We've Gone Off the MLS

There's been some questions about the fact that we're no longer on the MLS. The listing did go off the MLS on August 16, 2010. With the start of the school year, we've decided to go off the market, since we have a small child and we're finding it hard to keep the house neat for showings and expect it will only worsen with the start of the school year.

If for some reason you're still interested in the home, please contact the listing agent Martin Garcia at Redfin and he can be reached at 408-634-5117 and he can relay a message to us.

Home Value Estimates

If you use any of the estimate sites like cyberhomes.com, eappraisal.com or zillow.com you have to be careful since most of these are basing the home price on 3 bedrooms and 3 baths, rather than the 5 bedrooms, 3 baths the home is currently built out as. (See the previous post on 5 bedrooms, 3 baths). For example, if you looked at cyberhomes.com on August 2, 2010, you'd see they give an estimated value of $765,655 for 23 Linden Drive. This would make you think that the house isn't a true bargain.

But you'd be wrong. Cyberhomes.com actually gives you ability to change the number of bedrooms on a home to re-evaluate what the estimate should be. The simple act of changing the home to 5 bedrooms raises Cyberhomes.com's appraisal to a whopping $891,507. You can further refine the estimate by adding in items like the recent kitchen and bath remodels, which would further increase the estimated value.

Zillow.com has a similar ability and if you visit the site, you'll noticed an agent's estimate of $929,673 which takes into account all the upgrades; rather than the $792,500 that Zillow has as a base estimate.

So don't take the estimate at face value. Do a little research and see what the true value of the home should be.

Before and After

As mentioned in other articles on this blog, there has been a lot of work done to this home in the last 3 years. One of the biggest transformations has been the appearance of the home.

Just to get an idea of what this house looked like when the current owner acquired this home:




On the exterior, an all new stucco dash finish has been applied, as have new windows, trim around the windows, columns to front porch, slate tile to the porch, new garage door, new front door, new side lite, and of course all new paint and landscaping.

And of course the current appearance of this home:



We certainly believe this has been a drastic improvement, and hope you do too!

Storage Abounds

One of the nice features of this home is the amount of extra storage available in both the main home as well as the attached garage. In addition to the closets in the home, there are two large storage areas next to each knee-wall upstairs (between the knee-wall and the outside walls of the home. One of these two areas (the one next to the upstairs bathroom) is so large we've gone ahead and put some of the old kitchen cabinets up there for extra storage. We'll leave these in place for the next owner to use for storage (right now these are used for storing extra linens and clothes). Both of these storage areas run the length of the house (around 40 ft) and are about 4 ft deep on each side. There's 4 doors upstairs to access these storage areas (two on each side of the upstairs area), making them a convenient and easy to access area.

In addition to the storage area in the home there's also an easily accessible attic space in the garage. The garage has a pull down staircase to the attic area, making it easy to get up into the attic space to use for storage. The space is the same footprint as the two car garage, so there's plenty of storage up there as well. So if you need extra space for keeping your stuff, you've found the right house.

Completed Work

The original property inspection done on March 8, 2010, had a number of recommendations for the home at 23 Linden Drive. As of the time of this writing (June 17th, 2010), we've completed corrections and fixes to almost all the recommended work.

This post will attempt to outline the recommendations made by the inspection and the work that was completed to correct these issues.

Structure

The first set of recommendations were around the structure of the home specifically the foundation. It recommended a separate report be produced around the foundation. This report was done by Edwards Construction, and their recommended work was completed on May 24, 2010.

Exterior

The report pointed out that there was some old fencing in need of repair on the right side of the home. The particular section of fencing in question is actually on the neighbor's property and none of it is within the property line of 23 Linden Drive. All the fencing surrounding the home is relatively new, and in fact the fencing along the back and right side, and front of the home was all newly done in 2007.

Electrical



A number of electrical fixes were called out. Specifically these were around missing cover plates, ground tied to neutral in the electrical panel, and a double tap in one of the electrical panels. All of these have been corrected. Cover plates have been installed where necessary, grounds have been removed from the neutral bars, and placed on the ground bar (including adding a ground bar in one of the electrical panels to accomplish this), and the double tap was removed and split into two separate breakers.

