Casey Abby Blog's

Monday, 5 October 2020

Unassuming Nevada Home Features an Old-Timey Main Street in the Basement

In a Nevada house that is now on the market for $445,000, it’s possible to take a stroll down Main Street without leaving the comforts of home.

The main floor of a home on Cottonwood Drive in Elko, NV, resembles many open-concept tract homes we’ve seen, but the basement is the real showstopper.

“The basement is like a little oasis to entertain people,” explains the listing agent, Gabriella Spring. “It has a fully functioning café, a barbershop, a 13-seat theater, and the walkways are cobblestone. It’s pretty cool.”

The home measures in at 4,116 square feet, with five bedrooms and three bathrooms.

“You have no clue [the basement is there] until you walk all the way down the steps,” Spring explains. “The upstairs is so nice and luxurious, so when you go downstairs, it’s refreshing. It’s a little escape.”

Exterior of house in Elko, NV
Fawn Leach Photography

Basement restroom
Fawn Leach Photography

Everything on the lower level, including the two bedrooms and bathroom, fits in with the Main Street theme. The downstairs bedrooms have numbers on them, to resemble hotel rooms, and the restroom has a sign on the door.

“The bathroom downstairs has a urinal in it and a toilet—to make it feel like it’s in a movie theater, like a men’s and women’s restroom,” Spring says.

Other flourishes in the basement include a working phone booth, light poles, and even rubber mats that look like sewer covers.

“The newspaper stand in the basement actually has old newspapers from the 1980s and ’90s,” Spring says. “It took a lot of thought. The previous owners were really big entertainers, and a huge part of their life was doing this basement.”

The house was built in 2003, and the current owners have been living in it since 2012. The basement was already there, but didn’t look anything like what you see in the listing photos.

“I think [the original owners] wanted it to feel like a little town. So you go to the café and eat before you get your popcorn. You go to a movie, you go get your hair cut,” Spring says, adding that the barber shop has a real barber chair, scissors, and everything else a stylist would require.

And then there’s the home theater, designed to feel like a real night out at the local multiplex.

“It’s real theater seats. It has theater lighting, where it dims as the movie starts. The sound system is insane,” Spring explains. “It’s just like being in a movie theater.”

There’s even a ticket booth at the entrance.

The use of technology for entertaining isn’t limited strictly to the basement.

“They have a sound system upstairs that even that goes to the outdoors, and the speakers are in rocks,” Spring says.

The main level has an open-concept floor plan, with vaulted ceilings and a double-sided gas fireplace between the living room and a study.

“The kitchen is super custom, and has a china cabinet that’s built in. All the cabinetry with glass [also] has lights to light everything up,” Spring explains.

There are an abundance of cabinets, and plenty of room to sit down and eat.

The master bedroom has its own wing and has high ceilings and French doors leading out to a patio. The master bathroom has a soaker tub, double sinks, and a glass shower.

Elko is a town of around 20,000 residents in the northeast corner of Nevada. It sits almost midway between Reno and Salt Lake City, right off Interstate 80.

It may appeal to a buyer looking to escape the big city. Everything in this one-of-a-kind home is ready for a buyer who values a lot of living space and loves to entertain.

“I think this house really calls to everyone,” Spring says. “Everyone really does like to watch movies, and anyone that likes to entertain, this house is for them. If you entertain, whether it’s your kids, your grandkids, or anyone else, that’s who we’re looking for.”

The post Unassuming Nevada Home Features an Old-Timey Main Street in the Basement appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

source https://www.realtor.com/news/unique-homes/unassuming-nevada-home-features-an-old-timey-main-street-in-the-basement/

Curvaceous ‘Sand Dollar House’ Floats Onto the Market in Texas for $2.2M

“It’s kind of famous for this area,” says the co-listing agent, Michelle Jones, of an organic modern home designed to mimic a sand dollar.

“Everybody wonders about the house,” she adds. They need wonder no more: The asking price for the distinctive local landmark is $2.2 million.

The spiral-shaped, stark-white 2,240-square-foot structure is located in Lakeway, TX, roughly 20 miles northwest of Austin.

Known as the Sand Dollar House, the residence was designed by John Covert Watson and echoes the design of the Guggenheim Museum, on New York City’s Upper East Side.

The resemblance to the Guggenheim is no accident: Watson worked for legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright while Wright was designing the iconic art museum, which was completed in 1959.

Crafted from steel and gunite, with white curved walls, the home features an “Alice in Wonderland”-level of whimsy. It was built in 1979 for the artist Eugenia Hunt, who used it as a second home.

Custom windows, sliding-glass doors, balconies, and patios take full advantage of the views of the lake. A focal point of the design is a spiral staircase with wood treads. Skylights in the shape of teardrops offer the illusion that you are actually inside a sand dollar.

