Seller wants $400K for a prime lot in Alameda. It’s underwater

A prime lot in Alameda zoned for a single-family home or a building of up to four units has listed for $400,000. The catch: it’s underwater.

The unidentified seller has listed the submerged quarter-acre lot at 610 Grand Street, in the shadow of a bridge across the Alameda Lagoon inside the island city, the Sacramento Bee reported.

The listing calls on buyers to “come create and build a slice of heaven where the backyard is an aquatic oasis of calm and peace.”

“This is a water lot,” the listing says, noting an opportunity for an investor or developer “where location, location is everything.”

Listing agent April Jones of East Bay Realty and Lending told the Bee how her client came to own the watery East Bay lot, then chose to sell it.

Alameda County, which picked up the land because of a tax lien, sold the lot last year to its present owner for $100,100, according to public property records.

The lot, once part of the San Francisco Bay tideland, was one of three parcels at 610, 650 and 700 Grand Street owned by the wealthy fruit-processing mogul Arthur Cleveland Oppenheimer, whose estate included a main house, guest house and tennis courts.

When Utah Construction later filled the tideland to create South Shore in the 1950s, much of Oppenheimer’s waterfront estate was submerged. 

That created the 610 Grand Street underwater lot.

The buyer purchased the tax-defaulted parcel as an investment, but didn’t know it was underwater until Jones dropped by the site, she told the Bee.

“When you receive a listing as an agent, you go take a look at the property, you take pictures, and so when I finally figured out where it was I looked and said ‘Whoa, there’s no land here,’ not that you can walk on,” Jones told the newspaper.

The county property assessor’s office describes the lot as residential with zoning for a single-family home or a building of up to four units, Jones said. 

The lot measures just under a quarter of an acre.

A buyer would likely need to wade through extensive approvals from the City of Alameda, Army Corps of Engineers, Water Board, Public Works and Bay Conservation and Development Commission — before any construction could begin.

Once a buyer and building permits are in place and the lot is surveyed, the property could end up being a beautiful spot to live in an upscale neighborhood a few blocks from the Bay, Jones said.

— Dana Bartholomew

Read more

Commercial

San Francisco

Aviation startup Pyka leases former hangar for HQ on Alameda Point

Residential

San Francisco

Landsea’s Alameda Marina project meets luxe market at waterfront

Residential

San Francisco

New state law enables 600-home development on Alameda