Removing Architectural Features Reduces Your Home's Value

It's remarkable to me that sometimes people will do something to their house that they thought would make it look good or seem more valuable, but as a matter of fact will reduce the value of a home.

When my wife and I were looking for a house to buy over a year ago, we made an offer on this house in Merced Heights:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/223-Vernon-St-94132/home/828698

Even though Merced Heights is basically considered being in the middle of nowhere in San Francisco, the main reasons I liked it was
a) it was cheap relative to most houses in San Francisco - listing price was under $500,000 - and
b) because it's on top of a hill, it has incredible views of the surrounding neighborhoods in San Francisco and of the Pacific Ocean. 

This was a house built in 1956, but definitely needed a lot of work done on it.  But given it seems like anything from the 1950s is all the rage now and becoming known as historic, this house had some interesting exterior architectural features of that era: thin angular decorative supports/slats, decorative wood window shutters, original windows. The theme of vertical lines is supposed to accentuate the geometry of the house. 

At the time, we lost the bid on the house (in fact to a all-cash bid that was tens of thousands of dollars lower than our bid), but my wife was really disappointed because she thought whoever bought the house might not appreciate the house's historic features and would probably rip everything up.  I thought this was a bit of a cynical thought, but turns out she was right...  Before and after:

They took out all the cute features that I just described, and now it's just another boring boxed house!  Unbelievable what these new owners did to reduce the value of their new home.

Knowing this, they probably messed up the other cool features inside the home.  Original fireplace:

Original bathroom wall tiling:

The house also had original 1950s metal kitchen cabinets, though not in great shape. 

Old 1920s Ingleside House with Shaped Parapet

I saw a nice old house today in the Ingleside with one of my favorite residential architectural features in San Francisco, the shaped parapet. The house is at: http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/423-Faxon-Ave-94112/home/1584473 .

The shaped parapet is the decorative part of the front façade above the roof shingles. I just like it because I think it gives the house a special look of classical dignity, and also because this feature was particularly popular from about 1910 to about the mid 1920's (this house was built in 1926, probably one of the last years houses in San Francisco would be built with this feature). Shaped parapets became less popular after that, and it may possibly be a safety hazard (see http://www.sf-planning.org/modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=1105, search for "parapet").  

The house has what's called an English entrance. This means the front entrance to the house is downstairs (there are indoor stairs that then lead to the main floor upstairs) as opposed to other Sunset style homes where either there are completely outdoor stairs up front, or there is a covered but outdoor tunnel entrance that leads to stairs to the front entrance.

The floor plan is a very common floor plan popular in the 1920's; the flat I lived in for many years in the Inner Sunset had more or less the same plan (and looked similar too). It's got a nice classic 1920's living room with original windows with patterned muntins (decorative wooden strips; I had to ask my wife the proper term for this) in the upper sash, original fireplace, rounded ceiling with moldings, and built-in cabinets (though they have been painted over).

The dining room also has those same rounded ceilings.

There is one bedroom facing the front.

The kitchen is likely not original, but still is very old - judging from the wavy decorations and the wall tiling from the 1930's to the 1950's.

The tiny bathroom also has these wall tiles, but the big tiles are blue instead of white (blue seemed a more popular color in the 1950's, but I still can't date it with any certainty). 

Here's a close-up of the bathroom tiles.

There's a cute old telephone niche in the hallway.

Here's a look at the other bedroom (in the back), which leads to the sun room which is only accessible from this bedroom (which I find kind of weird and a bit of a waste of space since it would then be hard to use it as a third bedroom).

The sunroom does have nice views.

1900's Victorian / Edwardian Outer Mission Home

I saw an interesting Victorian / Edwardian transitional house in the Outer Mission last weekend:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/24-Niagara-Ave-94112/home/823171

It's actually already pending after less than two weeks, yet another example of the hot housing market in San Francisco right now - its official square footage sits at 836 square feet, it's got bars on the windows and it's located about a block from the corner of Geneva and Mission which is somewhat of a crime hotspot (on the plus side, it's literally across the street from El Pollo Supremo, where the grilled chicken seems to have a cult following in the City - I have tried the grilled chicken, pretty good, really). Though, that's not really why I find this house interesting.



