A concrete cube on the top of a hill, designed by a famous architect, has just attracted plenty of attention in upstate New York. The Cube House measures only 771 square feet and sits on 8.57 acres in Ithaca, NY. It came on the market just two weeks ago, for $289,000, and is now under contract after a flurry of offers came in. “A lot of what makes the property very exciting and really collectible is the fact that it was designed and the construction was overseen by Simon Ungers,” says the listing agent, Carol Bushberg. Ungers was the son of the architect Oswald Mathias Ungers—who was known for the use of cube forms in his designs. His son, who was also an artist, adopted a similar style. Simon studied architecture and later taught at Cornell University. He built the Cube for himself in 2000, with two bedrooms and one bathroom. He died in 2006, and his widow owned the Cube House until she sold it to the current owner in 2014. “He had a concept of building basically an urban loft in a country setting, and his family was a joint owner of this magnificent hilltop,” Bushberg explains. “The house is two finished floors, and there’s an exterior metal stairwell. It’s very dramatic and leads up to a roof garden. The view from up there is absolutely spectacular.” Windows in the concrete cube take full advantage of the bucolic setting. “Sometimes in other homes, you’re pining for a window or a place where there should be an opening or a window, but there isn’t,” Bushberg says. “That’s just the opposite of this little house, which has these incredibly placed openings and windows and lots of jaw-dropping views.” Minimalist and utilitarian by design, the concrete structure may at first appear imposing and grim. However, that’s not the final impression. “The place has a very European sensibility. The lines are very clean, and the materials are very simple. It has a simple open kitchen, dining, living room. There’s a lot of white, and the ceilings are high. There are a lot of built-ins,” Bushberg says. On the main level, the floors are concrete, with hardwood floors upstairs. “It’s pretty stark, there’s no doubt about that, especially on the exterior,” Bushberg admits. “It’s unembellished.” On the second floor, the color of the floors and the windows warm things up. “When you go upstairs, there’s more light filtering through the spaces,” she says. Bushberg tells us there’s been a lot of interest in the petite property, especially from people who live downstate. New York City is about three hours away from this concrete retreat. “For them, a 771-square-foot house feels pretty ample, and the price point seems very reasonable—and 8.5 acres seems like an unbelievable luxury,” she says. “We’ve had a lot of inquiries from people who are looking for a house that they feel they can comfortably take care of, but who are also eager to leave more populous areas right now and get to places that are simply less dense.” The post Minimalist Masterpiece! Cube House Quickly Finds a Buyer in Upstate New York appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®. via https://www.realtor.com/news/unique-homes/cube-house-minimalist-masterpiece-ithaca/
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Back in 1950, John Carr, an architect, commissioned a home from the legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Carr initially planned for his home to be built in Park Ridge, IL. However, plans shifted just a bit, and the home was built a few years later in nearby Glenview, IL—because the Carrs were charmed by the rural status of the town at the time. It remains the only Wright-designed home in the Chicago suburb of around 50,000 residents, and it was featured in House Beautiful magazine in the 1980s. For a Wright-loving house hunter, it’s now on the market, listed with Erica Goldman of Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty for $1,695,000. Goldman tells us, “We look at this home as much as a piece of art as a home to purchase. The family’s hope is that it goes to someone who’s preservation-minded.” The Carrs sold the four-bedroom, 3.5-bath Usonian-style home to the Busche family in 1965. After Carol Ann Busche passed away earlier this year, her heirs are ready to let go of the unique property. “The family has been there on a daily basis, and used it as a COVID retreat,” says Goldman. Edward Busche’s architectural background came in handy for three seamless additions to the original Wright design. He added a master suite, an extended dining room and a family room at the back of the house, overlooking the pool. He also added a shed, since the property does not have a garage (true to Wright’s designs, residents park under a carport). In 1958, an in-ground heated pool was added, and a new roof was installed in 2005. Iconic elements of Wright’s designs include the pierced-block windows, mitered-glass angled windows, over 30 sets of French doors opening to the outdoors, and Honduran mahogany throughout. The floors boast radiant heat, a desirable amenity in the chilly winters. Privacy and seclusion are also plentiful. “This is a complete, wooded oasis,” says Goldman. “You can’t see the neighbors.” The home backs up to a nature preserve and sits on a 3-acre parcel. The Busche family also owns the adjacent 3-acre parcel. “While it’s not listed,” says Goldman of the adjacent lot, “it could be incorporated into the sale in some way. The thought is that