Love that entryway but it gets a little squirrelly from there on the rest of the interior.
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Architecture & Design of Central Texas
Love that entryway but it gets a little squirrelly from there on the rest of the interior.
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Wow – both this and the house on Paramount are two examples of sellers asking ~ double what their properties sold for just five or six years before.
Of course, that comparison is virtually meaningless for the Paramount Stenger place if you consider the condition it was in and that the square footage has been increased 50% or more. I remember what the before pictures looked like and if someone other than Chuck or a MCM fan had gotten a hold of it, it could have easily ended up a teardown like so many of other Stengers at the time (nowadays they actually have some small bit of name value).
Thanks for pointing this out Ben. The house is 2x what it was, hence the price. It’s perfectly in line, in our neighborhood, with the cost psf. AND it’s special 😉
Sorry, but houses in a normal market – no matter what kind of work you put into them – do not double in value in 5-6 years. If you really believe this, I recommend you leverage yourself to the hilt and buy up as much RRE today as you can, tack on an extra room and maybe a Crestview door, and offload it for twice what you paid today in another 5 years.
FWIW, renovations/updates are never $ for $, particularly not in today’s RE market. Look up ROI on renovations if you don’t believe me. It may increase the marketability of a property, but not necessarily the sale the price. Even if they were $ for $, there isn’t even close to 200K worth of updates (material/labor) in the Paramount property. Further, any updates you perform are likely going to be undone by anyone who buys the place and has their own ideas for how it should look. Expansions are great, but particularly if the added space has rental potential. Lastly, how do you quantify the value added by the Stenger brand ‘nowadays’ versus six years prior (ancient history)? It’s not like he was some total unknown in 2004.
Anyway, I’m not out to piss anyone off; Paramount’s a fine little house and the guy obviously put a lot of energy into it. I just call it like I see it: both properties I mentioned doubled in price, which represents a disconnect from certain market fundamentals.
we’ve had this go around before and clearly you don’t want to believe that people are in fact buying homes for the prices they are. i don’t believe for a second that prices will double in 5 years, nor do i believe that it is easy to flip a house and make mad ca$h but i do know that whatever the price someone paid 5 or 6 years ago is irrelevant to what price the market may bear today.
as for stenger brand name, i can tell you that listings 6 years ago (when i started this site) rarely mentioned him and now nearly stenger listed does. from what i see they also generally sell more quickly. i also get emails on a semi-consistent basis asking how to verify if their homes is a Stenger or not or if I know of Stengers coming available. that has occurred far more in the past 3 years then in the first 3 years. i am sure someone could do the analysis to figure out if the average selling price is higher and time on the market is lower but i don’t have access to that raw data.
my personal feeling is that the Paramount home is more or less priced in right ballpark while the Ridgemont home is weighted well on the high side. but my opinion is irrelevant.
there are 2 topics that i hate that crop up here: “omg, the east side is ghetto / everyone will kill you there” veiled or not so veiled comments and the “overpriced” conversation, the later simply because it is so tired and nothing ever new comes from it. it is also meaningless since the market will correct itself for individual homes quickly. there is a more interesting and meaningful conversation about whether homes represent a good value on investment (both financial and / or emotional) but even that gets fairly tedious quickly since everyone can point to sets of data that support their position if that even bother to get that far.
BJ, have you actually seen the house? and further, did you see it before we bought it? Do you understand that I added the entire Master bed, bath and nursery, some 600 sf? Those solid wood beams and planking are topped with a 3 inch insulation SIP (you’ll scratch your head trying to figure out how I ‘hid’ it in there without disturbing the facia profile or the roofing height), the entire addition is way over e standards. It’s sheathed, like the original part, in 100% raked cedar shingles, wrapping around the exterior corners w/o trim, like the original. Many who don’t know, can’t believe it’s an addition. In labor and materials there is almost EXACTLY 200k. In fact, since virtually all of the labor was done by me I’ll be making a pittance if/when we sell on an hourly basis, trust me, I keep a spreadsheet and I’m down to about 3.00 an hour, not exactly top dollar for a highly-skilled, lifelong professional.
