California homebuyers looking for a fixer-upper have a chance to own a six-bedroom home in Silicon Valley for about $1.6 million—but there’s a catch.
On the downside, it also has an inactive meth lab.
Despite the toxic contamination, the price of the home only Walter White of the TV series “Breaking Bad” could love increased $125,000 about a week ago.
The price bump didn’t surprise Oscar Wei, deputy chief economist with the California Association of Realtors, a statewide real estate organization with more than 185,000 members.
“Given that it’s a tight market ... it’s not a complete surprise that prices may have gone up,” Mr. Wei told The Epoch Times. “Even though it has a meth lab, it may not be in bad condition.”
There might be buyers in the San Jose market who don’t particularly care about its history of illegal drug manufacturing and the clean up required, according to Mr. Wei.
Much of that is due to a substantial drop in available homes for sale in the area, Mr. Wei added. The city had nearly 39 percent fewer homes on the market in September compared to the same month in 2022, he said.
Many residents are holding back from listing their homes for sale because of the increase in interest rates and the cost to borrow money, which Wei said might start easing by the end of the year and into 2024.
“When we have interest rates start coming down, which will continue in 2024, that supply issue probably will ease,” Mr. Wei said. “I don’t expect a sharp increase in terms of supply in 2024, but we probably will see some improvement. We probably should expect sales to continue to be slow.”
The median price for a home in California was about $843,000 in September, meaning half of the homes were listed for less and half were listed for more than this price, according to the California Association of Realtors.
As far as the six-bedroom San Jose house for sale with a meth lab included, Mr. Wei said he didn’t know whether that would be a plus for homebuyers.
“Typically, it’s not,” he said.