the buyer could build on that site and maintain this home for entertaining, or as a guesthouse.” She also adds that it’s an “as is” sale but that “The new owner will get to put their own spin on it.” Who will put in an offer and move in? “Clearly, Frank Lloyd Wright enthusiasts and collectors,” says Goldman, adding, “Not necessarily a local buyer. This could be a country retreat for a city person. Or a second home.” She notes that the proximity of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and Chicago Executive Airport (for charter flights or private planes) is a potential lure for out-of-area buyers. And if you’re not one of the lucky few to see this Wright-designed gem in person, peep the video below. The post Frank Lloyd Wright-Designed Home With Only 2 Owners for Sale in Illinois appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®. via https://www.realtor.com/news/unique-homes/frank-lloyd-wright-designed-home-glenview-illinois/ DETROIT—Alter Road runs northwest along this city’s border. To the east is Grosse Pointe Park, an upscale suburb dotted with grand old mansions built in the auto industry’s heyday. To the west is the city of Detroit, lined with abandoned houses and empty lots. On the east side of the street, getting a mortgage to buy a home is a breeze. On the west side, it is hardly worth trying. Detroit is making a comeback after years of decline that led to a bankruptcy filing in 2013. But large swaths of the city are left behind, starved of the housing credit needed to revive them. No purchase mortgages were made last year in almost a third of Detroit’s census tracts, and fewer than five each in another third, according to data from LendingPatterns.com, a mortgage-data analysis tool. The impact runs disproportionately along racial lines in the majority Black city. Detroit’s Black residents are largely shut out of access to financing, making it tougher to attain homeownership, the key to building wealth for most Americans. Nonprofits, governments and corporations are trying to channel money back into the city’s neighborhoods. But making mortgages in Detroit is a convoluted task. The dearth of credit is largely a consequence of battered property values plus a commercial reality that depresses them further: Lenders can’t earn money on tiny mortgages, so they don’t make them. Unfinanceable houses then go unsold, and their value sags still more. In Detroit, entire neighborhoods are trapped in this cycle of languishing property values and decay, their residents unable to access the tools needed to break it. The average home is worth roughly $400,000 in Grosse Pointe Park. Across Alter Road in Detroit, entire blocks could sell for less. “Detroit is a hyperbolic example of the ways that systems can fail in terms of housing,” said Laura Grannemann, who oversees philanthropic work at the parent company of Quicken Loans Inc., which is the nation’s largest mortgage lender by dollar amount lent and is based in Detroit. Less than a quarter of Detroit home sales were financed by mortgage loans last year, the smallest share in the 50 biggest U.S. cities, according to an analysis by Attom Data Solutions, a property-information provider. For the city’s residents, it is a familiar story, now with a new dynamic. In neighborhoods where racist redlining policies once made it nearly impossible for Black Americans to get a mortgage, access to affordable credit and the wealth-building potential of homeownership remain elusive. The mortgages that are made inside Detroit’s borders go disproportionately to white borrowers. Whites, who make up less than 10% of the city’s population but often are concentrated in areas like downtown where investment in reviving property values, obtained 39% of mortgages last year. Black people make up roughly 80% of the population and got 51% of the city’s mortgages. A failure to revitalize the city beyond its center is an obstacle to Detroit’s ambitious comeback plans. The money flowing toward reviving Detroit misses many of its neighborhoods, residents say. As a result, the city is home to fancy condo developments in some places and dilapidated houses in others. “You can go down one block and it’s nice. You can go down the second block and they’re all vacant,” said Linda Smith, executive director of U-Snap-Bac, a nonprofit promoting economic growth on Detroit’s east side. The problem is worsened by lenders tightening credit to deal with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, which has hit Black Americans especially hard. The dearth of mortgage credit pushes the city’s Black residents into a parallel universe of financing options that offer fewer protections than a traditional home loan. Alicia Lurry didn’t apply for a mortgage when she was ready to buy in 2018. Instead, she signed a seller-financed deal to purchase a three-bedroom brick house with a brown-and-yellow awning on the west side of Detroit for $35,000. It wasn’t until she fell behind on payments that she learned she wasn’t actually buying the home. The contract she signed left her responsible for upkeep and property taxes, but she won’t get the deed until the final payment is made. Black Americans have always struggled to access affordable credit in Detroit. Starting in the Depression era, maps of Detroit were awash in red lines singling out Black neighborhoods as risky places for lenders to make home loans. By 1968, when the Fair