Archive for April, 2009

Coming Soon: 4160 Botanical: 4 bed/3 bath for $234,900

24 April 09
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INTERIOR: SPACE, glorious space! Need a big place? This is it. 4 bedrooms, and 3 FULL baths. The first floor is set up perfectly to host out of town guests with one good size bedroom adjacent to a full a bath. The whole house offers ample community areas. Downstairs there is a formal living room and dining room in the front of the house. In the back there’s a breakfast room or office with large picture window off the kitchen. On the second floor there’s a large family room and drawing room along with 2 bedrooms, public bath and MASTER SUITE complete with separate soaking tub, stand up shower with dual fixtures and laundry area.

LOCATION: One block south of 4160 Botanical is Tower Grove Park and one block west is the Missouri Botanical Gardens. From here you can walk to Grand for coffee, ice-cream, Thai or Japanese. Or stroll over the to the Tower Grove Farmer’s Market on Saturday to buy your groceries. Get to SLU campus or Medical Center on your bike. If your driving 44 is just a few blocks away.

VALUE: Shaw neighborhood prices are all over the board. Included in the CMA below you can see that there is currently a home on Flad with about 2700 square feet priced at 199K. It needs a new kitchen and some floor plan modifications and a good amount amount of updates in terms of new systems and windows and basic cosmetics. Alternatively you can see that a home in the 4000 block of Shenandoah with only 2024 square feet sold in under 40 days for 300K. So where does the Botanical home fall in this spectrum? With approximately 2700 square feet Botanical is massive.

Based on the CMA below the average price per square foot for SOLD homes in the Shaw Neighborhood is $101.32. Using that as a yard stick, Botanical should be about 270K, but it is going to be listed at $234,900 which makes it an amazing value. Alternatively if you look at the current actives homes in the Shaw neighborhood, you can see that of all the homes priced below 250K, 4160 Botanical has them beat not just in terms of space but in updates and cosmetics as well. Since 2004 there have been major system updates done to the whole house including HVAC, plumbing, electric and windows. Additionally the kitchen was completely gutted as were all three bathrooms.

4160 Botanical is coming soon and won’t be the on the market until the owner buttons up every last detail. Get your finances in order and clear your afternoon because this home will hit the market on May 1.


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Posted in featured, new listings

2853 Sidney: New Listing Open Sunday, April 19 from 1-3PM

18 April 09

2853 Sidney is OPEN, Sunday, April 19 from 1-3PM.

Reasons to BUY this house…

LOCATION: 2358 Sidney is located right at the intersection of Fox Park and Tower Grove East. Technically, the home is in Fox Park, but this intersection (Sidney and Nebraska) has seen a ton of grassroots development over the last couple of years. On the opposite corner there is a row of two story houses that have all sold for 198,000+. Just across the street, a former industrial building was converted into 4 condos upstairs and a live work space on the first floor. And just two doors west of 2853 Sidney there is commercial/retail space with 2 condos above. Visually this location is beautiful in an architectural sense because of the cohesiveness of the architecture. Look at the way these dutch colonials match in scale and aesthetics!

INTERIOR FINISH: This year 2853 Sidney was completely rehabbed and the owners made a significant improvement in terms of layout. They added a first floor half bath. I am really impressed at how well they pulled it off. They were interviewing agents while they were still under construction and I remember being hesitant when they said they were going to fit a half bath on the first floor. I have seen other homes that stole space from the first floor rooms and it always seemed to negatively alter the flow. I remember going in one house that just had a drywall box in the at the edge of the dining room. –very very wrong, not at all planned and very poorly executed. But walking through 2853 Sidney, you would never think that the half bath wasn’t there to begin with. It fits into the layout perfectly! The owners worked with a licensed and bonded general contractor to make sure all the details were in place. Other features of the home that I think will impress include the glass tile around fireplace, the breakfast bar in kitchen, and the upstairs full bath with the glass block ledge in the shower.

