The City of South Pasadena has already closed escrow on one of the unoccupied historic former CalTrans-owned houses on which it recently accepted purchase offers, and hopes four others will close by Christmas. Meantime tenants of about dozen occupied CalTrans properties are getting close to purchasing their homes.
The prospective buyer behind the $1,451,000 offer the Council originally accepted Nov. 20 for 216 Fairview bowed out for unknown reasons. But last week, the top three offers made for that house were brought hack to Council, which authorized negotiations on two of them. On Friday, city attorney Roxanne Diaz told the South Pasadenan News the new successful bidder was David C. Cheng, who offered to buy the property for $1,274,000.
Diaz also confirmed escrow closed Dec. 6 on 726 Meridian, a parcel that includes 1002 and 1008 Hope Street. It was sold to Susan Zhang for $1.72 million.
City real estate agent Dave Way, CEO of the Dave Knight Real Estate Team, said escrow on two others historic homes–217 Fremont, which sold for $1.45 million to Sergey Alvrtsyan and Marian Simonyan; and 225 Fremont, sold for $1,377,000 million to Eric Gong—is set to close next week, followed the week after by closure on 1707 Meridian, sold for $1,007,000 to June Teh-Chiung Cheng.
The city acquired all five properties from Caltrans last February for $165,700 which means if all five close as presently contracted, the city will clear $6,762,300.
Soheji Darvish, a real estate developer in Westwood who examined all five properties and made unsuccessful offers for 216 Fairview and 1707 Meridian, said the bidding was not sufficiently transparent. “The problem is I don’t even know how far off I was.” He said he’d have preferred a “multiple counter-offer back at a specific number and maybe a third round” to help him better gauge how much to put out for a best and final offer. “Other than that it was a normal process.”
Darvish said South Pasadena is a good neighborhood, and that he’ll be keeping his eye on the next batch of unoccupied houses the city is expected to offer. As early as next month, the California Transportation Commission is expected to authorize the city’s purchase of another group of unoccupied homes for resale by the city.
Meantime CalTrans is proceeding with private bilateral negotiations with tenants of 33 occupied properties it still owns in South Pasadena. This week, CalTrans spokesperson Eric Menjivar told the South Pasadenan News nine of the properties are currently in escrow at “affordable prices”; four contracts are “pending” at affordable prices; and one property has already closed at a fair market value.
Eleven other renters “have been determined non-eligible to purchase at affordable [values] and will be offered at fair market value.” Menjivar said tenants of two of the properties declined to purchase their home while three others did not respond to a “notice of solicitation to sell their rental.”
CalTrans acquired all the properties decades ago as part of its failed SR 710 extension project. MORE HERE
