Cottage / Bungalow in Westwood Park

Saw this adorable cottage / bungalow in Westwood Park today. Generally speaking, in San Francisco, when the square footage is under 1000 square feet, they start calling that a cottage. Typically, with these smaller homes, the price can be more attractive given the smaller square footage, but typically it may also not be easy to expand the home without tearing the home apart, as these houses are typically one-story on a limited parcel. These homes are typically one bedroom with a small office or two small bedrooms. Personally, these type of homes are a bit small for my needs, but one like this one might be a nice starter home for some folks.

http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/1358-Plymouth-Ave-94112/home/1938972

In this house's case, it stands exactly at 1000 square feet, and was built in 1918. Property in Westwood Park does seem to be more expensive generally. Specifically, Westwood Park homes tend to be more expensive than neighborhoods to the south and east of it (the neighorhood itself is very nice and residential) like Ingleside Terrace and the Outer Mission and Excelsior, but less expensive than the large, really nice homes in St. Francis Wood to the northwest of it, so from an investment perspective it's a good place to be.

Beautiful Crafstman-esque exterior (note the 1920s house to the left which is more of a full size Sunset style home):


It's got a beautiful but small living room:


Nice (also small) dining room with beautiful built in cabinets, probably original:


It's got a small bathroom with an old claw tub, which is quite cool to see (though not sure how cool it is to use):


There are two reasonably sized bedrooms in the back.

The parking situation is a bit weird. A lot of homes in Ingleside Terraces / Westwood Park are fully non-attached structures, with a private path on the side for the car to drive through to get to a garage near the back. In this house's case, the path has been partially dug up and obstructed with plants grown in the ground. In the back of the house is the garage, which is really a shed that fits one car. So the garage could be used as a storage space, renovated to become living space, or you can pave over the plants and turn the garage back into a garage. There is still a parking space on the property though.


Finally, the best or most interesting part is the backyard. Definitely my favorite part. Because this house backs up on City College property, beyond the chain link fence of the backyard, is a completely undeveloped field with a tree and other natural plants. So the backyard feels so very bucolic, unusual for San Francisco.

Outer Center Square Full Five, with bonus room!

I saw an interesting house at 1942 18th Ave today:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/1942-18th-Ave-94116/home/1500688

The reason I decided to see it for myself is it has almost exactly the same floor plan as my house and was built in the same year, 1931. It is an Outer Center Square Full Five. Very nice exterior:


The exterior as a whole is somewhat atypical for a Sunset house, but the individual components are more typical. In the front, there are three windows forming a Marina style semi-hexagonal facade (inside is the living room). The three bay windows forming a semi-hexagon was typical of houses built in San Francisco in the 1920's. In San Francisco, around 1930, Spanish style architecture became widespread in mass residential architecture, and so the "Spanish" component in this case are the few decorative red tiles on the top.

Very nice dining room with barrel ceiling, and also a "Spanish" style fireplace typical of San Francisco homes built in 1930 to 1931. Towards 1932, the builders got smart and realized the fireplace was awkwardly placed (making it hard to figure out where to place the sofa and tv/radio), and started placing the fireplace in the corner rather than on the side. In this configuration, the sofa and tv are squeezed to the right of the fireplace.


In my house, the sofa is next to, but faces 180 degrees away from the windows on the front, and the tv sits angled to the right of the fireplace.

The dining room is right behind the living room, with the side patio behind it. The difference between this home and a center patio are as follows: In a center patio home, the patio is bigger and in the center of the home, not on the side like this. A hallway and sometimes a bathroom sits on one side of the center patio, and the kitchen and breakfast room on the other side. In the side patio configuration, the dining room faces the side patio, while the breakfast room faces the front of the house instead of being on the side. If this sounds confusing, see http://saxerealestate.com/map/architecture.htm for more details.

Here's the dining room with rounded ceiling with the side patio behind it (similar to my house):


And here's the breakfast room (looks like it's been modernized) facing the front:


The bathroom is beautiful, with original green tiles and floor tiling:


One interesting thing is from the twenties and earlier, a lot of bathrooms had the bath and sink in one room, and the toilet was in a separate water closet room next door. This home still retains this older layout, the bathroom has no toilet. The water closet actually is across from the bathroom, with a window facing the side patio.

Here's the master bedroom. Because the land the house is on is sloped, even though we're on the second story, the two bedrooms evenly face the backyard, which is nice. A really nice patio was built behind the two main bedrooms in the back leading into the backyard.


Going downstairs, there's a third room. Originally, most San Francisco homes built until the 1950's had all the livable rooms on the second floor, with an open ground floor, which was considered the basement. In fact, before the 1930's, most of these basements weren't even paved when built (though some more expensive houses starting in the 1930's started including an original social room with wet bar and fireplace downstairs). As a result, most homeowners in San Francisco who owned these homes eventually built finished living space downstairs. Because most of these homeowners did the work without a city building permit (which requires multiple building inspections, architectural plans, and conformance with the city building code which includes things like minimal height and windows and ventilation), on real estate sites these rooms are usually referred to as a "bonus room" or "unwarranted room". This means there is a finished room downstairs, but because it might have been illegally built (and frequently built without legal height, or enough windows to the outside), it cannot be counted in the official square footage or bedroom count of the home. Some homeowners may have built what is called an in-law unit downstairs, which may contain a separate bathroom and kitchen, and a separate entrance into the unit. "In-law unit" is a euphamism for illegally built unit, which means when it is rented out, it is illegally rented out. However, it is estimated that about 50,000 people in San Francisco live in such units (almost 10% of the population) so clearly this is a problem that needs to be sorted out.

I've seen houses where they've legally renovated the downstairs where the upstairs seamlessly connects to the finished spaces downstairs to where it looks very natural. I've heard that this is very expensive, but in my opinion, worth it if you want to live in a cozy home that maximizes the living space potential. Here's an example of a very nice legal downstairs renovation: http://www.dwell.com/house-tours/slideshow/sunset-district-renovation

In the case of the house that I saw today, there is still enough room in the garage to park two cars (tandem, like almost all Sunset style houses), with the unwarranted room in the back. It has a window facing the back (though not much of a view since the two rooms upstairs are above and over it; the window faces concrete. Nevertheless, it appears to be a relatively nicely built room that can be a guest room.