Housing Act outlawed redlining, the city was highly segregated, and much of the region’s wealth had been pushed outside Detroit borders, according to Thomas Sugrue, a historian at New York University and author of “The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit.” All the while, the auto industry, hoping to expand its business and lower costs, shifted production out of Detroit. By the time General Motors and Chrysler filed for bankruptcy reorganization during the financial crisis, many of Detroit’s blue-collar jobs were long gone. A city population once as high as 1.8 million had fallen to around 700,000. The housing collapse in the financial crisis hit Detroit especially hard. In the years leading up to it, lenders had made subprime loans to many Detroit residents previously shut out of the mortgage market. That briefly narrowed the homeownership gap between Black and white residents in metropolitan Detroit, before a wave of foreclosures drove down property values and tore up neighborhoods. The Black homeownership rate across metro Detroit, including suburbs, was 31 percentage points lower than the white rate in 2007, the year before the financial crisis. By 2018 it had grown to 37 percentage points, according to data from the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan policy-research group. Detroit has the second biggest such gap after St. Louis among U.S. metro areas with at least half a million Black residents. The subprime-lending debacle left many residents hesitant to take on debt to buy property. Vincent Orr ’s grandmother lost her home to foreclosure in 2007, when he was a teenager. Mr. Orr, a production supervisor at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV, has bought two houses in northwest Detroit for cash at auctions run by the Detroit Land Bank Authority, a public repository of properties that are vacant or seized through tax foreclosure. The agency has been unloading hundreds of houses a month to the highest bidder. Prices start at $1,000, but buyers must agree to fix them up. Mr. Orr paid $2,100 in 2017 for a house for his mother. The roof was caved in, but he liked the brick work on the outside. He spent months redoing the electrical and plumbing, replacing windows and doors and putting up drywall. Then he did it again, buying the house next door for himself last year for $1,200. He is nearly finished fixing it up, too. He has used about $100,000 of savings, plus a good bit of elbow grease, to complete the renovations. “Cash is king because nobody can deny you,” said Mr. Orr, who is 30. “The houses that require a mortgage, a lot of people are reluctant.” A lot of lenders are reluctant, too. Fewer than 1,700 mortgages were extended last year in the city of 670,000 people, according to a LendingPatterns.com analysis of first-lien purchase mortgages for single-family, primary residences using Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data. That is about a sixth as many as in Oklahoma City and Las Vegas, cities with smaller populations. The low property values are the primary culprit. Lenders can earn so little profit on small mortgages—those of around $70,000 or less—that they often find it not worth the trouble to make them. Small-dollar home lending has been on the decline across the country, a shift that housing analysts say disproportionately affects people of color. “This is a big issue of our time,” said Alanna McCargo, co-director of the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center. Increasing the volume of smaller mortgages “would go a long way to reducing the racial homeownership gap,” she said. What’s more, in neighborhoods where few mortgages exist, there is a greater risk a home won’t appraise for as much as the purchase price, which typically causes a loan application to fall through. Low or nonexistent credit scores are another hurdle. LaKesha Hancock, a housing counselor and program manager at U-Snap-Bac, said many of her clients aren’t able to develop the banking relationships needed for a qualifying credit score because there are too few financial institutions in much of the city. In Wayne County, which includes Detroit, census tracts where more than half of the people are minorities contain 26% of the county’s bank branches while housing 45% of the county population, according to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a nonprofit focused on community wealth-building. When Kelly Brown bought a fixer-upper several years ago for roughly $5,000, she went to a bank where she had an account seeking a personal loan for about $15,000. The banker told her he couldn’t approve it because of her subprime credit score, Ms. Brown said. She said she thinks it was low because she didn’t have many financial accounts in her name and hadn’t attempted to build her credit. Instead of borrowing, she used her savings to rehabilitate the house, which she bought in an annual Wayne County auction of foreclosed homes. She went on to buy more. Though her credit score improved, she paid with cash, completing renovations as she saved, which took as long as a year. Ms. Brown, who is 36, now owns four properties, living in one and renting out three. “I’m not looking for the system to help, because I know it’s not going to,” she said. Residents unable to access the mortgage market miss out on federal benefits designed to spur homeownership. Through the government-sponsored