“House in Brookland under contract for over $1 million”

anon

I don’t love everything about it (kitchen and bathrooms) but it is otherwise a perfectly adorable house. I’d be very very happy to live there.

textdoc

Pedantic note: If it’s under contract, we don’t yet know whether the actual sales price was over $1 million; we won’t know that until closing.

justinbc

Very cute house! And I’m swooning over some of those furniture pieces.

wdc

Like what? The MCM china cabinet? The amazing desk with all the cubbyholes?? I want the living room rug.
- I Dont Get It
  
  Sorry, dude, I already virtually claimed that desk.
  - CHGal
    
    I need that desk.
    - justinbc
      
      Yeah, I -MIGHT- actually open my mail occasionally if I had that desk to sort it.
- justinbc
  
  Love the rust chandelier, the blue patina dresser in the entryway with the crazy mask, wood inset coffee table on rollers, the Indonesian (?) looking bar (?) in the :living room”, suitcase in the dining room, Chinese (?) armoire, and the apothecary desk just takes the cake.
  - wdc
    
    You can have all that. You’ll have to fight the others for the desk. (I love it, but it’s not quite “finished” enough for my personal aesthetic.) I just want the living room rug.
    - justinbc
      
      Yeah I couldn’t even go into the accents, too many I want and not enough space to put them
      o_O

anon

Do the chickens convey?

Bloomy

Refreshing to see some other colors, besides gray and clay. (Full disclosure: I painted my interiors with clays and grays.)

stacksp

The outdoor space in the rear of the home is hard to come by in the city. That is a major selling point in and of itself. A sort of private oasis to entertain and to relax.

There is a lot to like about this house.

justinbc

+1

The King Ad-Hoc

House and outbuildings occupy what seems like a very large lot. Nice.

I Dont Get It

Unsure about the price but wow, what a great house!

John

It is a great home with carriage house and another building. It took over 2 weeks to go under contract. A very nice but attached smaller place went under contract in less than a week for well over asking.

Mona

I guess I am the only one who finds this price crazily insane for this house (although a nice house). In a few years people are going to regret this. It is deja vu…

annonny

If Trump wins, DC house prices will plummet.
- John
  
  Let’s not become like a WP comment area. Nice nice. Very unpleasant.
  - textdoc
    
    I don’t think annonny’s comment was remotely WP-esque — more a speculative remark along the lines of “if ____, the real estate market will _____.”
    .
    FWIW, I disagree with annonny’s speculation, but I hope never to be proved right or wrong.
    - justinbc
      
      I’m guessing the speculation might be rooted in this?
      http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-purge-exclusive-idUSKCN10003A
    - textdoc
      
      Thanks for the link, Justin.
      .
      It sounds like the people Trump wants to purge would be political appointees who’ve converted to career civil service positions — not civil-service employees in general. (Although if he were to get the law changed, that would be worrying, because he could then use it to go after the latter group as well.)
      .
      My experience working with several political appointees during the administration changeover in January 2009 was that all of the political appointees left. Maybe some are indeed converted to civil service positions, but from the GAO stats presented in the article, it’s not all that common.
      .
      I’m puzzled as to what non-appointed individuals Trump thinks he’d need to fire. It’s not just Cabinet-level secretaries/agency heads who are political appointees; it’s also their deputies and their undersecretaries. Sometimes political appointees are retained by the new president if the new president is from the same party as the old one… but when that’s not the case, pretty much everyone expects to go.
    - justinbc
      
      I honestly won’t even play the speculation game with that guy. Nobody really ever knows what he means, and most of what he says he’ll do is rarely even possible under the confines of today’s legal structure.
    - Anonymous
      
      The “burrowing” issue is much ado about nothing. A political appointee who applies for and gets a civil service job is invariably taking a step backwards. The direction that a government organization takes is set by its political appointees. The career people pretty much just follow orders. There may be legitimate concerns about whether a political appointee will get special treatment when applying for a civil service job. Whether other qualified but not as well connected applicants get passed over. But I don’t buy the idea that the small number of these folks who move to the civil service side are being hired so they can muck up the works for the next President.
    - textdoc
      
      +1 to Anonymous 4:12. The one political appointee I knew of who moved to the civil service 1) didn’t move immediately (I think he was jobless for a while and had to apply as a member of the public) and 2) was doing GS-7-type work. Although I didn’t agree with his political views, he was a solid worker, and I was glad to learn that he’d landed a regular GS job.
      .
      Not all political appointees are movers and shakers. There are some (often the younger ones) doing low-level work.
- shmoo
  
  there was an article in the post a few weeks back saying DC actually does better financially when there is a republican in the white house.
  - Tsar of Truxton
    
    Two words: defense spending.
    - textdoc
      
      Good point.
    - justinbc
      
      Not to mention that Republicans tend to favor contractors, where Democrats favor govvies. They’re both doing the exact same thing regardless (which is why arguing over the size of government is silly whichever side you’re on), but one charges a premium for it.
  - a nony mouse
    
    This is true. Mostly because they shrink the size of the government by moving everything to government contractors. Private sector in general pays more than federal.
  - KellyKapowski
    
    DC region, or DC the city? I think people are more concerned about the urban core, right? I’ve heard that the people that come in with Republican administrations tend to settle in the suburbs, not in the city the way that the ’08 Obama wave did.
    
