It's Free to Look.....: Do the Right Thing

It's Free to Look.....: Do the Right Thing:   Let me preface what I'm about to say by mentioning that if you are even thinking  about selling your home now, keep  thinking. As every br...

Do the Right Thing

  Let me preface what I'm about to say by mentioning that if you are even thinking about selling your home now, keep thinking. As every broker will tell you, there's a real shortage of good homes on the market right now resulting in prices pushing up. Basically, an issue of demand and supply.

  That being said, if and when you do decide to sell your home here's my advice: maximize your profit and Do The Right Thing. By 'the right thing' I mean get some outside advice on presenting your home for sale. It can be a real estate agent, it can be a stager, it can be a designer you know-it could be all three. Every week I see examples of doing it the right way and, painfully, of the opposite. The opposite will most likely reduce the price you get and probably prolong the amount of time your property spends on the market.

  Odds are good that you don't see your house the way the rest of the world does. Let's not forget-one man's objet d'art can be another man's emetic. Look, I love my house and most of the things in it. I love being there; it makes me feel good. Even I would call in someone from the outside because I'm too close to it. A friend of my daughter's recently told her, "I love coming to your house; it looks just like Harry Potter's!" Unless I was aiming for 5th graders with a lot of cash on hand, that's not exactly what I'd be going for in marketing it. On the occasions when a friend or even a client to whom I've sold the house asks me what I think they will get for the house in the current market, I tell them I have to come over with my "other" eyes. It can be a house I've spent endless hours in but I still need to go in to it analyzing it the way the market will perceive it.

   While I find the current market here in L.A (and in New York as well) to be quite healthy, we're still in a market in which imagination counts for almost zero. Buyers want it done or, at worst, to only have to make minor cosmetic changes. Even paint scratches or missing doorknobs begin to subconsciously suggest "Oh, it needs work." And clutter is the ultimate fantasy killer.

   While purchasing a home is usually the largest transaction one incurs and involves numerous practical considerations, let's not kid ourselves. What we're selling, to some extent,  is fantasy. The fantasy of how good it will feel to live there. When our hearts beat a bit faster as we walk into our immaculately kept dream house, we willingly forget that once we move in with our three kids, dog, two cats, two hamsters and a snake, it's not going to look like that for long. At best, it'll look like that for 15 minutes before we have a party. But when we're looking to buy, we forget all that if our dream is laid out before us.

   If you've read this blog before, you probably know how I feel about the work of many stagers-it has a sameness and a lack of personality. But ironically-it works; I can't deny that. Sometimes you, or I as your agent, have to pull them back a bit. For example, I hate it when they have dining room tables set for dinner. To me, it suggests that either Frazzled Mom had to set the table early in the morning before packing in the rest of her day or, even worse, that the family had to leave town in a hurry for mysterious reasons. Last week, in a newly renovated Hancock Park home I saw a new low in this concept...

... I mean come on, even four-year-olds, who are known to occasionally take a bite out of wax fruit, won't fall for ceramic avocados. In the living room of the same home, where there was no other art work, there was, for some unknown reason...

...an impressionistic painting of Ronald Reagan. Let's not even discuss the badly placed lamps and the weird fertility symbol on the table or how crookedly it's hung. Let me simply suggest putting away any and all portraits you may own of political figures. The new owner's fantasies do not include your politics. Art, in general, is a tricky issue. Sometimes it is a huge benefit in showing a home. But most agents I know have had to suggest at one time or another, "How about taking down the collection of erotic paintings?" Certainly in this area not everyone has the same fantasies. And bad art is just as tricky, such as the painting I recently saw at the top of the stairs in a musty Beverly Hills mansion....

   While I'd like to believe it is a painting of the now deceased's granddaughter, I couldn't shake the feeling it was a portrait of grandpa's last girlfriend, the one who will be receiving the proceeds from the sale of this 15 million dollar manse or, at least, fighting over it in court with his children. In other words: I was paying little attention to the house itself.

    Much of what you need to do before showing your home is about paring down. This would have been sage advice for another home now on the market...

    Let's just say that when it comes to tchotchkes, less is more. And yes, flowers are lovely...

..but not if they're dead or have been arranged by a seven year old boy with ADHD. And while we're on bathrooms: pare down here as much as anywhere...

..which is what someone should have told the owner of this Sunset Strip house. Here's a place where we really do not want to see your stuff. A few good towels won't hurt the presentation either.

    While you're out towel shopping, think about bed linens as well. Nothing deflates fantasies more than sadly dressed beds. That same Beverly Hills Mansion with the bad portrait had 9 bedrooms...

