coastal breezes.

Values there are plummeting, and it is happening one house at a time.

It all happens on the margin, my friends.

[Laker]

Buyer wrote: "...Even my agent says I should wait until Oct because these same homes will drop down into the $600,000. Yes, an honest real estate agent! He told me bluntly that today's lower prices are still not low enough. Wow...."

Buyer,
Keep your agent, he/she is honest and those are hard to find. They will risk losing your transaction for helping you and stating what they all know but most of the time keep to themselves. Agents know where prices are going....
Stay with that RE agent and reward him/her for helping you save money.
In my case, 1-2 out of 15 agents that I've talked to were honest. All the rest you know...

[- Not RZ @ 11:12am]

Wow, there's a lot of hostility among the commenters...