The Joy of Showing Beautiful Houses

I love beautiful houses and property, as am fortunate that much of my business is in the 'better' end of the market. Since the beginning of the year, though, most of my clients have been scaling back, and the "upper end" I've been seeing has been about $400,000. Over the past few months, almost all of the deals I've put together have been in the moderate to upper moderate range, from $200,000 to $400,000.

This past week I was out with a client exploring options in the next tier up, nicely renovated, larger farmhouses with more acreage in beautiful settings. While I stay on top of the property in this category, it had been a while since I spent a weekend visiting them.

When you start at $600,000 and go up from there, it's a different world. My favorite, of course, was the most expensive, at $1,750,000. (Ain't that always the case?) A 228 acre estate-quality property in Wayne County, PA with a small, private lake, a long winding drive to the house, beautiful rolling fields and orchards. The house is deceivingly large (it looks much smaller in the photos), and has been very tastefully renovated. It's the kind of place you could envision Eleanor Roosevelt sitting at a desk at a window writing her memoirs.

I had two other favorites from this trip. The second was a beautifully renovated farmhouse on 11 acres with a small pond near Obernberg. A classic "Love, Valour, Compassion" house with a large rocking chair porch, set well back from the road down a winding drive. The third house was in PA, on 62 acres, also set well back from the road with stunning views.

Click there to see the three houses.

The common element among all three houses is that they don't involve many compromises. With most houses I show at lower price points, the buyers and I typically are going through the house discussing what it will take to make the house what they want it to be — reconfiguring the floor plan, renovating the kitchen, adding French doors, breaking down walls to combine rooms, replacing vinyl siding with clapboard, ripping out paneling and carpeting, etc. With these houses, I was uncharacteristically quiet — I just didn't have that much to say.  It was just such a pleasure showing such beautiful houses that were "ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille."

All three houses, by the way, have had substantial price reductions since being listed. The 228 estate, now at $1,750,000, started at $2.5M. The PA farmhouse of 62 acres is down to $650,000 from an original price of $999,000, and the Obernberg farmhouse has come down to $745,000 from $895,000.

By the way, there are two other farmhouse properties that have been on my radar that I had hoped to show this past weekend — one listed at $499K and the other at $799K. When I called on them, I found out that both are in contract. So maybe the upper end has a little more life in it than I've personally been seeing for the past few months.

Comments

[Mike]

I just heard on Bloomberg that Americans are entering a new phase of frugality.

With that - best of luck with these listings!

Mike

[David Knudsen]

Frugality is relative. There are still people in this world with money and some of them are out shopping for deals (just like those of us without as much money --- we're all looking for deals.) I've found over the years that my upper end buyers tend to be very savvy shoppers.