mortgage entities Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae, the U.S. ensures that lenders are made whole on most mortgages, a policy that enables lenders to spread payments over 30 years at low interest rates. Mortgages also erect obstacles to quickly kicking out home purchasers who fall behind on payments. Some groups are working to fix the issues that keep lenders from making more mortgages. Quicken Loans founded a program with the Detroit Land Bank Authority to renovate some properties the Land Bank takes over. Quicken fronts money for repairs and then provides financing to interested buyers. Having one mortgaged property in a neighborhood will lead to more, the reasoning goes. “If we were to just write more mortgages in Detroit, I think we would be setting people up for failure,” Quicken’s Ms. Grannemann said. The project isn’t self-supporting. Mortgage lenders say revitalizing neighborhoods this way typically means putting more money into fixing up those first homes than they can eventually be sold for. Quicken has found that 87% of homeowners in the city who are tax-delinquent self-identify as qualifying for exemption from property taxes because their income is below a poverty threshold. It is trying to teach them how to take advantage of the exemption and avoid tax foreclosure, a common pitfall in Detroit. More than a third of city properties have gone through tax foreclosure in the past 15 years, some more than once, according to Loveland Technologies, a data firm that tracks land parcels. United Community Housing Coalition, a nonprofit, works with the city to buy some homes headed for the foreclosure auction and sells them back to their occupants, often for the few thousand dollars or so of back taxes, payable over about a year. Real-estate investors also frequent the auction. Among them is Detroit Property Exchange, the company Ms. Lurry turned to when she was ready to buy in 2018. It finances purchases itself, offering residents one of the less-desirable options for Detroit properties that can’t be mortgaged. Ms. Lurry put $2,000 down on the $35,000 house and agreed to pay $700 a month for 90 months, which included 10% interest, much higher than the prevailing mortgage rate. She moved in at night, changed the locks, then shared a celebratory moment with her daughter. She subsequently missed some payments and the company started the eviction process. Detroit Property Exchange said she was renting the house with an option to buy. Ms. Lurry thought she already owned it. “Congratulations on your recent purchase,” her paperwork from the company said. “You are now the OWNER.” The company said in a statement provided by an attorney that Detroit Property Exchange helps customers become homeowners in a city that traditional lenders avoid. Ms. Lurry, 52, lost her job as a pastry cook when the coronavirus shut down the casino where she worked. Her lawyer, Steve Knox at nonprofit Michigan Legal Services, spent months negotiating a new arrangement. She expects to enter into a new contract that will make it more difficult for the company to remove her from her home and will lower her interest rate. It will now be 8.5%, still roughly three times the rate of a standard 30-year mortgage. The post Dearth of Credit Starves Detroit’s Housing Market appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®. via https://www.realtor.com/news/real-estate-news/dearth-of-credit-starves-detroits-housing-market/ When it comes to horror flicks, there’s nothing Hollywood loves more than a towering Victorian manse that’s a bit past its prime. After all, there’s a reason Ryan Murphy set the inaugural (and scariest) “Murder House” season of “American Horror Story” in a sprawling (and spectacularly haunted) Victorian home. Alfred Hitchcock situated Norman Bates and his irascible mom in one for “Psycho.” Even Walt Disney understood the Victorian’s freaky allure—that’s why Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion is built in the same inescapable and inescapably unnerving style. So why do Victorians make our flesh crawl quite the way they do? How did this highly ornate style--dubbed the “McMansion” of the antebellum period by one scholar—become so feared? “It has a lot to do with the proportions,” says Jonathan Moore, an architect in Tampa, FL. “Many of the details—like doors, windows, and trim—are long and vertical.” Remind you of anything? “There’s a direct relationship to an open mouth and wide eyes.” A screaming mouth, that is. Terrifying visuals aside, there are a few nuanced reasons—firmly grounded in architectural history—why Victorians turned into the pop culture stuff of nightmares. Victorians were inherently ‘dark’So let’s start at the beginning: The Victorian era is typically defined as beginning in 1837—when Queen Victoria of England ascended the throne. But the period’s influence on American architecture focuses on the years between 1860 and 1900. Homes built during this period typically drew their influences from Gothic Revival, Romanesque, Queen Anne, and Second Empire styles. For example: false fronts, false chimneys, tall towers, dormer windows, and gables. Victorians were typically situated on hilltops, where their usually wealthy owners could, quite literally, look down on their neighbors. Victorians often feature tall turrets or rectangular towers topped by ornate cast-iron railings and prominent weather