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A recent study determined that San Jose, California was the most expensive city in America to buy a house in. There are a number of factors contributing to the sky-high real estate prices and your friends in the Bay Area are just dying to talk to you about it if you ever ask them (so don’t do that), so a 6-bedroom house for $1.55 million seems like a steal on paper.
That study, featured here on MSN, determined the average annual income needed to buy a home in America’s 25 largest cities. The average combined income needed to buy a house in San Jose? $402,287. That comes with a monthly mortgage payment of $10,057 and the median home sale price is $1.475 million… Again, $1.55 million for a 6 bedroom home is a steal? Right. Not always…
A Redfin listing for a home at 668 Potomac Ct in San Jose has gone viral. The 6 bed, 3.5 bath home has 2,743 sq ft and is listed at $1.55 million. Tucked into the listing is the fact that the home has an inactive meth lab and methamphetamine contamination.
The listing says “GARAGE WITH NO VENTILATION TO HOUSE PER COUNTY INITIAL TESTING Home has INACTIVE Meth lab and meth SMOKE contamination, remediation process and subsequent costs associated will fall on buyer. Home has NOT been cleared of contamination and will be transferred to the new buyer in its current state. NO ACCESS prior to property being cleared by Santa Clara County’s Health Dept. Guidelines. Access Denied by County.”
The story exploded on the popular ‘Zillow Gone Wild’ Instagram account:
So not only does the house have meth damage and an inactive meth lab, you cannot access the property AND you have to pay the bill for it to be remediated and cleared of meth lab contamination!
Local news has gone wild with the story, of course. Something like this perfectly fits the bill of quirky local news stories:
It is hard to fathom a real estate listing like this anywhere else in America, or possibly anywhere else in the world. The top two comments on the ZillowGoneWild posting sum up a lot of thoughts on this. One reads “Sorry only looking for homes with an ‘active’ method lab. That’s a deal breaker.” The other says “I would think an inactive meth lab would devalue the property, but that’s just me.”
San Jose is at the base of Silicon Valley. The salaries many people earn in that area are unfathomable to regular folks. This house is going to sell and it is going to sell pretty fast.