All three bedrooms are on the lower level and connected to porches. The home also includes 2.5 bathrooms.

Design aside, the home sits in a coveted locale. It’s perched on a prized lot along the shores of Lake Travis, an area that attracts folks from metro areas who want to hunker down during the pandemic, says Jones.

“It’s a fabulous community,” she says. “Austin has been pulling people from everywhere, particularly California.”

The trend the area is seeing, she says, is an influx of people who want to improve their lifestyle and escape big cities.

Lake Travis offers multiple golf courses, parks, playgrounds, and dog parks, and downtown Austin is only 23 miles away.

Aerial view of house in Lakeway, TX
realtor.com

Not only is there limited inventory on Lake Travis, says Jones, but the location of this particular property, on the south shore of the lake, is much sought after, thanks to its “highly rated school district and its proximity to amenities.”

“It’s on one of the best parts of Lake Travis, on a deep part of Lake Travis,” she says. “It has panoramic views. The location of that waterfront property is really desirable.”

As in the case of the original owner back in the late 1970s, the area still attracts buyers in search of a second home. But these days, the search isn’t limited to Texans looking at the lake for a weekend getaway.

“A lot of our waterfront properties are second-, third- or fourth-home owners,” Jones tells us. “We’re still seeing out-of-state buyers coming in. I’ve had a lot of out-of-state interest.”

While recent open houses attracted a lot of gawkers, Jones feels that the buyers are likely to be people who are not tethered to a lot of physical possessions—who are hoping to reduce their clutter and simply appreciate the beauty of their surroundings.

“It’s going to be somebody who really appreciates art in its form over function,” she says. “You have to be a little bit of a minimalist to live in a house like this, living in a piece of art.”

Jones is the co-listing agent along with Todd Grossman—both of Compass.

The post Curvaceous ‘Sand Dollar House’ Floats Onto the Market in Texas for $2.2M appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

source https://www.realtor.com/news/unique-homes/curvaceous-sand-dollar-house-floats-onto-the-market-in-texas/

Home Sales Surge in Resort Towns Even as Covid Looms Large Over Ski Season

The home of Kate West and Carter Westfall in Wilson, Wyo., near Jackson. — Aaron Kraft for The Wall Street Journal

Rob Turner is a big skier. But it wasn’t skiing that pushed him to make an all-cash, $1.3 million offer on a three-bedroom, four-bathroom, penthouse condo with ski-run views in Park City, Utah, in August.

The impetus to buy this summer was the town’s quality of life—a welcome respite from his home in San Francisco, where the pandemic and recent wildfires have made it unpleasant to go outside. Mr. Turner isn’t the least bit worried that coronavirus-related restrictions will limit skiing in Park City this year.

“It’s a ski mountain, but it’s also a beautiful place,” says Mr. Turner, 45, a wealth management adviser. “There are other things to do there.”

For years, ski resorts have worked on diversifying their attractions to bring in more people by adding all kinds of non-ski amenities. The test is this coming season, when some might not even be able to open their skiing operations. The early results are looking good, as home sales and prices have soared despite the uncertainty.

“This was the busiest summer selling season ever,” says Ben Fisher, a broker with Summit Sotheby’s International Realty in Park City. The high end there has been particularly strong, with sales of single-family homes over $2 million up 50% between March and August 2020 compared with the same period a year earlier, according to Park City MLS. One house sold for all cash and $350,000 over its $15 million list price just a few days after it went on the market.

In Colorado, Telluride saw the dollar volume of home sales increase 54% through the month of August compared with a year earlier, with $125 million in sales in August alone—a one-month record, according to George Harvey , broker and owner with The Harvey Team. Aspen recorded 65 single-family home sales through August this year, up from 50 for the same period in 2019, while the dollar value of the sales were up by 49%, according to Sotheby’s International Realty. Since March 1, 46 houses over $10 million have sold and 24 are under contract.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. The high end is flying off the shelf,” says David Viehman, a broker with Engel & Völkers in Jackson Hole, where the total number of sales over $3 million is up 55% over a year earlier and there have been 21 sales over $10 million compared with five sales in that bracket in 2019, a 320% increase.

Keith Seigerman, a 61-year-old contractor from Southampton, N.Y., bought this house in Aspen this summer.
Jimena Peck for The Wall Street Journal

Skiing was initially the reason Keith Seigerman started looking for a second home in Aspen three years ago, but the pandemic played a role in why he finally closed on a four-bedroom, 3,200-square-foot home on 3 acres, 7 miles from the center of town, for $2 million this summer. He likes that Aspen is hard to get to, with limited direct flights, and that it has a remote feel. He also appreciates how strictly the town has been enforcing social-distancing rules, a feat he feels is easier there because of the small size of the community. “It’s tucked away, quiet, peaceful and safe,” says the 61-year-old contractor from Southampton, N.Y.

