This morning i went down to take some pictures of the Fairway Court Apartments (from the outside). I'll do a post later in the housing thread on them, but as i was driving through Phase 1 i came across a property i intially drove by but turned around and went back. I snapped a couple of pictures from the outside, picked up an information sheet and came home to look it up. It was really, really well done from the outside and the photo's from the listing showed it to be just as tasteful inside and in the backyard. It's a golf course property (the South Course), has a pool and a backyard of pavers. Three bedrooms, totally remodeled and comes with a price tag of $299,000. Unfortunately there's a pending on it. Here's the pic from the out from and i'll post the link in a minute or two. Way cool and gives you an idea the kinds of things possible with some of these older homes. Here's a link on Zillow for the house with lots of pictures.
We had this one on our list to look at until it went pending right before we got there. Sure looks nice in the photos. Much better, in the photos at least, than the total redos we did look at.
The outside was really well done M and the pics from the inside and backyard look pretty good too. Seeing them in person would be better, too bad you didn't get a shot at it. I sent the Realtor an email asking if the deal was solid and who the company was that did the remodel. If nothing else, knowing who did the work might give others a chance to look for a place needing some love.
I really don't want to be a downer here, but $300,000? Look at the homes around it. Is this a case of someone coming in and "flipping" a home? Is anyone concerned that this stuff will put homes financially out of reach for seniors? I do not want to put a throttle on capitalism, but I also don't want folks to be out of affordable options for retirement. View attachment 1270
Maybe I am looking at it wrong - maybe we should be looking at phase I to get in on the "ground floor". This is all just so dang frustrating trying to make decisions from this far away.
I know the $300,000 price range is high, but I look at it more from a what you get for what you pay perspective. This is a 3 bedroom, 2 bath home with 2200+ square feet and everything done. The fact it sits on a golf course adds about 25K to the price tag. If you look back in the history, this home was purchased in 2007 in the $170's and having done remodels for the past 15 years, it isn't cheap to do it right. The good news is there's lots of homes that are on the market or will be coming on the market that are vintage. If you are looking to do the work yourself, you'll have plenty of options. I've said this before, my measuring stick on a single family home is $100 per square (that's with some remodeling). If there's lots, obviously it's more; if there's nothing done, less. Attached housing is a little different as there is a better square footage price when the land is owned jointly. I'll be getting to the Fairway Courts apartments shortly.
There are frequent discussions in our house about the "capitalism" side of this. I don't know whether this was a flip or not but if it was they must have done good work and properly gauged the market. There were others we looked at, in this price range, that did neither and the same market will likely punish them for it. All that said, I share your frustration regarding the current dearth of good single family options.
And since I am playing Jekyll to my own Hyde on this fine Friday - I would love to know who did the work on that house, and I can only image what a place like that would get in the Seattle market.
