The competition for the smallest home in Los Angeles: 470 square foot home selling for nearly $900 per square foot in Glassell Park.
Los Angeles has some cramped living situations thanks to many people doubling up or moving in with mom and dad as adults. Renting and purchasing a home are both expensive propositions. However, I love getting updates on small homes and seeing how people try to justify current prices. One of the pick-up lines used to sell these homes is the “condo alternative†narrative. Why be a condo loser when you can actually own a single family closet instead? At least that is the line of reasoning in these ads. Many hipster areas where homes were built back in the days prior to the Great Depression need a lot of revamping. Sure, the cosmetics might look good but how are the underlying structural bones of the place? In L.A. most are only focused on the outside and really don’t care about these technical issues. Today we look at a home in Glassell Park that was built back in 1926. One option for avoiding rental Armageddon is buying a closet sized home.
Glassell Park
There was this trend labeled dis-inflation a few years back. It is still going on to some degree but not so much. You would see manufacturers getting creative with their packaging but actually giving you less food (i.e., tuna, cereal, etc) but under the guise that the new package was innovated and “cool†looking. Given the run-up in home prices and many simply being priced out, the new pitch is “hey, owning a home is more important than actually having additional space.â€Â Forget opportunity costs. Forget alternative investments. Forget safety of neighborhood. Buy at all costs. #YoLo and #AlwaysBeBuying.
So it caught my eye when this Glassell Park hit the market:
3027 Future St, Los Angeles, CA 90065
1 bed, 1 bath, 470 square feet
470 square feet! Now we’re talking major living space here. They pitch the big lot here as well but come on, are you really going to sleep out in the backyard? If you have a family, is your kid going to sleep in the yard?
The ad uses the condo alternative pitch:
“Sunset to Fireworks view! Handy to all that is NELA! Privacy! Why rent or go the tiny landless condo route when you can have this hillside oasis on a 5300+ sq ft lot. Slip thru the enticing curved red brick wall and up to the charm of this a bright and spacious retreat with a feeling of space beyond its 1 bedroom.â€
Why participate in rental Armageddon or purchase a “landless†condo? You can own this place outright (with a 30 year mortgage of course). The schools assigned to this area are not good but then again, screw the kids since they’ll be moving back home as adults. Maybe you’ll find room in the closet?
Here is another perspective of the home:
If you doubt the jump in prices, look at the price history here:
So much for the myth that people stay put. The house sold in 2004 for $260,000. 7 years later it sold for $276,500 (so much for mega appreciation here). Now, someone is trying to get $405,000 for a 470 square foot place (this is an increase of 46 percent in 4 years).
Maybe you are too hip for big homes. 1 bedroom is enough and you might enjoy living in a place the size of a college dorm room. I absolutely love the condo alternative market niche!
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37 Responses to “The competition for the smallest home in Los Angeles: 470 square foot home selling for nearly $900 per square foot in Glassell Park.”
I wish houses were that cheap in the Bay Area.
They are!! You can find them in: Richmond, Oakland, San Lorenzo, Hayward, and some parts of SJ.
I recently watched a show called Tiny House Hunting on FYI about a couple in SF who bought a cheap tiny box and the price was in line with this one.
I don’t know about you guys, but I think this shoebox is awesome. Among the many features NOT disclosed is the outdoor laundry area. Now you can do your laundry while enjoying the wonderful California weather. Not to mention the linoleum countertop in the bathroom with 1970 fixtures to match and the one tiny closet. I could go on and on. I mean who could ask for more? Where do I sign up?
It is smaller than my two car garage. Are you sure this is not one of those places on Maui that they rent? LOL
Don’t think this house represents the California Dream, but perhaps the Nightmare! Anyone that desperate to pay even close to the asking price for a ‘crap shack’ like that has more than a few screws loose in their head! The smaller the square footage the higher the price per square foot? Even nice homes along the coast don’t fetch $900/square foot, though they are still beyond the reach of 90% of the populace! You really got to wonder, when will the SHTF in California’s sky hight real estate markets!!!!
I don’t know Jn, after seeing the piece of junk house go for 3 million by the beach this just may be bargain by LA standards. When will the craziness end?
It’s hip to buy tiny square.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB5YkmjalDg
Positives and negatives in this one. With a minimum down the PITI will be around $2,200. Try to rent for less in SoCal. Another positive is the smaller home means overnight guests never happen. They stay in a hotel. Kids won’t move back either as there is no room. Smaller living requires trashing unused material items.
