Social rooms were rare special features for Sunset style homes built in the 1930's, so this makes this home a special treat, but you wouldn't know it from the listing!
When I emailed the uninformed listing realtor in question, he wrote back, "I really don't know. All the information is in the disclosure package. I'm sorry I can't be more specific but I have very limited knowledge and I have a legal responsibility to be almost 100%." Honest enough answer I suppose... I'm pretty sure the realtor we used for our home purchase would have known the moment he set eyes on it what that room was.
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Knowing Your House - Historical Features
If you like history or historical architecture, you probably want to know and understand the historical features of your home. I read a very cool (if academic) "Sunset District Historic Builders, 1925-1950, Historic Context Statement" document yesterday, see
http://www.sf-planning.org/index.aspx?page=3192
which includes a lot of details about the exterior of your historic San Francisco home. What most of these survey types of documents do not include is details on the interior (though there are many other sources which include detail about historic house interiors), for the obvious reason that the architectural preservation professionals who write these reports are frequently not allowed to go inside these homes. Which leaves real estate listings as one of the main sources where you can figure out this information.
But these listings can be misleading if the listing realtor has no idea about the historic interior features of your home. If you want to preserve these types of features in your home, it can be very confusing trying to figure out what are original features of it on the inside.
For example, I saw a 1931 listing yesterday where the description listed a "bonus room" downstairs. As you may recall, I have written previously that bonus rooms are usually illegal rooms added after the home was built. Yet, when I looked at the photos of the listing, the faux fireplace, shaped arch, and wet bar with what looked like bright original wall tiling seemed to indicate that the bonus room was actually a legally built, original social room.
Here's a photo I took of the Rousseau home I went to awhile back with the wet bar in the downstairs social room:
Social rooms were rare special features for Sunset style homes built in the 1930's, so this makes this home a special treat, but you wouldn't know it from the listing!
When I emailed the uninformed listing realtor in question, he wrote back, "I really don't know. All the information is in the disclosure package. I'm sorry I can't be more specific but I have very limited knowledge and I have a legal responsibility to be almost 100%." Honest enough answer I suppose... I'm pretty sure the realtor we used for our home purchase would have known the moment he set eyes on it what that room was.
Social rooms were rare special features for Sunset style homes built in the 1930's, so this makes this home a special treat, but you wouldn't know it from the listing!
When I emailed the uninformed listing realtor in question, he wrote back, "I really don't know. All the information is in the disclosure package. I'm sorry I can't be more specific but I have very limited knowledge and I have a legal responsibility to be almost 100%." Honest enough answer I suppose... I'm pretty sure the realtor we used for our home purchase would have known the moment he set eyes on it what that room was.
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