A Smart DC MD Real Estate Team to guide you home
They’re better than the virtual reality in your favorite hi-res X-box game! Marcie and I are thrilled to offer these incredible, life-like new virtual tours for our listings (or better, for those listings that lend themselves to the experience). Click on the image or here to dive into the first one we’ve created–it’s for a new listing we’re showing this coming weekend in East Bethesda. More info to come soon.
Introducing a new listing in Bethesda: First open Sunday, April 12th from 1-4. Sensational and sleek two-bedroom condominium in Sumner Village. This
is not your average unit! Wide open floor plan with verdant views and a balcony overlooking the grounds. Renovated from top-to bottom in 2012, this bright and airy unit features a wood-burning fireplace, new hardwood flooring, a new kitchen and two renovated full baths.
The unit comes with two separately deeded, covered tandem parking spaces. The Sumner Village apartments were developed between 1972-1977 and sit on a 28-acre tract of wooded land with pool and tennis courts, adjacent to the Capital Crescent Trail. The tranquil setting provides privacy along with access to numerous shops and businesses located in “The Shops at Sumner Place”.
Open Sunday, August 31st, from 2-5 pm. Offered at $650,000
Top floor unit in converted Dupont Circle Mansion, 2 bedrooms, 2 full baths, 4 exposures, skylights, long balcony AND large private roof deck! Easy walk to just about everything, including 2 Metro stations.
Open Sunday, August 31st, from 2-5 pm. Offered at $650,000.
Last Wednesday was the hottest day of the century in DC.
Okay, that might not be true, but it sure seemed that way. My AC stopped working in the afternoon, when the outside temperature read in the 90s. By the time the realization set in that it was indeed just luke warm wind coming out of the vents and that reprogramming and restarting the system wouldn’t change that fact, it was after hours. Of course.
By nightfall, we had about a million degrees in the upstairs bedrooms. Opening the windows added insult to injury because the humidity must have been close to 100 percent.
Our CAC is less than two years old and overall quite fancy; it shouldn’t have just failed on us.
Diego, the lovely tech who showed up on Thursday–after the weather had suddenly turned dry and cool–took about two seconds to diagnose the problem. The “capacitator,” a 10-dollar part that kickstarts the compressor, had blown out. Who would have known. But it’s a very common thing to happen, Diego assured me. (If you’re either very handy or willing to risk your life, you can even learn how to fix this yourself.) And of course, it always happens when you need it the least, because that’s when those air conditioner parts tend to overheat.
Truth be told, I felt grateful that it wasn’t one of those third-world power outages this time. Miserable or not, we still had ice and fans to work with! (For a really nifty list with 24 suggestions on how to survive such nights, check out the Greatist here.)
After the recent long stretch without notable historic kit houses hitting our market area, there were a bunch in recent weeks that caught our eyes. The first one here was not a Sears product: It’s a 1925 “Regal” by the Lewis Manufacturing Company of Bay City, MI. (There’s only one other “Regal” we’re aware of, and that one can be found in Chevy Chase, DC.) Lewis had a large local sales office in DC in the early and mid-1920s and sold many of their kits to developers. The new owners would never know!
This “Regal” is right in the Takoma Park MD “downtown” area and — after just a week — already under contract. It was completely renovated, and while not so much in reverence to every kit house detail (judging from old pictures, much of those might have been lost before the contractor took over), so still respectfully and beautifully. One of the upstairs bedrooms gave way to a second full bath.
You can see the 1922 catalog page here. (For the full pdf, click on the link on the page that opens.)
A couple of other kit houses are on the market in neighborhoods that are a little further from our base:
A 1925 Sears “Conway” is on the market in Cheverly. At $440,000 and less than 2 miles from the District line, this is another nice renovation, if not a restoration, that saves one of the historic kit houses. (Photos and virtual tour courtesy of MRIS.) In the front part of the house, it retains many of the original detail, while the moderate addition adds a bright family room and some space. A lovely contrast to the more soul-less Conway addition we recently saw in Glen Echo.
In downtown Rockville, another, somewhat bigger Sears house came on the market a couple of weeks ago, a 1924 “Americus” in walking distance to the Town Center and Metro station. It’s also been expanded, though not recently, and has a fabulous backyard,. At $679,900, however, in need of some work all over and with only the one original bath, it seems priced more for the potential. You can see some pictures here. (Photos courtesy of MRIS.)
For those of you who are interested, I will post 1920s catalog images for these two houses in the next couple of days, but for now, just let us know if you want to find out more (or even see one of them).
You’d think that there should be palm trees around them when you see these homes. But no — this is DC, and there’s no such thing in our yards, at least not year-round. But we love to dream, and apparently we already did some 100 years ago. While the housing stock in DC is generally rather conservative, you can also find the traces of some quirky trends. The “Spanish” style, most popular in the 1910s and 1920s, is one of those. It was applied to homes of all sizes , from little 2-bedroom houses to mansions. Enjoy!
The Sears “Barrington” was not a very rare or unusual model. In fact, the style was so popular in the late 1920s that several other companies, including Montgomery Wards, offered similar-looking mail-order houses. This 1930 Sears “Barrington,” however, is just like we want to see them. We have so often complained about renovations that strip those dear old homes of their charm and character, add generic additions, or “modernize” in a way that violates the style of the house.