VALUE: Finding a home under 125K with 1.5 baths is difficult. An MLS search shows that there are only 4 homes priced between 100-125K that have an additional half bath in the 63104 or 63118 zip codes. Below is a snap shot of values in the 63104 or 63118 zip code of move in ready homes that had 2 bedrooms and 1.5 baths that have sold in the last year. Square footage for this group of homes ranges between 1100-1500. The average price per square foot is $102. At 1239 square feet Sidney is prices right at $100 a square foot.

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Posted in new listings

2631 Nebraska and the Craig’s List Scam

9 April 09

We use Craig’s List all the time to advertise our FOR SALE listings. Most times its a great tool. In the MLS we are unable to advertise the individual property website because of the agent rules governing IDX, but on Craig’s List and Backpage we can re-direct people to the home’s individual website which has much more information (floor plans and disclosures) than the brief post.

HOWEVER, last weekend someone stole one of my posts. They took the photos and description of my listing for 2631 Nebraska and posted a FOR RENT ad. Then they proceeded to correspond to inquiries using an email address yahoo email address. dawngriffin94@yahoo is NOT my email address. Most people figured it out quickly and contacted me personally (Thank you!) And someone forwarded me the correspondence so that I could report it to Craig’sList. Below is a bit of the message.
–

Hello,
How are you? Thanks for the interest in my House,my house is still available for rent and is located at :2631 Nebraska Ave St Louis,MO 63118,quite and safe I only need someone that can take good care of the house at my absence because right now am not around i just secured a contract in London .of which i will not be back until after 2years. And am here with the house keys and document, i tried to look for managent before i left but couldn’t get any in time.If you know that you have a good reference and a good crediential you can email me back to secure and occupy my house at my absent.
–
I believe they were trying to get people to submit their personal info in the form of an application. Possibly they were trying to collect deposits as well. I guess the lesson is to be VERY VERY careful when responding to posts for rent and insist on meeting someone personally at the property before giving up any of your personal info.

P.S. 2631 Nebraska is UNDER CONTRACT after only 45 days on the market. A testament to what an amazing house it is!

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Posted in misc., new listings

New Listing in Southampton: 5328 Devonshire

3 April 09

Reasons to BUY this house:

LOCATION: Southampton is one of the most sought after neighborhoods in the city. How do I know this? It says so on their home page. Southampton was rated as one of the top residential choices for families in the 25-35 age bracket. But there’s more, this house is near the intersection of Devonshire and Macklind which, in my mind, is the best neighborhood mainstreet that we have in the city. Grand is great and Morganford is marvelous but Macklind actually bridges the two parts of Southampton and makes this little neighborhood feel like a village complete with its own economic center. All within walking distance of 5328 Devonshire are Home Eco Green General Store, Big River Running Company, Mackland Avenue Deli, Manzo’s Imports and Deli, Murcoch Perk, and Onesto Trattoria

Interior Finish Quality: Not everyone is going to love this house. Clean lines and modern finishes aren’t for everyone. That big blue LazyBoy recliner is NOT going to work in here. If you are attracted to a lofty feel but not really interested in the condo fees or the cost of upgrades, then you are going to LOVE it. If you like to cook and entertain, then the layout will impress you. The kitchen has a perfectly designed work triangle, plenty of prep area and a peninsula with barstools so even those who aren’t great with knives can be part of the action. (Also the double drawer dishwasher is very cool). Want a spa inspired bathroom? Take your pick, there are two! Worried about utilities in a big brick house? Well this house has zoned HVAC and lots of extra insulation. Looking for 2 sleeping areas and a space for office/informal family room/play room? It’s all upstairs. I could go on, but the photos tell the story.

Value: Below is a CMA report from the St. Louis MLS. Based on a map search of the Southampton area, the numbers show that Devonshire is priced to SELL. Of the five other move-in ready homes currently active in the neighborhood, Devonshire is priced at 189,900 meaning it is about $9500 below the average list price. Additonally if you look at the SOLD values you can see that the average SOLD price of a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom home in the Southampton neighborhood is $204,278 which means Devonshire’s list price of $189,900 is an amazing value. Also note that the AVERAGE price per square foot of the ACTIVE listings is $123.01 while 5328 Devonshire is priced at $108 a square foot. No need to make low-ball offers here, this seller has priced according to the current market.

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Posted in investment spotlight, market conditions, new listings