vanes—features that rusted and sometimes slipped out of place over time. “These are the house styles Hollywood depicts high on a hilltop with bright lightning strikes in the background, causing the descriptor building to be outlined in dark silhouette against the sudden light,” says archaeologist and architectural historian Ronald V. May of Legacy 106 Historic Preservation in California. In other words: creepy. The era was also notable for its overwrought furniture, dark interiors, and heavy draperies, says Charles Robertson, a board member of the Victorian Society of America (who himself lives in a meticulously maintained Victorian home in Washington, DC’s Dupont Circle neighborhood). During their heyday, “these houses were indeed dark and cluttered,” he says. “They had bric-a-brac everywhere, and they were just elaborate and ornate.” Move toward modern architecture left Victorians empty and decrepitInterest in the genre waned dramatically over the years, leaving more and more Victorian homes empty and decrepit. Some historians claim the downfall of the Victorian aesthetic really began with the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago—the site of which became known as “White City” for its clean, mostly white neoclassical buildings. It was the beginning of the end for Victorian homes’ heyday, according to Robertson. The style fell out of favor in the 1930s as tastes began to skew toward modern design. As time wore on, “the elderly owners passed away, and their children let the houses fall into serious disrepair with little or no paint, causing shingles to slough off, ornamental metal roof edges to rust and break down, pieces of siding drop off, and windows break and not be replaced,” May says. A Victorian revival?But here’s the thing: What goes around indeed comes around. Look no further than San Francisco, which has enjoyed a historic home preservation blitz over the past several decades—and where a Painted Lady will now run you at least $3 million. And if the headache of a large-scale renovation isn’t your bag, there are a handful of builders committed to building “new Victorian” homes—although the intricacies involved in this kind of construction make it more expensive than your usual run-of-the-mill new build. But in the end, Americans love a good horror story—and classic Victorians provide the perfect backdrop. “The aging population of historic homes makes everyone familiar with that one neighborhood house that has deteriorated, and everyone talks about the crazy old man that used to live there,” Moore says. Throw in peeling wallpaper and paint, decades-old dusty draperies, and more gables and turrets than could possibly be prudent, and you’ve got the stuff of nightmares (and more than a few urban legends). ——-- Watch: We Dare to Peek Inside the Winchester Mystery HouseThe post Designed for Dread: Why Are Victorian Houses So Spooky? appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®. via https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/victorian-houses-spooky-reputation/ The horror movie maven Eli Roth has put his Hollywood Hills Tudor on the market for $3,475,000. The director of “Hostel” has enjoyed the three-bedroom, four-bathroom home built in 1926 for a lucky 13 years, after purchasing it in 2007 for $2.54 million. “Eli has loved living in the house over the past 13 years. He was drawn to the home’s 1920s character and design,” says the listing agent, Darian Robin of The Agency. “Over the years, Eli added an expansive home gym and sauna that, together with the theater, pool, private outdoor spaces, incredible views, and overall privacy, have made it the perfect place for him to live, work, and entertain.” The “creative compound” hovers over Hollywood Boulevard on a double-wide lot. While the attractions of Hollywood are within easy reach, the privacy landscaping and a gated entrance protect the home from any creepy unwanted guests. The multilevel spread measures 3,497 square feet. The exterior gives off classic Hollywood glamour vibes, but inside, the home is sleek and SoCal modern. The grounds offer glittering views of the hills, the canyons, and Los Angeles from almost all the rooms, patios, and balconies. Even the pool offers sublime views, and the flagstone terraces and pathways were built specifically to take full advantage of those one-of-a-kind vistas. The interior is surprisingly light, white, and bright—especially jarring when you consider Roth’s dark cinematic creations. Expansive windows, some of them arched, allow plenty of light to stream in, and dark wood floors solidly ground the rooms. Architectural accents like custom-framed fireplaces, brightly colored Mediterranean tile, and specialty moldings can be found throughout. Other elegant features include a spacious chef’s kitchen with a breakfast nook, and a master suite with an adjacent office, spacious walk-in closet, and a modern, spalike bathroom with a large soaking tub. Robin says Roth has transformed the place into his own private paradise, but alas, it’s time for him to make an exit. “Eli’s next project will be shooting in Europe for an entire year,” she explains, “and then he has two other films lined up that will keep him away. Since he won’t be in L.A. to enjoy it, he feels the time is right to part with the house.” Although he’s known for directing nearly a dozen films, Roth, 48, has worn many hats, including those of