    That said, I like to think that DC has passed over the” hump” of relying on political appointees to inject young people with disposable income into the city. Seems like in the past 5 years or so tons of young people have moved to DC for reasons totally unrelated to political jobs in the executive branch.
stacksp

Personally, I think most DC homes are overpriced. House and lot are nice but not how I would want to spend a million bucks.
- shmoo
  
  its not over priced if the market bears the price. someone went under contract in two weeks on this place. Seems like that is what the market is asking.
  - jumpingjack
    
    More like a month; it was first listed on May 20.
  - Mona
    
    That is the language realtors use to sells house and get people to pay more than they need to. I am just saying that people are probably going to regret this when they can’t sell it for so much. But they will be the same one complaining…
    - Hill Denizen
      
      It’s not language realtors use, it’s economics. The market price, and therefore whether something is over- or under-priced, is determined by what people are willing to pay.
    - textdoc
      
      I think one can say “I think this is overpriced” while acknowledging that the market is indeed bearing such prices.
      .
      In this particular case… maybe the house will indeed close for $1.2M, but like stacksp, if I had $1.2M to spend, I’m not sure that I’d choose to spend it here.
    - justinbc
      
      “I am just saying that people are probably going to regret this when they can’t sell it for so much.”
      Many people buy a house without worrying how some unknown future buyer will value it. The same can be said for doing renovations. There are plenty of us who want to live in our house the way we want it, not how average Joe does, and we’ll pay whatever we feel it’s worth, even if U.F.B. above disagrees.
    - textdoc
      
      Justinbc — It’s true that most (I’d imagine) people who buy a house aren’t doing so with the idea of making big $$$ in a short time… but most people are not in a position where they can afford to _lose_ a significant amount of money on a house if (say) they need to move unexpectedly.
      .
      Some people talk as though we’re in another “bubble” and it will inevitably burst. I don’t think that’s true; I think the most we’re likely to see is a slowing-down of price increases in areas where they’ve been skyrocketing, or maybe even a plateauing. But it’s understandable for people to be a little wary when so much money is at stake.

Hill Denizen

Don’t love the kitchen or the lack of door on the master bathroom, and the furnishings and colors aren’t my jam (though obviously that’s an easy change), but that size and style of property is basically my dream. I’ve always wanted to have a enough land to have a guest house or guest apartment for my parents when they get older, but not an excessive amount. It looks like there might also be an apartment over the garage, perf for in-laws. Future me, I’ve found your house!!! Too bad future me is also not likely to be able to afford it.

Anons

I love (94%) of this house. Dislike windows (2 over 2?), not crazy about bathrooms (is that a jaccuzi?) and the kitchen isn’t to my style. But it’s a beautiful space, and I’d take all the furniture/decor possible!
.
The lot size is a huge bonus – and chickens!
.
If my budget was a million, I would have been bidding on this place

d

Agree with you completely. This house has just about everything I’d be looking for if I was in the market at that price range, the the bathrooms being an unfortunate exception. Surprised it lasted as long as it did, even listed at $1M+.

fun police

What’s the bizarre obsession readers in Brookland have with the 1M sale price?

a nony mouse

If you went back to 2000 and told someone a house in NE DC is going to sell for over a million in 16 years you’d probably be committed for psychiatric observation.
- textdoc
  
  +1. (Unless it was a house in the portion of NE that’s super-close to the Capitol.)

Petworth Landlord

No one has mentioned yet that this backs right up to the amazing Fransiscan monastery. Such a hidden gem. A very quiet part of the city. Small one-block streets with little through-traffic. Toward the east side of the monastery looking east, you could imagine yourself in the country.

2 outbuildings AND a chicken coop AND a grassy yard AND a pebble stone driveway!?!! AND an upstairs attic TV room? Sold.

anon

For the record, this part of the city won’t necessarily be quiet forever. Even (parts of) the monastery may be redeveloped: https://www.washingtonian.com/2016/02/02/catholic-church-catholic-university-selling-brookland-northeast-dc-to-developers/
- textdoc
  
  Interesting article; thanks for the link.
  .
  It doesn’t sound to me as though the Franciscans are actually _seeking_ offers, though — more like they’re receiving them unsolicited: “No development is currently planned, but the Franciscans regularly field offers for [the monastery].”
  - anon
    
    Sure. Would still be unwise to buy for that exact level of quiet, though. The institution should be allowed to replenish its funds by selling off parcels it isn’t using without community outrage (which is a constant in Brookland for the other organizations that are actively doing so (and in the past when others have).

Anonymous

If there is a property in Brookland that is worth $1 million plus, this is it. Huge space indoors and outdoors. I think it is that much better than the other comps listed on the Redfn page.

anon

This house is great and all, but 1m houses this far west aren’t new. This is the third Brookland house to sell for $1m+ I think. Personally I’m watching this house that’s considerably further east and under contract with a $1.25m asking price: https://www.redfin.com/DC/Washington/2004-Evarts-St-NE-20018/home/105284563

anon

wtf
anon

That house now under contract too

Shaw

Nobody is excited about the one right down the road at a $1.5 million???
.
https://www.redfin.com/DC/Washington/1230-Quincy-St-NE-20017/home/96402100

JMR

That is a beautiful home!
Anon

Nope, not excited about this.
stacksp

Pending too !!!
It’s beautiful

anon

Here’s the deal. People can object in principle to the idea that a property in Northeast would sell for that much money. But where else in DC can you find a detached house on a huge lot with metro access and short drive to downtown? You can buy across N. Capitol in Bloomingdale and spend more money for a longer walk to metro and much less space or you can buy in upper NW, Arlington, or MontCo and get a similar house (probably a smaller lot) with a much harder commute. Plus, with Monroe Market and development on 12th Street Brookland is starting to have a small but good shopping/eating/arts scene. The biggest remaining issue is the in-bound schools. However, there are several good charter schools located nearby not to mention St Anselm’s so that won’t be an issue for many families.

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