The negative is less room with no private space for the spouse who wants to read in a quiet spot in the house.
Since we traded down from 2,600 sqft. to less than 1,000 we are extremely happy. No yard to maintain and people know they can’t bunk with us.
Apparently you aren’t aware of rents in SoCal. You can indeed rent a 1/1 for far less at 470 sq ft in a nice neighborhood to boot.
You make a great point about downsizing, although that’s not really relevant to the issue of comparative affordability which is being presented here.
Your argument boils down to “hey it’s a smaller turd, so it doesn’t stink as bad as a larger one.”
I forgot to mention that there’s more to the cost of ownership than just PITI. Maintenance, repairs, and replacement costs. Taxes and insurance could increase in real terms. Government subsidies such as the MI deduction change. It’s a depreciating asset, there’s no free ride.
@MikeMor, I rent a place that is almost 900 sq ft, walking distance to the beach, bicycle distance to Manhattan Beach, including renters insurance I pay less than $1400 per month. So this Mt. Washington crap shack is about 1/2 the size and costs 1/3 more than what I rent. If it looks like a bubble, walks like a bubble, quacks like a bubble, then it must be a bubble. I pity the fool who buys this pile of dung.
MikeMor I wouldn’t say it’s good to go from 2,600 to 1,000 sqft, I mean unless you want that, I still enjoy my 5 bed, 4 bath in 2/4 acre and 3600 sq ft. Who cares if family needs to move in, at least you have something to offer them, assuming you love family. By the way I have no mortgage anymore, I’m just a slave to property tax. If it’s ok for New York and San Francisco, it’s gotta be ok for some of Los Angeles, and expect prices to rise as there is no inventory. Rock on
I remember an older lady relating to me that as a child, her and her siblings slept in a tent attached to the side of their families small home on the plains of Alberta Canada. Likely well below 0 much of the winter and they survived, so throw the kids outside for sure in So Cal. Everyday is a camping day and I can assure you those kids will move out ASAP once they are older. Win-Win.
Micro homes are cool, but that house will be over 100 years old before the interest on a 30 year note is paid off.
Lolololololol
This is sadly one of the things that starts to mark systemically unaffordable housing markets. Followers of this site must surely be aware of the site “Crack Shack or Mansion”, on housing choices in Vancouver?
The UK has had housing markets distorted the longest by anti-growth regulations, and besides an epidemic of people in “illegal accommodation” (garages, lofts, garden sheds, basements etc), they have all sorts of “housing innovations” becoming legal – such as shipping containers converted to “housing” and inner city basement parking garages legally redeveloped as “housing”.
Meanwhile in any city that does not worry about saving the planet, preserving farmland, whatever, the norm continues to be for larger and better houses for the same real cost, with the cost of land per unit of space falling in real terms at least in long term trend. This is how free markets work in most things, and there is no reason it can’t work like this in housing, as shown by several decades of evidence (following automobile based development which ended the extractive-economic-rent urban model).
Look closely Doc.
This property has unpermitted additions – an extra studio apartment and a dining area. It is more like 2bed/2bath 800 sqft
https://www.redfin.com/CA/Los-Angeles/3027-Future-St-90065/home/7072092
HAHAHA. Your absolutely right! Totally unpermitted additions. They closed up the back patio and made it a room. You can still see the original roof eaves and patio floor. Obviously not up to code. Then there is the shack next door, some kind of studio apartment I assume. Good call.
As a cautious buyer in the Bay Area, who missed the boat in 2007.
I’m afraid this trend will continue.
Anything under 1 million will soon be a bargain.
Many off-shore investors, flippers and well paid Engineers and Programmers,
Filling to the jobs that go begging in the Bay Area.
Everybody needs a place to live, young college educated professional families see houses as a good long-term investment, the American Dream.
I can’t blame them.
“Anything under 1 million will soon be a bargain”
LOL, 2007 called and it wants that line back!!!
BTW all that brick work on a house in socal!!!, that shit is going to crumble one day, all it’ll take is a well place temblor and that’ll cost a bundle.
Bubble-bubble; the money never runs out for the Bay Area….. 😆
Things can and will change…
Excuse me sir; Can you direct us to the naval base in Alameda? It’s where they keep the nuclear wessels.
So go bid on some houses in the Bay area, you better have all-cash.
What’s different from 2007?
