3144 Lighthouse Ridge Lane: A Point Loma Sale

Multiple offers, four days on the market, and two closings just four days apart.

Sold price: $830,000 | Days on market: 4 | Sale-to-list ratio: 100.6% | Price per square foot: $502

Long before anyone outside the family saw a photograph of 3144 Lighthouse Ridge Lane, the work had already started inside it. I walked through the home room by room, and my sellers spent several days packing away the personal belongings that had filled it, so that the rooms would read clearly in photographs and in person. We brought in staging pieces where the home needed them, because we wanted it ready to sell quickly once it went live. I describe how I prepare a home for the market on my seller page.

The photographer arrived on Monday, September 21, and by the next morning my sellers had photographs, video and a 3D tour in hand. Everything was ready, and we still kept the townhome off the market for four more days, because the timing of this sale depended on another one.

My clients were buying a home elsewhere in Point Loma, and their purchase depended on selling Lighthouse Ridge. If we had listed right away and found a buyer over a weekend, they could have been committed to moving out with nothing signed on the place they were moving into. We waited until their offer on the new home was accepted, and on Friday, September 25, I listed the townhome at $825,000. I wrote about another family's version of this move in how one San Diego family sold before they bought.

The home sits inside At The Bay, the gated townhome community in Point Loma, and it has three bedrooms and three baths across three levels and 1,652 square feet, which makes it larger than all but 24 of the community's 167 homes. Its nearest counterpart was 3538 Shoreline Bluff Lane, a home with the same bedroom and bath count and exactly the same square footage, which had sold in June for $835,000 after seven days on the market. The photographs, video and 3D tour went live with the listing that Friday, and we held open houses on Saturday and Sunday.

The first offer came in that Sunday from buyers using a VA loan, the mortgage program backed by the Department of Veterans Affairs, and they proposed closing in 15 days. Most sellers would welcome that kind of speed, but my sellers' purchase contract called for their new home to close two business days after Lighthouse Ridge, and this offer asked for possession at closing. Accepting it as written would have meant handing over their keys two business days before they could collect new ones.

By Tuesday, the fourth day on the market, a second offer had arrived, and I walked my sellers through both of them, from price and requested credits to financing and timing. It was a difficult decision, because both buyers clearly wanted the home, and I told the other agent as much afterward.

My sellers chose to move forward with the VA buyers, and we shaped the agreement around the calendar their move required. We settled on a price of $830,000, moved the closing to Friday, October 23, and added the right for my sellers to stay in the home rent free for a short time after closing. That arrangement let the proceeds from this sale arrive before they closed on their new home, and it meant they would not have to move out before they had somewhere to go.

Four days on the market was faster than most recent sales nearby. The CMA I pulled on November 6 includes 11 attached homes in the 92110 ZIP code, all built since 2005 with at least two bedrooms and two baths, that closed over the previous 12 months, with Lighthouse Ridge among them. Those homes spent a median of seven days on the market and an average of 19. The group spans the whole ZIP code and includes several much larger townhomes, so its $959,000 median price says less about this home than the June sale on Shoreline Bluff does, and Lighthouse Ridge found its buyer three days sooner than its near twin.

After their inspection, the buyers asked for $7,000 in repairs and credits. I asked their agent exactly what that figure was meant to cover, and my sellers took the request seriously enough to get verbal quotes on the items that were not working. Based on those quotes, they offered $2,500 and left out one cosmetic item the buyers had already seen when they wrote their offer. The buyers accepted, and we signed the addendum.

The VA loan added one more uncertainty. The appraisal for a VA loan comes through the program itself, and if it had come in below the contract price, the buyers could have walked away with their deposit at a time when my sellers' own purchase depended on this sale. The appraisal came back at the contract price on October 10, and a week later the buyers removed their remaining contingencies.

I represented my clients in both transactions. Lighthouse Ridge closed on Friday, October 23, at $830,000, and four days later, on Tuesday, October 27, they closed on their new home in Point Loma.

Shirin Kheshti
Broker Associate | MRP
Coldwell Banker West
DRE 01848250
858.750.5753
Shirin@TheSDHome.com
Instagram: @ShirinSellsSanDiego