For those desperately trying to stay afloat in the never-ending struggle that is the San Francisco rental market, buying a spot to call your own sounds like the ultimate dream. We're right there with you. And so we can forgive you for getting excited at the news that a piece of property in San Francisco's Lake District just hit the market for the low, low asking price of $50k. But of course, there's a catch. The property is a driveway. That you can't build on.
According to Curbed, the property is used as a driveway by the neighbors, and it doesn't look like that's going to change anytime soon.
When the agent started marketing the property, neighbors offered stories of its past. "This is all hearsay, but some neighbors told me that years ago, the owner of the property gave them a really hard time and hassled them. They ended up going to court to get a legal easement to use the driveway," [real estate agent Fred Glick] says. The agent thinks that happened sometime in the 1970s.
As the neighbors have been granted a legal easement, any use of the property would have to maintain their existing ability to drive through it.
So who owns the property now, and why did they buy it in the first place? Glick told CBS SF that the owner lives on the East Coast, and had never seen the tiny sliver of land before buying it at a tax auction.
“I don’t think he knew what he was buying. He just saw an address in San Francisco for a cheap price, and he thought, ‘why not, let’s try it.’”
And so why would anyone drop $50k on this thing? Because having a San Francisco address gets you cool points, duh. Or, as Glick explained to Curbed, "I think that maybe someone with an ego might want it, or someone who might want a San Francisco address."
But, wait, what?