Los Lagos bargains

Granite Bay, California is ranked number 74 on Money Magazine's Best Places to Live. Los Lagos is a gated community in Granite Bay, home to executives and local basketball stars. Even within the gated community, one finds gated estates. The community features a beautiful pond/park next to the guard shack. Even in the Sacramento area, where most of our state's leaders keep at least a part-time home, Los Lagos is a special neighborhood befitting of movie stars and sports "royalty" (the local basketball team is the Sacramento Kings).

6080 BARCELONA CT, Granite Bay, CA 95746 is a bank repo priced at $944,900. At 4500 square feet on an acre, it is perhaps a modest home for Los Lagos. It doesn't even have a pool. But with HOA dues of just $175, it is a cheap entree to a neighborhood just across the street from Eddie Murphy's 10 acre estate (on the market for $6.9 million). Zillow reports 2007 property taxes at $12,577, making the old valuation somewhere around $1.257 Million dollars. But the last sale, presumably the bank repo, was only $866k, so don't cry for the bank yet.

5634 VIA AVION, Granite Bay, CA 95746 is more befitting the storied opulence of Los Lagos. At over 7,000 square feet on a 1.7 acre lot, this house is a bank-owned, as-is bargain at $1.539 Million. The new owner will only need to install a pool, add some landscaping to block the view of the power lines, and update the decor. Zillow reports 2007 property taxes at $24,326, making the old valuation somewhere around $2.43 Million dollars. But the last sale, presumably the bank repo, was only $1,710,00. It would appear that the prior owner (or the second mortgage and the prior owner) took a $700k loss, with the primary mortgage only losing a couple hundred grand (including repo costs).

I expected the real estate market to drop. Even I didn't expect to see open houses of bank repo homes in Los Lagos.