producer, editor, writer, and actor. His most recent release was “The House With a Clock in Its Walls” in 2018—a PG-rated departure for the man associated with all types of horror. The post Horror Movie Maven Eli Roth Looks To Scare Up a Sale on His Favorite Haunt appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®. via https://www.realtor.com/news/celebrity-real-estate/eli-roth-out-to-scare-up-sale-hollywood-home/ Fertility phenom Kate Gosselin famously shared her family life with the world on “Kate Plus 8.” Now that her kids are growing up, she’s selling the family home she bought with her former husband, Jon, in 2008. It served as the backdrop for the long-running reality TV show, and folks wanted a peek inside. Those curiosity-driven clicks made the 24-acre spread this week’s most popular home on realtor.com®. On the market for $1.3 million, the 7,591-square-foot home is designed for a large family. It boasts a large family room, a man cave, and a separate living space over the garage. You also clicked on a noteworthy celebrity mansion: the marvelous modern house of Washington Nationals pitcher Max Scherzer, which sits on the banks of the Potomac. Other homes attracting attention this week include a Michigan home painted inside and out in gunmetal gray, a custom log cabin headed for auction, and a spectacular winery in Washington. While we debate the sanity of spending $50 on a personalized greeting from Jon Gosselin, we think you should scroll down for a look at this week’s 10 most popular properties. 10. 1126 Sidney St, Saint Louis, MOPrice: $400,000 According to the listing, the home’s original owner was the founder of Green Tree Brewery. The one-of-a-kind mansion is being sold as is. It has three sets of entry doors, pine inner doors with art glass, double drawing rooms, marble fireplaces, and a frescoed 14-foot ceiling. And for oenophiles, this place is a treat: The basement has two vaulted wine cellars. ——-- 9. 129 Smithtown Rd, Pittston, MEPrice: $679,900 Highlights of the remodeled home include a gorgeous kitchen, spacious mudroom, wood floors, and built-ins. You can soak in the views from the home’s large front porch, take a dip in the heated in-ground pool, or make use of the many outbuildings and barn. ——-- 8. 2 Charlands Ln, Kennebunk, MEPrice: $224,000 ——-- 7. 1931 Alliklik Rd, South Lake Tahoe, CAPrice: $325,000 Rustic meets modern in this cute three-bedroom cabin near the lake. Built in 1953 and updated throughout, the charming home sits in a clearing of aspen trees bordering a U.S. Forest Service parcel. Close to loads of outdoor activities, the property even has a seasonal creek for an added touch of magic. ——-- 6. 168 North St, Mattapoisett, MAPrice: $439,800 ——-- 5. 100821 E Brandon Dr, Kennewick, WAPrice: $3,750,000 Known as the Naoi Cailini Oga Estate, the 6-acre property includes a luxe mansion with an indoor pool. There’s also an art studio, workout room with ballet barre, as well as several terraces and balconies. The home is surrounded by lush landscaping and comes with a tasting room for indulging in a few of your favorite vintages. ——-- 4. 4872 Hidden Hills Cir, Howell, MIPrice: $201,000 ——-- 3. 1139 Crest Ln, McLean, VAPrice: $15,000,000 ——-- 2. 7162 Alaska St, Detroit, MIPrice: $69,900 Besides the occasional pop of white furniture, all carpets, drapes, and doors are monochromatic. The three-bedroom house has a large front porch, an updated bathroom with high-tech shower, and a full basement—which looks to be the only space that evaded the gray paintbrush. The home isn’t expensive, but a buyer will need to shell out money for new paint unless he happens to be gaga for gray. ——-- 1. 298 Heffner Rd, Wernersville, PAPrice: $1,299,900 She’s ready to part with the 24-acre property, which includes the six-bedroom home where she’s been raising her kids for over a decade. Ideal for a large family, the home boasts a lower-level game room, two washers and dryers, and a separate living area over the detached three-car garage. For downtime, there’s a pool plus a three-stall horse barn with 10-acre fenced paddock. The post Kate Gosselin’s Famous Reality Show Ranch Is the Week’s Most Popular Home appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®. via https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/kate-gosselin-home-most-popular-home/ It’s apropos that the unofficial city motto of New Orleans is “Let the good times roll.” Because it didn’t take long for offers to roll in for a rare midcentury modern masterpiece in the Big Easy. Built in 1963, the home on Marquette Place landed on the market for $1,850,000 less than two weeks ago—and received multiple offers within days. The distinctive dwelling features four courtyards, two with water features and large windows. Glass corridors connect the living areas. “Like a lot of contemporary homes, it’s just light-filled. It’s indoor-outdoor living,” says listing agent Ricky Lemann. Architect Nathanial “Buster” Curtis—part of the design firm Curtis and Davis that designed the New Orleans Superdome—built the home as his personal residence. The home’s current owner is just the second and also happens to be an architect. Lee Ledbetter purchased the house in 2014 from the Curtis family and made a few updates. Ledbetter “carefully restored the house with respect to the architecture. He’s quite frankly a really big deal locally, nationally, and internationally. He was the