There was also a recommendation to put the electrical romex in the back utility room through rigid conduit. This was also completed, and all electrical in the utility room now goes through conduit.

The final electrical recommendation was to either have conduit or to drywall over exposed romex in the garage. This has been left for the new owner to complete, in case they want to do additional wiring, so they can drywall this section when their wiring changes are complete.

Heating

There were two recommendations for repairs to the heating system. One was to add a second vent to the door to the furnace and the other was to replace the brass gas flexible supply line with one made of stainless steel.

Both of these have been corrected. An upper vent was added to the furnace closet door, and the supply line has been replaced with a coated stainless steel supply line.

Plumbing

There were two areas that had plumbing recommendations. The first was with the water heater. It was recommended the venting system use sheet metal screws to hold it together (instead of or in addition the metal snaps currently in place). Also the discharge pipe was too short and it was recommended a longer one (one that reached below the water heater) be installed. Metal screws were added to the venting system and the discharge pipe was extended to below the water heater.



The second area of recommendation for the plumbing system was in reference to the p-trap below the sink in the kitchen. The kitchen sink has double bowls, and there was a p-trap below each sink. The recommendation was that the two drains should tie together and lead to a single p-trap. The configuration was changed so there is now a single p-trap below the connection of the two drains.

Interior

There were two interior recommendations. The first was to install an air gap for the dishwasher and the second was to install a threshold to the master bathroom on the ground floor.

The air gap installation is left to the new owner, as there a number of ways this can be accomplished. The sink itself is a 3 hole sink, and the current kitchen faucet only uses one of the 3 holes, so the "dummy" cover could be removed and one of the other two holes could be used to install an air gap (leaving a third hole that would need either a dummy cover or another feature (such as filtered water or soap dispenser). The other option is to keep the faucet as it is with the dummy cover and drill a hole for the air gap at either corner of the sink. Because the location of the air gap is a preference item for each individual, this task is left to the buyer.

A new threshold has been installed at the entrance of the master bath. It is oak wood tone to match the wood flooring in the master bedroom.

We've now covered all the recommended work in the property inspection. As you can tell, with the exception of a few items, almost all the recommended work has been completed. If you'd like the remaining work completed, just specify it (along with what or where you'd like that work done), and as sellers we'd be happy to accommodate your request as long as its reasonable and addresses the recommended correction.

Plans complete and available

The architect plans to make the house officially 5 bedrooms (the act of adding 2 closets to the upstairs rooms have been completed and are available for review. There's a small screenshot of the plans above. The full size printed version is a 24" x 36" blue print. As you can tell the plans require the removal of a single wall, and rebuilding the wall to accomodate two closet areas. These full plans will be included with the sale of the property. We can also put you in contact with the architect if there are any changes you'd like to have made to the plans.

As mentioned earlier these plans are completely optional, and only necessary if you'd like the home to be recorded with the county as a 5 bedroom home, otherwise the house remains a legal 2520 sq ft home with 3 bedrooms and 2 additional bonus rooms that have no closets.

The Neighborhood

At first glance, if you look at maps of 95050 and the surrounding area of San Jose, you'd think that 23 Linden Drive was actually in San Jose, and not in Santa Clara. The boundary is close, but this home is squarely in the city of Santa Clara, having Santa Clara utilities (considerably lower cost than PG&E and San Jose services) and part of the Santa Clara Unified School District.

This area of Santa Clara is generally considered part of the area surrounding Santa Clara University which is just to the north. It's also right on the border of the Rose Garden section of San Jose, one of the older more established sections of San Jose, which includes some of the most beautiful tree-lined streets in San Jose, along with shops and restaurants that line the Alameda.

There are also shops and restaurants within walking distance of the home at 23 Linden Drive. These include a video store, a Chinese, Japanese and Brazilian restaurants, a Starbucks, a donut shop, two dry cleaners, a convenience store, two gas stations and a Burger King, all conveniently located at the corner of Newhall and Washington.