This is a good example of a house that was built right after the period when highly ornamented Victorian houses were most popular (this was built in 1907 according to records though according to the agent it could have been built before since a lot of records were destroyed after the earthquake). This house has the shape of a Victorian house but has much plainer ornamentation, more in line with Edwardian houses built in the late 1900 and 1910's. I also think the exterior color is pretty hot. Even though I think of Sunset style homes as being houses built in the 1920's to 1930's primarily, this particular house does more or less has the same form as Sunset style homes - narrow row house on a narrow lot, one story living space over basement style garage.

It has a cute fireplace in the living room:


It's got nice detailing on the hardwood floors:


Nice built-in cabinet and wood paneled walls in the dining room:


Nice boxed beam ceiling in the dining room:


I was joking with the agent that this is a great three-bedroom 800 square foot house. This is because while the official statistics show 836 square feet and 1 bedroom, there are two fully finished un-warranted knotty pine bedrooms in the attic that are very cool and which I'm sure would be well loved by children:


Finally, one small funny thing I saw is the dining room has a nice window facing out, except looks like decades after this house was built, another house was built right next to it, blocking the view of that side window and making it somewhat useless:

Colorful San Francisco Outer Mission Houses

My wife recently took some photos of Sunset style homes in the Outer Mission that are particularly colorful. The buildings look like they date from the 1930's to 1950's. Not all the houses are to my taste but the colors are awesome!



Here's a link to her Instagram, enjoy! http://instagram.com/thesecitystreets/#

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.

Not Your Typical San Francisco 1950s House

Saw another interesting home show up on Redfin today, a home in Merced Manor from the 1950's:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/150-Gellert-Dr-94132/home/1822602?utm_source=myredfin

There's actually a pretty large cluster of San Francisco homes built in the 1950's, especially in the southern and southwestern part of the city (coinciding with when much of Daly City was developed); it's just there aren't as many large developments of such houses in most parts of the city since most of the city had already been developed by then.

This is kind of an interesting house. First of all, the exterior is built in the English Tudor style, which is a bit unusual as most of the 1950s houses built in San Francisco were built in a more mid-century modern esque style, similar to the Westlake district in Daly City. It's free-standing, unlike a lot of houses in San Francisco that are more row houses. It's got a relatively modern two car side-by-side garage, which is very unusual in San Francisco where most houses have tandem garages. Finally, it's a split level home, which is also a bit unusual for San Francisco (though not for the United States; split level homes started appearing in common usage in the 1930s and became truly prevalent from the 1950s to 1970s). This house was built in 1953, so pretty much at around the same time as the Stonestown Galleria (the developer of the Galleria was the Stoneson Brothers, who therefore possibly built this house as well).


Inside, it's got a beautiful lava rock fireplace and wood beam ceiling:


The next photo shows clearly how the split level works - the level in the "middle" contains the front entrance and the living and dining rooms. You go up the stairs halfway to get to the main bedrooms and bathrooms. You probably go down a few steps to get to the basement room(s) and garage.


Pretty hot looking green bathroom:


Another bathroom, typical 50's tiled bathroom:


Very cool and comfortable looking family room in the basement with built in benches:


Finally, here's looking at the two car garage:

Spanish Influence in Sunset Style Homes

Saw a good example of a Spanish influenced Sunset style home show up on Redfin today:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/710-43rd-Ave-94121/home/1563063?utm_source=myredfin

Within San Francisco, since roughly the 1910's, there had been homes built in a neo-Spanish style that harkens back to the days of Spanish missions in California. But most of those homes tended to be for the rich. Within San Francisco in the 1920's, for normal mass produced homes, the more typical style was Marina style with barrel front. Around 1929 to 1930, it finally became stylish for even these mass produced homes to show neo-Spanish or vaguely Mediterranean characteristics.

So this home is a good example of the first batch of mass-produced homes in San Francisco to show with this style, built in 1930 in the Outer Richmond:


Notice the overall exterior appearance is still a barrel front Marina style, harkening back to the 1920s, but there's some extra red tiling at the top along with the two little decorative triangular parapets on both sides.

The living room is very nice, with a barrel ceiling. The built-in cabinets next to the fireplace look very nice but not sure if they are really original.


My favorite part is the fireplace, which comes with a decorative tile showing what could be a California Spanish mission:


The dining room has a nice rounded ceiling:


Finally, looks like they've remodeled the downstairs with a bonus room. The steps look a bit narrow, and you can tell on the walls they've painted/plastered over the foundation) it bulges out from the walls, up to the small windows. And you can clearly see the pillars that support the original home in the middle. But still very nicely done for a bonus room.