..each one...

..with a more depressing bedspread...

..than the one before. Of course the winner of the week for most depressing bedroom...

..would have to be this one, which can only send the message, "Yes, here's where grandma died." This is what's known as a tough sale. Clearly no stager was called in here. Or here:

While this room has enough working against it, here's another tip: hide the electrical cords. When they're running along the wall like this, it tends to suggest there may be wiring issues. And I'm telling you now-if you happen to have vertical blinds...

...I will be asking you to take them down (I think the person who invented vertical blinds should be imprisoned, for life). Also, if you have your furniture arranged around the perimeter of the room like this, just know now that we will be rearranging it.

   But enough of what not to do. Let's look at one of the best examples of what can be done and how it maximized the owner's profit.
   A brilliant interior designer I know recently bought a home for herself:

   Lovely house on a very large lot (much of which was unused). As soon as she moved in and started designing it for herself, she knew it was the right house in the wrong part of town for her, and put it back on the market. Ordinarily this would be a situation in which a seller's biggest question is how much money will I lose on top of what I just paid for it?

   But this seller was very lucky and didn't even have to hire a stager; she was the stager, effectively cutting out the middle man (warning: don't try this at home, kids, unless you are a designer). So the perfectly nice dining room she acquired....

...was transformed....

...into a first class entertaining space. A recently installed but somewhat barren kitchen....

...was now the place where everyone will offer to help you with the dishes...

...while pouring out all their most horrifying secrets. Personally, I believe the transformation of this room alone would have re-sold the house. But she didn't stop there. The perfectly acceptable library she inherited off the main entry....

....she transformed into a study and/or guest room....

....which, among other things, makes downloading books seem like a passing fad. She was able to take a master bedroom with good features but a bit of that corporate-extended-stay feeling....

...and create yet another room that you just don't want to leave....

....especially when there's a fire going.  Even a perfectly nice bathroom...

...she transformed just enough...

...to make it hypnotic. By the time prospective buyers had made it to this room, they were thoroughly ensconced in the fantasy of what it would be like to live here.  Even the large, formerly empty lawn....

....now incorporated a bocce ball court:

    Okay, at this point you might be thinking, "Is there really any difference between a ceramic artichoke and a bocce court?" No; in reality, there isn't. But again, we're not talking about reality here. We're talking about that fantasy-of living here. You know you're not going to sit down to a ceramic artichoke appetizer no matter how long you live there. Buy you could maybe see yourself oh, you know, learning to play bocce. Okay, it's not exactly the Kennedys playing touch football, but it still could look pretty good on a sunny holiday. You see how it works? We're already so far into fantasy that we've reinvented holidays as easy going family get-togethers. I'm telling you-this stuff works.

    So where does it get you as a seller? In this particular case, it got the seller $205,000 more than she had paid for it only 90 days earlier. That's fairly amazing and totally attributable to her talented eye, as are the number of offers she had for the property.

    "But I'm not a designer, " you may be thinking. Even so, you can still do the right thing and bring in that outside eye to help you optimize your eventual financial return. Maybe more succinctly- you're not a designer, so get out of your own way. Find someone, whether it's an agent, a stager or a talented friend, who will help you get it to the point where it is at its most attractive to potential buyers. Someone who doesn't see past your toothpaste or the stains on the rug, like you do. It can make all the difference in the world.

Jamie Foreman
james4man@gmail.com

 

Pon de Replay-A Rhianna Resurrection

  Think back a few posts:  Remember earlier in the year when Gloria Allred got Goldilocks that hefty settlement from the Three Bears and how, before the ink dried on the check, Ms. Goldilocks ran off to find herself a new residence in Beverly Hills? Remember how she turned her nose up at poor little Rihanna's dream-pad-turned slum? The one that imploded once the rainy season began?

  Yes, this one.  The one she paid 9 million dollars for and took a hit of almost 4 million dollars just to get out of it?  Of course the lawsuits did fly, so perhaps she's had a bit of a financial bailout. Then, remember, a mysterious Russian came along, who may have been a baritone or maybe just a billionaire, and snapped it up for 5 million? Apparently he snapped his fingers as well; barely 9 months later, he has this:

   I guess he's not looking to hold on to it, as he has now boomeranged it back onto the market with an asking price of $9,950,000, half a million dollars more than it's original, pre-Rhianna price tag. So  now this...

...has become this....

 The pre-Rihanna master bedroom, which  looked like this...

  ..has now become this...