“Covid accelerated our decision,” says Carter Westfall, who, with his wife, Kate West, bought a three-bedroom, 2,550-square-foot house in Wilson, Wyo., near the Jackson Hole ski area, for $1.75 million in August. The couple had been thinking about relocating from Oakland, Calif., ever since Mr. Westfall started a freeride snowboard competition tour with Travis Rice, a renowned Jackson professional snowboarder. But Mr. Westfall and Ms. West, a creative producer for The North Face, probably would have waited another year to buy if they hadn’t noticed that Covid-19 pandemic was increasing demand for houses there, pushing prices higher. At the same time, they worried people wanting to leave the Bay Area because of the city’s limits during the coronavirus crisis would lower the price they could get for their house in Oakland, which they have since sold. Mr. Westfall is aware there will be changes at the Jackson Hole ski resort this year, but says they are there for the long haul.

People fleeing cities in search of homes with more of a connection to the outdoors are driving much of the demand, real-estate agents say. What started as requests for long-term rentals in April accelerated into sales starting in June, says Kristen Barber, a broker with Stein Eriksen Realty in Park City.

Carter Westfall and his wife, Kate West, shown here with their children Keaton “Keats” Westfall (9 months) and Shepard “Shep” Westfall (3½ years), bought a house in Wilson, Wyo., near the Jackson Hole ski area in August.
Aaron Kraft for The Wall Street Journal

This summer, Michelle and Roland Weedon bought a two-bedroom, 1,300-square-foot condo at the Pendry Residences, a residential community still under construction in Park City. The Weedons, who live in Huntington Beach, Calif., where he owns a mortgage company and she is a real-estate consultant, already own a 6,000-square-foot house in Park City that they built three years ago and which is valued at around $5 million. But they thought lots of people would want to get away to wide open spaces and bought the condo as an investment. They are also eager to use the condo’s on-site amenities, including the pool and bar, spa, fitness center, ski concierge and slope-side parking. “People are looking to get out,” says Mr. Weedon.

The kitchen is open to the dining area and has high ceilings.
Aaron Kraft for The Wall Street Journal

The couple chose the area because Mr. Westfall started a freeride snowboard competition (called “Natural Selection Tour”) with Travis Rice, a renowned local Jackson professional snowboarder. Ms. West is a creative producer for The North Face.
Aaron Kraft for The Wall Street Journal

After the pandemic hit, Claire Nathel second-guessed her decision to buy a 4,000-square-foot penthouse in Deer Valley, Utah, for around $3.5 million. She and her husband, Ira Nathel, had put down a deposit in January but started to falter in May. “We felt like it wasn’t the right time, with people losing jobs,” says Ms. Nathel, 48, who owns a wholesale produce company in the Bronx. She also felt uncertain about how the pandemic would affect travel and skiing. But she went ahead with the purchase because the closed-in feeling she had in New York made her grateful for a space to go. She and her husband hope to spend a couple of months a year in Utah when their home is finished.

Gary Feldman, a broker with the Gary Feldman Group at Aspen Snowmass Sotheby’s, says one difference he noticed this summer was that buyers didn’t care as much how close they were to the ski mountains. He sold his own three-bedroom, four-bathroom, glass-and-wood house along the Roaring Fork River near Snowmass for $4.8 million and is moving about 7 miles away to Basalt, where he says buyers are now “coming from everywhere.”

Keith Orr, who bought Mr. Feldman’s house, also saw the pandemic as an opportunity: It made it easier to sell his 2,100-square-foot, three-bedroom ski condo in the center of Aspen. Mr. Orr, 58, a car salesman from Dallas and Texarkana, said it took 10 days to sell the condo for $5.3 million—he paid $3.2 million for it seven years ago. He said there were dozens of showings scheduled for his condo after two days on the market. “I’ve never experienced such a thing,” he says.

The post Home Sales Surge in Resort Towns Even as Covid Looms Large Over Ski Season appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

source https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/home-sales-surge-in-resort-towns-even-as-covid-looms-large-over-ski-season/

Late Musician Dave Brubeck’s Jazzy Japanese-Inspired Home Available for $2.75M

Dave Brubeck Connecticut home — Douglas Elliman, CBS Photo Archive/Getty

An impeccably composed home built for the late jazz musician Dave Brubeck has come on the market. The estate in Wilton, CT, is listed for $2.75 million.

The home was built for the Brubeck family in the early 1960s by the architect Beverley David Thorne, and was designed to blend harmoniously with the surrounding land.

