About a year and a half ago I wrote a post about bad mls photos and I thought it was time for another. I swear, there sure has been a glut of really bad photos of homes in the MLS lately! Maybe it’s becasue of all those short sales? It always seemed to me that an agent took photos of their lsitings to show off those properties. A photo is supposed to put a home in it’s best possible light…at least that’s what I thought. Below are some goodies from homes on the Peninsula currently on the market. They’re amazing to say the least!
Ummm…what’s for sale here?
I guess it was a tad too much work to move those boxes?
Nice shot!…of the screen!
Maybe if it was in focus?
See, the idea is to make the room look as large as you can…
What’s with all these TV’s being on? Hey, is that ESPN?
Any chance we could take last night’s dinner off the counter during the photo shoot?
Maybe there’s no bedding available?
Now really, can any of you imagine exposing your home to the marketplace like this? It’s hilarious…
Shrikant on 
allie on 
Dana Ferri on 
A reader on 
Suresh on 
Hi Jim,
These are funny! Maybe these are the ones which stay on the market forever!!
By the way, very informational and occasionally funny blog. I am a long time lurker, but posting for the first time. I have gained a lot of information about Foster City from your website (blog), so thanks for the excellent work. I would to hear your thoughts on 150 FLYING CLOUD Isle, what;s going ion with that one. It may be bank owned, but it has been sitting on the market for almost 6 months now!
Anurag
Thanks Anurag!!
Flying Cloud would be OK if it was $869,000….the problem is that it’s on leased land. You have to buy the land too and that pushed the overall value way over where it should be for that house. (in my opinion at least)
Hi Jim,
Thanks for the evening laugh! The other ones that get me are the teeny, tiny photos about the size of a postage stamp.
See ya,
Lottie
Hi Jim,
Do you know what streets/houses are on leased land? I would love to learn more about it.
Thanks,
N
This may be worth a post at some point…if I can find out a couple of answers. The story is that when Foster City was created the idea was that you could buy a single family house cheaper than in San Mateo, Belmont…etc by paying for the house and leasing the land from the developer. The original lease was something like $25.00 a month and it went for 30 years. There was also an option to buy the land, inexpensively by today’s standards, but still alot of people leased. All of these folks had lots of opportunities to buy the land over the years. When the lease ended it was restructured at over $1000.00 a month and at that time some people got caught. Many people had retired and were on fixed incomes…the land was still offered for purchase but it was over $100,000. Last year there was a waterfront on Flying Mist that was on leased land and the cost of the land was $200,000. I’m constantly surprised that there are any leased land homes still out there. They’re rare at this point and they’re randomly located too. There’s no specific neighborhood that are exclusively leases. It’s safe to figure most of the earlier phases in Foster City had this lease component…but how many remain? I have no idea, but I’ll try to check.
On another note about pictures, what about the agents who post pictures for the wrong house or even put the wrong address? It actually happened to my parents once, they got a flyer in the mail about a townhome that was for sale and looked at the address and it was theie house! They called the agent and he didnt understand what they were talking about.
Also, I was just looking at the MLSlisting and I noticed a “townhome” for sale on Albacore however the home in the picture could not be on Albacore.
Funny that you saw that Nicole!! I did too…it must be the secret house on Albacore, huh?