If you’re actually buying a house, and don’t want ours that’s certainly okay. If you’re interested in 78704 you could always buy a smaller, nondescript fixer-upper on Kinney St. for 375k instead.
btw, before Ben started this site and my wife and I bought our Stenger, very few did know about him. Where did you hear about him? If you say ‘the Statesman’ it was likely they found it here. There were plenty of personal anecdotes floating around about AD but there is little in the way of archived drawings, writings, etc. Those things have been (and are still being) gleaned by living in and around his houses. He didn’t seem particularly interested in his legacy, save his penchant for making bear hunting videos. You won’t find him in any books.
Anyway we’re planning a meet-up at the house this coming Friday the 17th 6-9. I told Ben so he might post (is there an old LiveModern list Ben?) but I’ll add a message on our houses thread. You’re welcome to stop by and see the house for yourself.
…i know that whatever the price someone paid 5 or 6 years ago is irrelevant to what price the market may bear today….
I’m actually surprised that you would suggest a thing. Price histories are one of the primary fundamentals in price discovery when it comes to housing in any market. Comparative rents/local salaries/rent/buy ratios are some others. If I buy a place, can I rent it out at positive cash flow, etc. Everything else — MCM, STENGER, etc is just marketing to people’s emotions. IOW, they make the house more marketable, but they does not correlate to higher value in the final sale.
…my personal feeling is that the Paramount home is more or less priced in right ballpark…
With all due respect, I think it’s possible that you are biased. Sorry – my initial point wasn’t to debate whether Paramount is a nice home, with thoughtful upgrades – it was to point out that it had doubled in price in six years, and that there is no quantifiable reason for it. Austin is overheated right now — particularly this area. I don’t think it can last, particularly once the various government price supports start to wind down in the next year or two.
BTW I’m sorry that you’re tired of the housing affordability issues in Austin, but as a long time resident, it pains me to see friends and neighbors feeling the pinch brought about by speculators with 5/1 ARMS. The good thing is that I know it cannot last.
Anyway, no offense meant. This is not personal! It’s just dollars and sense.
Chuck…I’ve lived in around Austin since 1997 and first visited in ’89. I’ve been aware of Stenger for as long as I can remember. Anyway, good luck with your place. No bad feelings intended.
you are conflating a discussion about affordability and general market dynamics with a discussion about the price of a particular home. it is the later that i said i was tired of discussing. it seemed that you were attacking specific homes in your initial posts.
my point simply was if the market dynamic supports a given price point today (whether higher or lower), it is largely irrelevant what price point was previously. now whether that price point is reasonable or not can be argued on many ponts, one of which is historical pricing particularly in context against income / purchasing power.
i am curious, you assert with confidence that marketability factors do not translate to higher price points, do you have a study to back that up? i’ve not dug into the real estate market in depth, but in every other business market i’ve worked in, marketability, including brand, is a key component in achieving better price points and overall margins. if true, that would be an interesting topic to discuss why it doesn’t drive the behaviors we see in other marketplaces.
do you always have to qualify your posts at the end? I have no bad feelings, why do you keep bringing it up? I’m super-comfortable with our place and it’s price, your opinion doesn’t bother me in the least. I’m just not sure why you think I should give my house away so that someone can have ‘affordable’ housing.
I didn’t say nobody knew about AD. I said ‘few’ knew and it’s true (and I have a LOT of architect friends). Ben and I had to dig for information on Stenger, that’s how we became acquainted. Google AD Stenger and see what the first five or six listings are. Also, see if you can find ANY article online that dates prior to @2007. cheers!
(ben, I keep posting right after you; apologies for redundancies!).
…you are conflating a discussion about affordability and general market dynamics with a discussion about the price of a particular home…
Because the specific home(s) in question illustrated rather well a contention of mine – that asking prices in Central Austin in the last five-ten years have decoupled from the fundamentals. I try to gauge market activity across the city using as many different resources and websites available as possible. The two homes I pointed out here fit the bill as having doubled in price in less than ten years. If you accept that housing over the last 70 years has nominally kept pace with inflation, then you must accept that the rate of appreciation in these two examples is abnormal.
…my point simply was if the market dynamic supports a given price point today(whether higher or lower), it is largely irrelevant what price point was previously…
The market dynamic argument might be true if local salaries/wages had kept pace with the rate of RRE inflation, but they have not. I recently read a report in the Austin Biz Journal citing the population in Austins’ core urban areas as decreasing rather than the anticipated increases you’ve see being hyped everywhere for years. One of the factors cited in the study lists…wait for it…cost of living!
