RedneckModern

Eichler for sale: 3707 Merridan Dr.

I was able to stop by 3707 Merridan Dr. today for the open house. It's rare that two homes come on the market so close to one another in timing and price, but this one is a far cry (and a good one) from the house on Lancashire. Both are flips, but this one's a bit better.

However, the photos on the site linked above are terrible. While it's a soft market, if I'm paying my agent nearly $30K to sell my house, I'd expect better photos and marketing.

Update: the above link has been deactivated, but if you were to click on it, you'd see images that look like they were taken with an old cell phone. Agents: drop me a line if you'd like better images of your properties!

Update: the above link has been deactivated, but if you were to click on it, you'd see images that look like they were taken with an old cell phone. Agents: drop me a line if you'd like better images of your properties! The photos below are (c) this site.

1243 Lancashire Drive: Flip-flop

(or... When bad things happen to good Eichlers)

I've noticed a few things when photographing Eichler homes for the past five years: (1) How much I love my Canon G9 camera (even more than my much more robust Nikon dSLR); (2) How a little bit of effort in the wrong direction can make a house look passable at twenty feet, but reveal itself to be terrible at two feet; and (3) how the good bones of an Eichler combined with farly decent photography amplifies the "passable" notion noted above.

Case in point: 1243 Lancashire. This house is a terrible flip (and I'll detail that below), but when editing these pictures, they actually don't look bad... but don't let this fool you. This is a bad flip in all the wrong directions — not just aesthetically, but functionally (and safety-based). Buyer beware.

This house was purchased a few months ago for about $330K and is now on the market for about $450K... with $120K, one could have done great things, but sadly, this is not the case here. The shortcuts that were taken combined with the already jacked-up state of the house leaves a buyer with a home that might look OK from a distance, but might be a headache later on.

First, let's start with the "stop work" notice pinned to the kitchen wall. That's always a good sign, right? It seems that every "update" to the house was unpermitted. Combined with some very obvious code violations in the house this makes for a very shady situation.