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It's festive! Who wouldn't want to live in a festive house?

Not clear from the small picture. You assume it's dead grass but
maybe it's dirt. Or maybe it's just brownish gravel. I know one
guy who levelled his smallish front yard and put in gravel so he
could park his half-dozen cars right up front of the house.
Also got rid of all that idiotic mowing, watering, and weeding.

Interesting price history.

Date Event Price Appreciation Source
Jul 08, 2009 Listed $254,900 -- MLSListings #80932758
Nov 07, 2005 Sold $510,000 8.5%/yr Public Records
Mar 09, 2001 Sold $349,000 -- Public Records

Now, its lower than 2001 prices. Unfortunately, no strawberry picker can get the loan

I used to live in Hollister, and have been keeping track of the market. I predict a fall-back to 1997 prices, not adjusted for inflation.... straight back in time twelve years. I bought a house in 1999 that I'm pretty confident is worth less today than what it was when I bought it. There are a number of factors for this, with the funny-money mortgage money being only one of them. Hollister has other factors that are dragging it down.

There is a long way to go to bringing water-free yards, I can see.

Where is photoshop when ya need it? Add a little green lawn, erase the christmas lights... Or - add snow to the lawn and make the lights pretty. We've got options, babe!

So stocksjustgo, you lived there - can you explain the 'Hollister' t-shirts? Don't the kids know where the hell Hollister is? Or is there something special about this sprawling metropolis I just don't know? Check me, but isn't it a rural/farming community in the middle of almost no-where ? Or maybe I have underestimated the coolness of strawberry picking. Do the strawberries have a garlic tinge to them? (I sense a smell, is it close to the garlic capital of Gilroy?). Yum.

Hey 50% off, what a deal? Nothing like a 1400 sq ft tract house 50 miles from everything. Holla!

I visited Hollister sometime around 1980 and it seemed to be a throwback to the '50's~~~at least it appeared that way to me. I can't imagine anyone paying $510K for a house there~~~I just assumed that it had become something akin to 'North of Montana' in Santa Monica. I, too, figured that the 'Hollister' clothing line was emblematic of a hip, cool and desirable new community that had evolved from the former sleepy little working class hamlet. The house pictured looks like most of the houses I saw in Hollister many years ago. The more things change...et al.

Hollister is a hot, dusty town surrounded by ag. However, they have an AWESOME dirtbike/offroad park there. It's way too far to commute to any real job, so I have no idea why home prices would have gone up there.

The Hollister clothing line came about because, I think, they thought that the name Hollister sounded cool enough. It's all beach wear and stuff, not farm-hand wear, which is what you see people wearing out there. Hollister is NO WHERE NEAR THE BEACH. It is rural interior California.

My wife and I laugh at people who wear it.

That being said, Hollister as a town isn't that bad a place.

Hollister isn't a beach town, but I'd hardly call it "rural interior." It's 30 minutes from Pebble Beach, 20 minutes from Marina Beach and about 20 minutes from Manresa Beach.

Agree with you though, that naming a line of beach wear clothing after the city is ridiculous. Reminds me of that old commercial where a guy moves to California and asks a group of girls how the waves in Riverside are.

As to the $500k prices in Hollister, it isn't much different from the way the bubble inflated prices in Gilroy, Salinas, Marina or (shudder) Watsonville. It'a about an hour's commute from any of these towns to San Jose, so a lot of folks who were priced out of that market moved south. Not to different from all the folks who moved east and bought houses in new developments in Los Banos or Tracy/Manteca/Stocton. Absolutely crazy to pay even $250k for a house in any of these cities, but that's the kind of mentality people had during the bubble.

As others have said the "Hollister" on t-shirts refers to a beach in southern CA.

If anyone cares, here's what's good and bad about Hollister...

GOOD:

- Easy commute to Silicon Valley. I didn't say short, but it's easy. 45 minutes to one hour. It's not stop-n-go until you get into San Jose.
- A lot of land outside the city limits, which means acreage is in good supply.
- Low population, which means no waiting in lines at gas stations or supermarkets.
- Quick access to the Monterey area.
- Hollister Hills Recreation Area, for off-roading.

BAD:

- They built too many homes in the 1990's, and didn't scale the infrastructure. The sewer system spilled into a river in 2002, prompting a six year building moratorium.
- Water woes - The San Felipe "Blue Valve" water pipeline that fed so many farms (and homesites) has been severely restricted. Now farmers are bringing their old wells online. Aquifer levels are sure to suffer since it hasn't rained much in the area in recent years.
- Mortgage funny-money led to inflated home prices between 1997 and 2007. Prices are beginning to return to normal, but the foreclosures and walk-aways are rampant, since people can now live in or closer to their jobs in San Jose for the same amount of money. There will be severe and lingering undershoot in Hollister housing prices as a result.
- Crime. Bad gang problem, which is pathetic because of the small population and relative isolation of the town.
- Corrupt local officials. This is what led to the building of too many homes.
- Incompetent local officials. There is no true leadership in the town. Hollister doesn't even have a real mayor.
- Botched Fourth of July Rally Cash Cow - It could have been a boon if they organized it properly, but they ran it into the ground. They even took the focus away from the bikes and put it on vendors. Who wants to go to a bike rally to just buy t-shirts?