Larger homes on large lots are hard to find in our current real estate market. If you look at new construction looking for a large lot you will not find any without paying $500,000-$750,000. And the location of such new construction homes will be typically out of the way and off the beaten path. The nice thing about the Woodward Park neighborhood is that it is located near Fresno’s best shopping areas and most expensive office/commercial spaces.
Now that we are about a decade past the last mortgage meltdown and real estate floor so to speak, the average home buyer today is looking for a nice, move in ready home that they don’t need to upgrade. During the real estate trough everybody wanted a deal and they didn’t necessarily care about the condition of the home as long as it was a good deal and they could get a lender to give a loan against the property.
However, with the rise of real estate prices over several years straight and popular TVs shows like HGTV, people now want a nice updated home. And rightly so due to that price tag on homes in the current market. My point is that if you can put some elbow grease in a home and do some updating then you can still find a home for substantially less than the top of the market for any neighborhood. In order for a home to need updating it probably needs to be at least 5-10 years old at a minimum. Well, in this Woodward Park neighborhood most of the homes were built in the late 70s to the mid 80s. So there are at least a few decades of real estate interior design trends that have come and gone since they were built.
Looking at the two cheapest sales in the past six months out of eight sales they sold for $330,000 and $385,000. These homes were 2,022 and 2,700 sq. ft. with 10,800 and 15,200 sq. ft. lots respectively. They sold for $163 and $142 a sq. ft. What these homes had in common was they were both almost all original inside. The larger of the two had some updates in the kitchen at some point. So if you can put in some work over time on interior upgrades you can still find a deal in Woodward Park for under market value and still have an above average to an estate sized lot.
This neighborhood has a wide range in homes. I’m using Shepherd, Friant, Audubon and the running path as the four boundaries for my data. The homes that are active on the market and the ones that have sold in the past six months range from 2,022 – 3,455 sq. ft. The lot sizes of these homes range from 8,800 – 15,200 sq. ft. Prices of the sold homes range from $330,000 – $539,000 with a price per square foot range from $142 – $198. To see what is actively for sale in and around this Woodward Park neighborhood click here for real time data.