The structure itself is a melodious midcentury modern gem. Brubeck had toured Japan and fallen for its architecture, and, on the exterior of the home, the Japanese influences include the arresting red moon gate as well as the idyllic Japanese garden.

“The home is very serene, because of the fabulous foliage, sounds of water, tremendous acreage and stone,” says the listing agent, Monica Webster with Douglas Elliman.

“Interestingly enough, all levels are on ground level, with full walk-out ability,” she adds.

“This is due to the grading and slope of the property and how the house was built. So, the amount of light that shines through from all levels being exposed is breathtaking.”

Built with steel beams, stone, and glass, the 6,252-square-foot interior hits all the right notes.

Dave Brubeck’s jazzy home in Wilton, CT
Courtesy of Douglas Elliman

Recording studio
Courtesy of Douglas Elliman

Pond and Japanese garden
Courtesy of Douglas Elliman

With eight bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms, the property features original details that Brubeck once enjoyed himself. The floor plan features three fireplaces, a wraparound porch, flagstone terrace, indoor pool, sauna, and gym.

Enter into a step-down living room that overlooks two brooks and a pond with fountains. A formal dining room with sliding doors is enhanced by shoji screen doors, which open to a wraparound porch and solarium.

Other features include a family room, spacious kitchen, and a breakfast room that opens outside. The master bedroom includes a porch, dressing room, and full bathroom.

Brubeck’s music studio features a 20-foot ceiling, sliding patio doors, built-ins, and balcony that would inspire any creative soul. If the home’s 7.5 acres aren’t enough, five more adjacent lots, spanning 18 more acres, are also on sale.

Brubeck died in 2012 at the age of 91. Many of the famed jazz pianist and composer’s melodic works have become jazz standards. The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s album “Time Out” is one of the top-selling jazz albums.

The post Late Musician Dave Brubeck’s Jazzy Japanese-Inspired Home Available for $2.75M appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

source https://www.realtor.com/news/celebrity-real-estate/dave-brubeck-jazzy-japanese-inspired-home/

Friday, 2 October 2020

Motocross Rider Brian Deegan Selling $5.9M Estate in SoCal Wine Country

Brian Deegan Temecula house — realtor.com, Michael Tullberg/Getty Images

A few weeks after placing his North Carolina mansion on the market in early August, the X-Games legend Brian Deegan put his luxurious estate in Temecula, CA, up for sale. His Southern California spread is currently available for $5.9 million.

The motocross rider’s Mediterranean-style mansion features eight bedrooms, 7.5 bathrooms, and 8,586 square feet of living space. It’s set on over 20 acres in Temecula’s wine country and includes some vineyards.

According to the listing details, the options for an interested buyer are wide open. The property is located within commercial zoning, so it could be used for a variety of purposes besides single-family life.

Suggestions provided by the agent include “a winery with a boutique hotel, restaurants, events, or weddings.” The Temecula Valley markets itself as “Southern California’s Wine Country” and is home to over 40 wineries. Deegan’s property is about an hour’s drive from San Diego, Palm Springs, and Orange County.

As you enter the property through the custom front gate, you’ll see the surrounding vineyards, which give the place a resortlike vibe. The long driveway is lit by a series of light posts, guiding drivers right into the home’s large motor court.

Deegan — Exterior of estate in Temecula, CA
realtor.com

Inside, you’ll find custom, high-end features, including large windows, lighting fixtures, and intricate woodwork. A spacious chef’s kitchen offers plenty of counter space, and the refrigerator is designed to blend right in with the cabinetry.

Next to the kitchen is a midsize office/study, where large windows allow plenty of California sunlight into the room. Down the hall is the master bedroom, with a large sitting room, a fireplace, and also loads of windows. The master bathroom features a stand-in shower, large tub, and separate sinks.

Overnight guests will find an 1,100-square-foot guesthouse, complete with a kitchen, full bathroom, and laundry.

Given Deegan’s passion for motorsports, it’s no surprise to find a huge garage/workshop with two RV-sized garage doors, as well as an elevated loft with a half-bathroom. There’s also another four-car garage with RV hookups.

Outside, you’ll find a lovely garden to grow fresh vegetables, two full-size pools, an Olympic-sized sand volleyball court, and a covered outdoor kitchen.

Deegan’s Morganton, NC, estate is still on the market for $4.95 million. The 46-year-old racer has won 10 medals at the X Games and is considered one of the best freestyle motocross riders ever.

Gene Diegelman with Rancon Real Estate-Murrieta has the listing.

The post Motocross Rider Brian Deegan Selling $5.9M Estate in SoCal Wine Country appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

source https://www.realtor.com/news/celebrity-real-estate/brian-deegan-selling-estate-in-socal-wine-country/