For home-seekers and armchair looky-loos, real estate sites like Zillow, Trulia and Redfin are like wish lists, giving visitors peeks inside homes on the market and even frequently offering virtual 3D tours of the residences. It’s not only of benefit to the merely curious and to serious home buyers but to Realtors and home sellers who want to either cut back on or dispense with the hassles of throwing open houses.
In terms of accuracy and dependability, the sites vary a bit. One house I check on regularly ranges in estimated value from $911,000 on Zillow to just shy of a million on Redfin. True, I can’t afford it either way, but it’s not the best way to guess what the house should sell for. Realtors don’t have much regard for any site’s estimates, relying more on “comps,” comparisons of selling prices of similar homes in the neighborhood.
Redfin offers a listing of the most popular homes that are looked at on its site, and it’s a fairly interesting cross-section of homes, ranging from very expensive to what passes for reasonable these days. Currently, the Top 10 list ranges from a $3.2 million home in Belmont Heights to a $299,000 manufactured home on the Westside, which might suggest people are searching for fantasy homes as well as ones they can more easily afford.
Of the homes on the Top 10 most-viewed list, half are already into the selling process. Here are the others that are still available.
The No. 1 most-viewed home is a Spanish-style four-bedroom, four-bath home at 296 St. Joseph Ave. in Belmont Heights. Listed by Heather Dene at $3.2 million, the 3,275 square-foot home has plenty of great features, including a big window-seating nook in the living room, a walk-in wine cellar, an outdoor fireplace and a large primary bedroom upstairs with two balconies. The home was built in 1936 and thoroughly renovated in 2017.
Coming in at No. 3 on the list is a three-bedroom, one-bath house touted as a starter home at 626 E. 10th St., just steps from St. Mary Medical Center, if that’s a selling point for you. Offered by Jeanet Salazar at $599,000, the 1912 home has a few upgrades, including most windows as well as forced-air heating. Also upgraded is the price, upped $24,000 on June 29 from its initial list of $575,000, still well below the median home price in Long Beach of $791,000.
No. 5 on your scorecard is another high-dollar residence in the Bixby Village community at 6080 Avenida de Castillo. Offered at $1.733 million by Julio Ayora, the three-bedroom, three-bath Cape Cod-style home features vaulted, wood-beam ceilings, high-end kitchen appliances, and a very welcoming backyard covered patio with outdoor kitchen and glass-framed fire pit. You can live the links life by enjoying the adjacent Bixby Village Golf Course, stroll the nicely maintained grounds on ending walking paths and take a dip in the community pool. If you’re going to be strained to be saddled with a 30-year mortgage of about $7,400, you should note that the Homeowners Association fees for this property are $470 a month.
Next, we have a very nice—small but nice—house at 712 N. Toledo Walk (not to be confused with THE Toledo in Belmont Shore and Naples). By small, I mean one bedroom and one bathroom in a bit more than 700 square feet. I can feel your interest waning but bear with me for a sec. The home, though, yes, we can all agree is small, is nevertheless a jewel of a 1923 Craftsman, with undeniable curb appeal. Listed at $649,000 by Scott Chapman, the home has restored wood flooring throughout and beautiful Craftsman-style wood built-in shelves and cabinets, window frames and casings and doors. The home is just north of Seventh Street, adjacent to the Hellman Historic District. The buyer will inherit the home’s bragging rights for being the winner of the 2014 Preservation Award from Long Beach Heritage.
Finally, we end up with a million-dollar-plus home in the East End’s Plaza neighborhood. The listing calls it Los Altos, but I know a Plaza home when I see one. This particular one, at 2340 Iroquois Ave., is up a few notches from the stock models, as it should be with a listing price of $1.28 million, about a quarter-million more than typical homes in the 70-year-old neighborhood.
Listed by agent Mary Ebersole, the three-bedroom, two-bath home has been thoroughly upgraded and expanded to its current size of 1,594 square feet, with an open floor plan allowing the galley-style kitchen easy access to the dining room.
The landscaping is lush, with the front yard featuring palms and dogwood trees. The backyard is less verdant but built perfectly for entertaining with its backyard kitchen, covered patio and hot tub.