perfect person to get the house.” Lemann explains. The 4,160-square-foot home has four bedrooms, four bathrooms, and two half-bathrooms. However, the current configuration isn’t how Curtis originally designed the place. The Curtis family “had seven children, so [Ledbetter] very carefully converted a few bedrooms into fabulous guest suites,” Lemann explains. By tearing down some interior walls, Ledbetter took four small kids’ bedrooms and turned them into two suites, each with a bathroom and a living area. He also updated the kitchen, while retaining the original door and cabinet hardware. Ledbetter “refinished the original wood cabinets. He made modifications in some of those cabinets, too, but I mean you can’t even tell it’s been done. Honestly, it’s that good,” Lemann says. “He made some modifications to accommodate updated equipment. He was so careful with the restoration of that kitchen—the refurbishment without any bastardization.” The home sits on a quarter-acre lot and is close to Audubon Park and Tulane University. It’s one of the few midcentury modern homes in the area. Curtis’ widow fought to get the home listed on the National Register of Historic Places after she made an aborted attempt to sell the property many years ago. “A neighbor had called to offer her money to buy it and tear it down, and she just went ballistic. From that point on, she took the steps to put it on the national registry so that would never happen,” Lemann says. The home was listed on the National Register in 2014 as the Curtis Residence. The exterior offers little clue to what lurks behind the white wall. Most folks wouldn’t expect the vintage beauty that awaits them. “It just takes your breath away when you walk in the house and you look to the right and the left—it’s just dramatic,” Lemann says. “There is a surprise factor.” The post Offers Roll In for Marvelous Midcentury Modern House in New Orleans appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®. via https://www.realtor.com/news/unique-homes/marvelous-midcentury-modern-house-in-new-orleans/ You can now own an award-winning HGTV home for $1,985,000. This fully restored 4,000-square-foot house on Bay Street NE in St. Petersburg, FL, snagged the title in the Homes With History category of HGTV’s nationwide Ultimate House Hunt 2020. “It’s Craftsman style, and it is absolutely stunning. It has been restored over the years pretty much down to the studs and redone,” says listing agent Tracy Reyes. “I like a home with history. I like a home with character. This house definitely has both.” Built in 1910, the home is on the market for the second time this year. The previous owners entered the property in the HGTV contest, and the current owner bought it in June before the award was bestowed. “The home was very beautiful when he bought it. He just kind of put the finishing touches on it,” Reyes says, adding that the owner is selling so he could move closer to the water. This house is located close to the Tampa Bay–area waterfront parks and just a few blocks from downtown St. Petersburg’s museums, shops, and restaurants. The home has five bedrooms, four bathrooms, and two half-bathrooms. The hardwood floors are original, and all of the woodwork, coffered ceilings, and moldings have been restored. It’s also available as a totally turnkey purchase. What you see in the listing photos is what you get—the home is being sold fully furnished, minus the artwork. “He had some furniture made. There’s a particular couch in the living room that he had specially made so it has a lower back so it doesn’t block the windows,” Reyes explains. The kitchen is a gorgeous combination of old and new. It has quartz countertops, high-end Thermador appliances, and wood in the ceilings. There is an island with seating for two, a fireplace, and easy access to the dining room. A butler’s pantry is nearby with a sink, wine fridge, and storage space. Outside, the landscaping requires minimal maintenance and there are three covered porches as well as a pool. “In the front of the house, you have a beautiful L-shaped patio and you can see the pool from that patio as well,” Reyes explains. The pool is in the backyard surrounded by an open courtyard and sits next to a carriage house. The carriage house is a 700-square-foot legal guest cottage with separate water, gas, and electric meters. It could provide rental income for a new owner. The owner “just replaced that countertops out there. He replaced the balcony. I mean the guest cottage is amazing in itself. It’s beautiful,” Reyes says. The 600 square feet of garage space is also finished with an industrial fan and new flooring and ceiling. “You can fit two cars in the garage. They’re just manual trifold doors that you have to get out to open them to put your vehicle in, so they’re not automated at all,” Reyes explains. The new owner wouldn’t have to lift a finger to feel right at home in this award-winning residence. “The perfect buyer for this home is someone who is going to live in it and love it and take care of it and be the next caretaker,” Reyes says. “Someone that appreciates history and appreciates the craftsmanship in a home like this.” The post HGTV Ultimate House Hunt Winner: Historic Craftsman Home for Sale in Florida appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®. via https://www.realtor.com/news/unique-homes/hgtv-ultimate-house-hunt-winner-historic-craftsman-home-in-florida/ The numbers: The index of pending home sales dropped 2.2% in September compared with the previous month, breaking a four-month streak of increases, the National Association of Realtors reported Thursday. The index measures real-estate transactions where a contract was signed for a previously-owned homes but the sale had not yet closed, benchmarked to contract-signing activity in 2001. Compared with a year ago, contract signings were up 20.5%. What happened: The Northeast was the only region that experienced a monthly increase in pending home sales, with contract signings rising 2% in September. The Midwest, meanwhile, had the largest decline in pending sales, with a 3.2% decrease. All regions saw higher contract-signing activity than a year ago, however. The big picture: The dip in pending sales came as a surprise, with most economists expecting a modest increase. The decline may have been a function of seasonality — even as summer was winding down, home-buying activity remained elevated because of the delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic during the normally busier spring season. But the slowdown in contract signings last month could also point to some of the hurdles buyers are now facing in the market. “Many buyers struggled with steeply rising prices and shrinking inventory of homes for sale,” said George Ratiu, senior economist at Realtor.com. Buyers have bought up most of the available inventory of homes, causing home prices to skyrocket. As a result, affordability will be a growing concern for Americans looking to buy a home in the coming months, even as mortgage rates remain at record lows. What they’re saying: ” In one line: The housing rebound is stalling, for now at least,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. “The demand for home buying remains super strong, even with a slight monthly pullback in September, and we’re still likely to end the year with more homes sold overall in 2020 than in 2019. With persistent low mortgage rates and some degree of a continuing jobs recovery, more contract signings are expected in the near future,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors. Market reaction: The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 turned positive in Thursday morning trading as investors digested the latest GDP figures. The post As Pending Home Sales Fall in September, Concerns Emerge About a Housing Rebound appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®. via https://www.realtor.com/news/real-estate-news/as-pending-home-sales-fall-in-september-concerns-emerge-about-a-housing-rebound/ Former Chicago Bulls star Toni Kukoc has sold his Highland Park, IL, home for a bearish price. The upgraded contemporary dwelling finally closed for $920,000, according to Crains Chicago Business. The NBA star purchased the 1990s era home in 1993 for $1.19 million, realtor.com® records show. Last year, Kukoc and his wife, Renata, placed the high-end mansion on the market for $1.15 million, essentially the price the couple had originally paid decades ago. But the ultramodern home had failed to find a buyer, and had gone off market. In June, the home returned to market for the lowered price of $1 million. That eventually caught the attention of a buyer, who purchased it earlier this month for the slightly lowered amount. What a score! The original model in the Hybernia neighborhood comes with “many upgrades.” With 5,035 square feet of living space, the layout has an open foyer, family room, and a living room with two-story ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows looking out to the pond and serene grounds. A private den or office can be found on the main floor, along with a bedroom and bathroom. Upstairs, another four generously sized en suite bedrooms fill the second floor, along with a large master suite with three walk-in closets, two vanities, and two water closets. A finished basement features a custom wet bar and exercise room, as well as an area set up as a game room, along with a bedroom and full bathroom. In the listing photos, NBA memorabilia hangs on some walls. In addition, a large mud and laundry room is located off the heated three-car garage. Outside, the quarter-acre lot features a patio with a fire pit, hot tub, outdoor grill, and seating. A lawn backs onto a pond. “This is a lot of house,” the listing notes helpfully. The former teammate of Michael Jordan has fared better than “His Airness” on the sales front. Jordan’s Highland Park home has been on and off the market for years, with no movement. The massive, 56,000-square-foot home, on over 7 acres, is still available for $14.85 million. Kukoc, 52, starred in Europe before landing in the NBA with the Bulls in 1993. He became an integral part of the team’s second NBA title three-peat from 1996 to 1998, a role that was described in “The Last Dance.” The three-time NBA champion is now serving as a special adviser to the owner of the Bulls, Jerry Reinsdorf. Ted Pickus with @properties Highland Park represented the seller. Aviva Ginzburg with Baird & Warner Gold Coast represented the buyer. The post Former Chicago Bulls Star Toni Kukoc Sells His Highland Park, IL, Home for $920K appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®. via https://www.realtor.com/news/celebrity-real-estate/toni-kukoc-sells-highland-park-home/ |
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