Deconstructing a 36,000 Square Foot Home
I guarantee you have never seen a “tear-down” house like this one. A Minnesota company is disassembling an immense home in the prestigious Lake Minnetonka area west of Minneapolis.
This massive structure is filled with room after room of salvageable building materials in pristine condition, ranging from sprawling kitchens and custom cabinetry to a unique sauna and indoor pool slide.
At the company’s link are several pages of photos and a walk-through video.
The company saves money by inviting the public to go directly to the home to harvest materials; what remains is transported to their warehouse and store for resale.
Link.
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11 Incredible Homes From Around the World for Under $50K
The worldwide recession has hit a lot of people hard, but it’s not all doom and gloom. Far from it actually, as is the case with property. As the price of real estate has fallen, there are plenty of bargains to be had all around the world! The villa pictured is in Halcyon Hills, Greece.
No doubt there will be a few reading ready to point out the error in the title. Surely, it’s a mistake? Homes for less than 50K? No way! But yet, it’s true. Since the global financial debacle of last year, it’s shocking how many homes are available for sale for under US$50,000, especially in the US where the housing market was hit hardest.
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Amusing Real Estate Listings
Lovely Listing is a collection of user-submitted finds in the the real estate world. Sometimes you just have to wonder what people were thinking, whether it be the agent’s choice of photo, the seller’s interior decor, or the builder themselves, as exemplified above:
Dude. Check it out. The weirdest thing ever is going on here. You see? You see it? So bizarre: the toilet paper is hung on the shower stall door. Crazy!
There might be something else wrong here, too.
(Photo: Netti Asunto)
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Nature Reclaiming Abandoned Houses in Detroit
Across many cities in the United States, hundreds of thousands of foreclosed and abandoned homes turned some neighborhoods into urban blight … but nowhere is the effect as acutely felt as in Detroit.
Sweet Juniper blog has an interesting post about how nature is now reclaiming some of those abandoned houses. They use the description "feral houses," which given the condition they are in, seem very appropriate:
I’ve seen "feral" used to describe dogs, cats, even goats. But I have wondered if it couldn’t also be used to describe certain houses in Detroit. Abandoned houses are really no big deal here. Some estimate that there are as many as 10,000 abandoned structures at any given time, and that seems conservative. But for a few beautiful months during the summer, some of these houses become "feral" in every sense: they disappear behind ivy or the untended shrubs and trees planted generations ago to decorate their yards. The wood that framed the rooms gets crushed by trees rooted still in the earth. The burnt lime, sand, gravel, and plaster slowly erode into dust, encouraged by ivy spreading tentacles in its endless search for more sunlight.
Previously on Neatorama: 100 Abandoned Houses (also in Detroit)
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Defying Developers: Buildings of the Resistance
Buildings are creatively converted or utterly demolished all the time to make room for highways and other large-scale civic problems, but the laws vary on what can be done when a single hold-out structure stands alone against a sea of fat-cat developers, builders and architects who all want nothing more but for them to move.
Sometimes they successfully force out residents or bribe them with offers that range up to 20 times the value of the home and real estate – but in many cases they simply have to give up and build around them, creating so-called ‘nail houses’ that stand apart from their surroundings.
In some cases, these incredible stand-alone structures have huge fan bases of individuals who applaud their willingness to stand up for their property.
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Psst! There's a Real Estate Boom (Yes, a Boom) in Phoenix, Arizona
After the big real estate bust in Phoenix, Arizona, a new trend is afoot: a boom in the market for foreclosed homes, where investors buy properties then lend it back to the (former) owners turned renters:
With this sweltering desert city enduring one of the largest tumbles in housing prices for any urban area since the Depression, there is an unrelenting stream of foreclosures to choose from. On some days, hundreds are offered for sale at the auctions that take place on the plaza in front of the county courthouse.
There is also a large supply of foreclosed families who can no longer qualify for a loan. And that is prompting a flood of investors like Mr. Jarvis, who wants to turn as many of these people as possible into rent-paying tenants in the houses they used to own.
Real estate got just about everyone into trouble in Phoenix, and the thinking seems to be that real estate is going to get everyone out.
The low end of the real estate market here — and in some equally hard-hit places like inland California and coastal Florida — is becoming as wild as anything during the boom.
David Streitfeld of the New York Times has more: Link
(Photo: Joshua Lott / NY Times)
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Housing Crunch Turns Literal in Victorville: Cheaper to Demolish Than To Complete Building
The real estate market may be bad everywhere, but it is particularly bad in Victorville, California, where the real estate crash has turned quite literal. There, failed developments are being torn down because the cost of demolishing the houses are cheaper than completing and selling them.
Peter Y. Hong of the Los Angeles Times has more:
The Victorville demolition is one of the most dramatic ends to a bad bet made during the housing boom, but abandoned developments have become an all-too-common sight in California. Nearly 250 residential developments totaling 9,389 homes have been halted across the state, according to one research firm.
The developer of the Victorville project had hoped to sell the houses for more than $300,000 as they were being built last year, Forrester said. But reality quickly diverged from that vision. Home prices have tanked faster in San Bernardino County than any other Southern California county during the downturn. In March, the median home sale price for the county was $160,000, down 43% in a year, according to the San Diego-based research firm MDA DataQuick.
Officials of Guaranty Bank of Austin, Texas, which took over the development last year, were unavailable for comment. But Victorville city spokeswoman Yvonne Hester said the bank decided not to throw good money after bad.
"It just didn’t pencil out for them," she said. "They’d have to spend a lot of money to turn around and sell the houses. They just made a financial decision to just demolish them."
Link (Photo: Christina House / LA Times)
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Logo Fight: Re/Max vs. Rehava
Do the two logos look similar to you? They do, according to the trademark attorneys of Re/Max, a national real estate franchise. They’re challenging the trademark application of a real estate startup Rehava, which has a new commission structure that is different than the established culture:
Adam Scoville, Re/Max’s legal counsel, said he can explain.
First of all, both names start with "r" and have logos with accent lines near the letter "e," he said.
"It goes beyond that," Scoville added. "If you chop the top off of the ‘h,’ you (almost) have the ‘m’ in Re/Max. The next letter is an ‘a,’ and if you take the ‘v’ then you have half of an ‘x.’ "
Steve deGuzman, Rehava’s broker-in-charge, said he doesn’t buy it. He said the trademark challenge is harassment and a form of corporate bullying that will cost his firm thousands of dollars.
"It’s a huge distraction, particularly for a startup and also in this kind of a market," deGuzman said.
He suspects the Colorado-based franchise is challenging the trademarkbecause of Rehava’s controversial commission rebates, which some in the industry see as a threat to traditional compensation standards.
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Futuristic Billboards to Transform L.A into Blade Runner Dystopia
The retro-fitted futuristic world of the film Blade Runner starring Harrison Ford may not be as far away as one might think. Director Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic dealt with such classic questions of “what does it mean to be human” while depicting the city of Los Angeles in the year 2019 as a smoggy dystopian future, a cultural melting pot brimming with skyscrapers, flying cars and inescapable corporate advertisements. Almost 30 years later the film is hailed as an overlooked masterpiece and has inspired multitudes of designers, engineers and artists.
Now you can also add “Real Estate Developer” to that list. Sonny Astani, a Los Angeles real estate mogul, is hoping to make one part of the film’s dystopian future a reality with 14-story animated billboards.
The plan is currently undergoing environmental review and pending approval by city officials. Officials are wary of anything billboard-related at the moment as downtown L.A already has its fair share of distracting lights and signs that have drawn complaints from area neighborhoods.
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