Millionaire Chinese looking to get their families out of that polluted, corrupt, country.
Or just plant their money in a safe investment that the communist government can’t touch it.
What’s different from 2007?
HB-5 visas, for rich immigrants, bring your bucks and buy a house, become a US citizen.
What’s different from 2007?
Tech workers with 5 to 7 million in their E-Trade accounts.
You think Google is going to have layoffs? Or move to Lubbock Texas?
BTW, there is a great brewery at the old Alameda Navy base, try their IPA!
people crack me up….patience brings opportunity..
This drought could make houses a small part of your worries….I live in the bayarea, own and wouldn’t buy for what it’s supposedly worth…hot money has turned housing into a day trading market….
waves break….for some reason I want to own water rights, go figure, that is old school thinking…
So what is going to happen when Boomers start downsizing or moving to managed care facilities?
Current US Household debt totals 11.8 Trillion dollars – how much debt can we pile up?
Between stagnating salaries and heavy debt for many Americans – it doesn’t take an economist to figure out that we are in for a rough ride in the near future.
Anne Mouse: “So what is going to happen when Boomers start downsizing or moving to managed care facilities?”
That question has been addressed many times. Boomers who have houses (not all do) will leave it to their children. (Prop 13 benefits do descend to the children.)
So Xer’s and Millennials should not expect to buy the house of a Boomer (who is not their parent) on the cheap.
It won’t be practical to keep in all instances, soal – and when market turns we may see a rush to the ever narrower exit by sellers… narrower with fewer willing buyers into a collapsing low-mid-high prime market.
—–
Lois
March 9, 2015 at 9:59 am
…Father’s house in Culver City is worth probably around 700,000–needs renovation. Will need to divide property with siblings, but don’t want to think about it now.
Weather forecasted for 90065 over the next few days – hot as hell. I bet this place is a sauna inside even with all the windows and doors open in the middle of the day. $405K and you don’t even get central A/C.
“Another working day has ended
Only the rush hour hell to face
Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes
Contestants in a suicidal race” – Synchronity II, Sting, The Police
Boomers — those born between 1946 and 1964 — do not appear to be downsizing into smaller homes like some of us thought they would. In California, Proposition 13 helps Boomers stay in their homes because their property taxes are low (compared to those who buy now), and many of the Boomer mortgages are paid off.
Also, as the Doctor has previously documented, over 2.0 million Generation X’ers have moved back in with their Boomer parents, and another proposition – Proposition 58 – will let them keep the same low property taxes once the parents pass the home on to them. It’s basically a win-win for those who purchased property in California during the 70s and 80s, and stayed put. The same thing can be said for Boomers who rented years ago and stayed put in their rent controlled apartments, some having nice apartments now by the coast $500 a month.
There are no volcanoes in sight spewing lava that cools and forms new land in southern California on which to build more houses. It’s not about the structure, it’s not about the stucco and wood, it’s not about the crap shack itself – it’s about the precious California dirt on which the crap sits. The supply of dirt is limited.
where’s the water coming from….
40 yr drought makes that dirt worthless
How seriously do people here take this (an op-ed by a NASA guy who says California only has one year’s supply of water left in its reservoirs): http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-famiglietti-drought-california-20150313-story.html
He adds that that still leaves groundwater, but the groundwater supply is also being rapidly depleted.
If it’s as serious as all that, it might not be worth buying a house in California even if prices plummet.
Water is precious, more so than any other resource. Without it, good luck.
I take it real serious, all lawns needs to go brown or be replaced terra landscaping.
I live in N California and it’s not right, the sun is much too hot for this time of the year. I’ve lived in Ca for 50 yrs and this is scary drought. Worse yet is there have been 3 minor droughts over last couple years.
I will not buy in California…no way. I hope my wife wants to sell and move…near water…
This drought sounds serious, but here in SoCal people act like it’s no big deal. That’s it’s a concern, an annoyance — but that it will be solved without serious suffering. Maybe just a little less watering of the lawn.
IF the drought really does happen, and SoCal runs out of water, where will all the illegals go? No money to pay for desalination plants, and the illegals add little to nothing to the tax role….
Might be able to pick a a SoCal home for a song in 5 years IF NASA really has a clue.
Can’t be long until the hypsters are asking cash money for a literal cardboard box under the freeway …
I’m asking $185k for my Sub-Zero fridge cardboard box flip on SoSki (South Skid Row, for LA n00bs)
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