The reason price histories are such an important metric is that it gives us a glimpse of a more organic marketplace. Once the various government price supports are wound down and interest rates necessarily start to rise, you will see a reversion to the median — and we get an idea for what the true median is based upon what prices were *before* these supports were in place. Not all the Californians in the world can offset this reversion. I think that’s why you see so many places for sale here all the time; the savvy are aware of this and I do not blame them for trying to offload now.
…i am curious, you assert with confidence that marketability factors do not translate to higher price points, do you have a study to back that up?…
This isn’t my personal assertion, it’s something of a common canard – but yes, there are studies/surveys to this effect. Hit the Googles. I know Coldwell Banker of all places did a survey profiling which marketing techniques and renovations resonated most with buyers, and it made many similar observations. There was also a great article on Patrick.net a few months back on this misguided notion as well. I know Real Estate porn like A&E’s Sell This House would have one believe that performing even the most superficial changes (staging) can hide even the biggest money pit of a house, but this is unproven marketing BS from the school of Lereah et al.
Chuck — I guess I qualified because your responses seemed a little defensive — particularly the one where you state you’re not being defensive. I’m not kicking your tires, calling you a carpet bagger, or suggesting you ‘give’ your house away; though I could easily rephrase the question back to you as: why should you expect anyone to pay for your move-up; student loan debt; retirement plan; kid’s tuition? I merely noted that it is priced at about twice what it sold for six or seven years ago, which I find remarkable. Something being SPECIAL just doesn’t explain it for me.
Witness California, where a litany of many special architectural masterpieces have been languishing on the market for years.
http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2010/08/29/business/doc4c7a3096065a7155411798.txt
Good luck.
“…why should you expect anyone to pay for your move-up; student loan debt; retirement plan; kid’s tuition?…”
you forgot to mention my banjo lessons! Because making things with my two bare hands is what I do FOR A LIVING. NOT FLIP HOUSES (with a 5/1 ARM LOL – I wouldn’t do adjustable if my life depended on it). I just happen be selling the house I’ve been living in that I fixed myself (that’s twice the house it used to be – ask anyone who’s actually SEEN it).
Our house HAS undergone a 60k reduction with 20k in new work since we first listed it. I call that a MAJOR correction. And, you keep insinuating that there’s something ‘tacked on’ or ‘superficial’ about my house. Pretty cheeky for someone who hasn’t set foot in it.
I’m sorry if you and your friends can’t afford a house in our neighborhood, it obviously upsets you. Maybe you could do what we did: find a piece of crap house and make it into something good with your own two hands. It’s called ‘sweat equity’ and as I mentioned before, I’m working cheaper than anyone while doing better work. Spend six years on it and see if you care when someone suggests you shouldn’t profit from it.
And, in California, particularly L.A., there is more MCM than you can shake a stick at, you don’t have to buy a Neutra, Wright, Ain, et al. Many of these early vintage houses are falling apart (6.5 million for the Ennis renovation alone! ) because of poor construction and maintenance. Having a few of these ‘masterpieces’ hanging around isn’t at all surprising when you have so many to choose from. A more timely link would be to Crosby Doe’s actual site as he handles virtually all the marquee MCM in L.A. county:
http://www.crosbydoe.com/listings-featured.php?ap_SearchStart=30&ap_SearchLimit=5&statusID=&curr_page=7&
(apologies to the owner of Ridgemont who is probably thinking ‘wtf is this discussion on my listing page 😉
As someone who is familiar with the Ridgemont house, let me just say that the reason they are asking double what they paid is because the original deal in 2005 was a STEAL. The house was originally advertised as having huge foundation issues and was being sold as is in 2005, when I bought my home in the same neighborhood. The current owner bought the house, repaired the foundation, and is now asking ~$113 per sq ft in an area that is selling for more like $140 per sq. ft. It’s not a bad deal nor an unreasonable asking price.
got to agree with Lori there…it seems perfectly in line for the ‘hood.
They just lowered their price to $282K! It’s confusing as to if the garage apartment is included in the overall 2600+ sf listed in the add. Tax record indicates 2642 sf PLUS a 500 sf garage (that I assume they turned into the apartment). That’s a lot of house for the $ in that area and it does have some hints of MCM design . . . knock another 30K off and that would be an awesome project house and still be in the price point ballpark for Delwood!!!!!