This house, however, which just hit the market (listed with our very own office for $1,049,000 ) is an absolutely beautiful example of how it can be done right. While there is a two-story addition in the back, it’s not out of proportion to the rest of the home. The whole design was inspired by the original part of the house, even the new window moldings are crafted to match the old ones in the front.
Just as nice is the fact that much of the historic Sears mail-order detail was preserved, even some quirky things that have long disappeared from our lifestyle. Take the built-in phone booth in the entry hall, for instance. According to the 1930 Sears catalog, it was supposed to “solve the problem” of “where will we place our phone?” That probably won’t be necessary for 2014 cordless handsets, but a great touch to respect it as part of the home’s integrity.
A similarly authentic piece is the corner cabinet in the dining room that came shipped with the houses neatly packed 1,000s of pieces as well. The catalog image (below) even shows the same lead glass panes.
Kitchen and baths are new, but they, too, work with the essence of the style. It certainly can be done, but it’s not usually what we get to see! And some changes to the layout might actually be practical improvements, like an arched break-through from the hall to the kitchen. Beats carrying groceries through the living room, at least in my book.
[space]
The main stairs still sport the unique Sears-invented plinth blocks for the lay builder. There’s no doubt about the authenticity of this one!
You can see a Virtual Tour of the whole house here. And as always, if you’d like to see this historic kit house in person, just let us know and we’ll get you in!
Do you think you live in a kit house? We’d love to hear about it:
There’s a lot of buzz about “staging” your home for sale these days. It’s become a must for anybody who wants to get the best price for their house. We spend much time discussing such options with our seller clients. Every house is different, so staging can mean different things, from decluttering, depersonalizing or rearranging some furniture to painting or exchanging artwork. Sometimes, the tweaks are small, and sometimes, we think it better to bring in a professional stager (or team). But what when the house is vacant?
Actually, when the house or condo is vacant, a staging job can be even more important. In trying to explain this to a seller today, I came across this little video in which a crew from Red House Staging explains and demonstrates how they’re making a rather small condo look inviting, big and functional to potential buyers. Have a look, it’s no too long:
When I bought my first house in DC in the 1990s, most of the places our Realtor showed us were vacant. And it wasn’t just that they were empty, they were often also in sad shape, or at least it didn’t look like the sellers had put any effort at all in making them look appealing to us. Yes, most of them sold in the end, even without that effort. But before they did, most of them also spent 6 or 9 months or even more than a year on the market.
(P.S. We love Jaye and Sam and Red House, but they’re not the only stagers we’ve worked with. Depending on your unique needs and situation, there might be other designers, organizers or companies we would recommend.)
It’s not only a magic, easy-to-use tool, but it’s also a fun toy to play with: the Homesnap smartphone app and website. As a website, it’s a neat, map-based real-time MLS search, but the real kicker is the phone app. You can stop in front of any house you drive by, open the app, point your cell phone at the hues, and — voilà — tax records, sales history, rough value estimates and pictures will pop right up!
If the house happens to be on the market, the app will take you straight to the listing. And if not, well, you’ll get to find out what your neighbor bought their place for. Just give it a try!
It was an exciting moment last year when we discovered this inconspicuous little 1918 American Foursquare in Silver Spring, Maryland. [Click on the thumb prints for larger pictures.]
After much writing and talking about the many Sears and Lewis mail-order homes we have in the DC suburbs, we’d also been looking for evidence of Historic Aladdin kit houses for a while. In archives, we had found a series of picture ads in the Washington Post from the 1910s. They showed how the company — in the pre-cut kit house business even before Sears — had tried to charm the city’s potential home owners and builders. So clearly, there must have been a bunch of those houses built here.
Eventually, we did succeed in finding some truly amazing specimen (pictures to come soon!) as Aladdin offered some of the largest and most luxurious models of all kit house companies.
The “Standard” was certainly a more moderate house, but the discovery was nevertheless exciting because it was the first Aladdin we spotted here. The playful, pointed yet swinging pitch of the roof and dormer and its 2-foot overhanging extension were the tip-off. They’re less common in other homes from that time, kit or not.
“BEE-UUU-TI-FUL!” cheered Rosemary Thornton, leading kit house expert and author of a bunch of books on the topic, when I shared pictures in a national kit house forum. What we were thrilled with was the fact that the house appeared – at least from the outside – preserved in almost original form. Despite the vinyl siding, it seemed likely that much of the original structure and detail was preserved.
Well, little did we know. Until a couple of days ago, that is, when I discovered that the house was for rent. Marcie and I ran off to have a look. What we saw was not at all what we had expected. The good news: the house was reasonable well maintained, comfortably and in healthy shape. Floor plan, blue grease pencil markings on the lumber and a few other little details confirmed that it was indeed the Aladdin “Standard.” The bad news: other than the walls and door trim, there was nothing left of the house inside. Absolutely nothing.
Hollow-core doors, epoxy hardware, Pergo floors all over and pseudo-contemporary glass light fixtures made it clear that the owner might have appreciated the house as such, but certainly not for its historic value or beauty. I’m not going to ruin this post with the interior pictures we took (although we ended up laughing so hard that it might warrant a follow-up piece here). You can, however, check out the listing agent’s MLS pictures here.
The “Standard” — off Georgia Ave in Downtown Silver Spring — is currently available for rent at $2,200/month by Josh Andrew of Streamline Management in Bethesda.
