Author: Catarina Bannier

When Nature Is Zooming In On You

Catarina Bannier Home Owners , ,
Hornet infestation Chevy Chase

Agressive Hornets on house in chevy chaseI had thought my problem was ants. Tiny little ants that gradually invaded my house for the past couple of months and formed into armies two weeks ago, after the dreadful Pepco mega outage. There were dozens of them on even the tiniest morsel of food left on the kitchen floor, and seemingly hundreds of them started attacking the cat food bowl even while the kitty was still eating from it. Yuck.

Well, the guy that was sent by my favorite pest control company showed up this morning and set out to explore the perimeter of my house for ant hills (or nests, as he called them).

No nests could be sighted. What he found instead, was every creepy thingy, pest and vermin imaginable. There were a couple of carpenter bee holes in the fence, paper wasp nests under a seat on the deck, large spider nests outside the garage and lady bugs that might live in the walls. The worst, however, was a football-sized nest of bald-faced hornets right above my kitchen door. The entrance to the hive-like thing was crawling with huge inch-long wasps. “And these are really nasty ones,” the exterminator explained. “They will attack you massively if you just stare at them.”

How could I have missed this all??!! Perhaps it’s the weather — it’s been so brutally hot that we haven’t spent too much time outside. (Note to self: never again judge home sellers who might have missed a little infestation here or there…)

Hornet infestation Chevy ChaseAnother two hours and multiple treatment measures later (I pitied the guy who came to bait ants and ended up having to climb around my house in a beekeeper’s suit,  in 100 F heat), the tiny ants on the kitchen counter looked, well, sweet and harmless.

If you own a home in the DC area, here’s my advice for you: grab a pair of binoculars or even just your sunglasses when you come home today, and then go around the house to check if nature might be trying to take over your place as well.

 

“How Is The Market?”

Catarina Bannier Market Statistics and Updates , ,
market stand--sketch--catarina bannier

market stand--sketch--catarina bannierOne of the big real estate trainers of America has suggested for years that there is only one possible answer to this question, ever: “It depends on where you live.”

Of course, he is right. And for the market we live in, this is one very lucky truth right now. While in some parts of the country property values have dropped more than fifty percent, prices in the DC metro area generally have not, at least not in the very close-in neighborhoods.

But it’s more complicated than that: overall market activity and inventory remain low. Many sellers seem to hold back for more lucrative times, while many buyers have a hard time finding a house.

Want to chat with the experts? Tune in tomorrow at noon to the Washington Post online for a live talk with expert demographer Lisa Sturtevant, who will chat with readers about “why the inventory is so low, what impact it might have on the region and where pockets of affordable inventory remain.”

Sounds interesting, doesn’t it?  I’ll definitely stop by–perhaps I’ll learn something new as well!

 

 

The Sears Kit Houses Of Takoma Park

Catarina Bannier Kit Houses , , , , ,
Kit House in Takoma Park MD
A perfectly preserved Sears “Westley” in Takoma Park, Maryland

Washington DC’s streetcar expansion years in the early 20th century went hand in hand with a construction boom and the development of the city’s first suburbs. The Palisades, Chevy Chase, Shepherd Park and Takoma Park were some of the more prominent ones, and they all have one thing in common: an abundance of Sears catalog homes and other kit houses (namely from Aladdin and Lewis Manufacturing Co.). An abundance in relative terms, that is, because so many of them turn out to be copies or look-alikes.

Others are authentic but might have been modified so much over the years that they will be hard to spot and thus will go unrecognized and forgotten. As sponsors of the Takoma Park House & Garden tour, we have been working together with Lorraine Pearsall and Diana Kohn, president and VP of Historic Takoma Inc.. Over the past couple of years, Marcie and I have started to put together a catalog (no pun intended) of mail-order homes in the Takoma Park Historic District. What could be more fun, and what could be a worse thief of sleep than poring over pictures, old listing records and piles of 1920s catalogs?

While we now a list of about five dozen candidates in North Takoma alone, only a fraction of them has been identified and authenticated beyond a reasonable doubt. There are some mysteries we have discovered together, as well as some amazing historic finds.

Historic Takoma will feature our work in a special section on their website once we feel we have enough solid information assembled.

If you think you own (or live in ) a Sears house or other kit home and would like some assistance in authenticating it, I’ll be happy to help! Just fill out this form and I’ll be in touch shortly.
If you provided a phone number, how do you prefer to be contacted?

The Garage In The Mail

Catarina Bannier Kit Houses , , , ,
1920s Mail-order Garage

1920s Mail-order GarageIf you ordered your house in the mail, some 90 or 100 years ago, and you had enough land (and money for a car) left, you might have wanted a garage as well.

So, not surprisingly, all the major kit house manufacturers–in the DC area mainly Sears and Lewis, but also Aladdin and Gordon-Van Tine–sold garage kits in their catalogs as well. The styles often neatly matched the homes with their exposed rafters, hipped roofs, pretty cedar siding or whatever features the house itself sported.

This blue garage here I spotted during the Takoma Park House & Garden Tour yesterday, in the backyard of a lovely Sears house. (Note that the former driveway had long been blocked by a deck; most modern cars no longer fit into these garages.)

1920s mail -order garage in catalogTrying to verify that it was indeed a kit garage, I went through stacks of 1920s catalogs last night–only to find out the model was actually sold not by Sears but by one of its biggest competitors.

“Ready-Cut Garage No. 102” was offered in the 1923 catalog of Gordon Van-Tine.

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If you own (or live in) a Sears house or other mail-order/ kit house, please click here

Should You Get Your House Officially Appraised Before Putting It On The Market?

Catarina Bannier Sellers , , , , ,

Cati Bannier Washington Post blogIn the hot market seven or eight years ago, pricing was rarely an issue. Multiple offers (and the escalation clauses that came with them) would take care of getting the price where it should be.

Not so now. Read my latest piece for the Washington Post real estate blog here.

Sold in Five Days — How Much Is The Historic Sentiment Worth?

Catarina Bannier Kit Houses , , , , , ,

On my DC House Cat blog, I regularly introduce historic kit houses that are for sale in the Washington DC area. Many of them were once ordered from the (probably best-known) Sears catalog, others came from companies such as Aladdin and Lewis Manufacturing (a particular favorite of the in-town suburbs in the 1920s).
It’s virtually impossible to put a sticker price on the value of house history (although we frequently get that question). What we have found is that in neighborhoods which are highly aware, and often proud, of their history and significance it makes more of a difference. In other neighborhoods, where there’s more turnover, sometimes more privacy and less use of community facilities or organizations, owners seem less interested.

A lack of interest (or perhaps knowledge) leads to thoughtless renovations and modernization that strips the poor house of everything architectural history buffs and catalog house aficionados love it for. But when owners find a way to compromise between their need for comfort and updates and the one hand and the respect for the original materials and sensibilities of the home design on the other, it often pays out. My latest featured Kit House Of The Week, a 1925 Sears “Maywood” in Chevy Chase, is a good example  (check out the agent’s virtual tour). And guess what? It sold in just 5 days!