  The new Master Bath is pretty spiffy too. 

   The current listing broker describes the Master Bedroom Suite decor as "rocker chic". Since I didn't see any rocking chairs, perhaps Rhianna should sue for image infringement as well.

  As you may be able to tell from the photos, this house has now been staged within an inch of its life. There's even a light fixture suspended over the two story living room....

 ..that probably put the owner back a big pile of rubles even though it looks like some sort of exploding cartoon sperm, maybe in a Tim Burton film. But on the whole, the house is very much a Statement. Of some kind. The guest and/or children's bedrooms really aren't much, compared to the rest. Perhaps that is intentional: guests may get the message not to plan a long stay and kids, well kids would probably be an afterthought to the buyer of this kind of house anyway.

   That said, it does have great views and light everywhere and by the time I got to the master bedroom, somehow the whole fantasy was working for me. "I could live here, I thought," ignoring the concept of paying for it. 

   A few moments later, I realized what I was really thinking was, "I could stay here." For a while. But eventually, how out of place would a refrigerator full of family pictures and news clipping of friends look here? To be totally honest, how long would it stay white, given the number of pets and teenagers that seem to surround me? And of course the whole look is thrown completely off if you drop a book here or there.

   It will be interesting to see how quickly it sells this time. It could be fast; it does have big market appeal. It is indeed a house that coincides with a theory of mine: the dream of the majority of Angelenos is to live in the Peninsula Hotel. If they can't, they want it to seem like they do. I walk into countless numbers of immaculately staged and styled homes each month and leave thinking, "Hmm; feels like a nice hotel."

    My theory began to dawn on me sometime during our 2nd year here. The parents of one of my 7 year old son's friends, both truly talented architects, came over one evening to fetch their son. As him mom stepped into our living room she said, "Oh. You have personal things. And books. That's so great." It was then I first realized that this was deemed a bit of an oddity here. Seeing 15-20 different houses each week has only confirmed my theory

    I don't know where Rhianna has moved on to.  A part of me really wants to believe it's a '50's ranch house in Studio City with avocado hued kitchen appliances. That doesn't leak.

    But if you, or a friend, is thinking of living either of those lifestyles, don't hesitate to call me.

  Jamie Foreman

  323-314-1906

     

Looking for the perfect L.A. Pied-a-Terre?

     A truly bi-coastal lifestyle has been my fantasy for years now.
     I love New York; no one will ever convince me there is a more exciting place to live. Sometimes, it's too exciting.
      Los Angeles, with its near-perfect climate, year-round abundance of green and beautiful light is the perfect antidote to New York induced stress, as is the California state motto: In Animo Habeo ("I have nothing on my mind").
     Fortunately, both cities contain an endless amount of superb architecture.
     Of course my own bi-coastal fantasy crashed and burned, along with a number of others, when we decided to have children. Who knew they'd have lives and schedules and needs of their own? They make it very difficult to turn around and say, "You know what? I feel like going to my other life now."
     For anyone who is looking to add Los Angeles into their life, or already has, the absolute best pied-a-terre I've seen in Los Angeles has just come on the market. It is part of a totally unique, 5 unit condominium tucked away at the base of the Hollywood Hills. This unit is actually a stand-alone home.

     Built in 1926, it is a classic 4bedroom/3 bath Spanish style home that quietly evokes Old Hollywood glamour.

     Both the living room....

    and the dining room....

..open to private patios with outdoor fireplaces.

    There's an excellent, redone kitchen....

..with three bedrooms and two baths  upstairs. The master bedroom has it's own bath as well as a separate, windowed dressing area. The master and second bedrooms both open on to balconies...

....with that second bedroom overlooking the pool....

  Yes-the pool. The pool is shared by the five units.

   The great news here is that you have all the benefits of a private house and none of the upkeep on your shoulders. On the bottom floor there is a laundry room and a separate guest suite which even has its own entrance, in case you have the kind of guests who occasionally need to slip out, or in, during the middle of the night. Monthly common charges are $648. These units rarely come available and, as I said, there is simply nothing around to compare it to. Asking price is $1,250,000; it won't stay on the market long.

  Jamie Foreman

  323-314-1906

   

The Spirit of Silverlake

  Though now I am a HUGE fan of Silver Lake, it took me a long time to find my way there. Literally.
   Shortly after we moved here 16 years ago, someone suggested, as they often do in L.A., that I see some therapist/career counselor/yenta that she knew and claimed had done wonders for her. My friend told me this person lived in Silver Lake, an area which had not yet come onto my personal radar. With directions (and Thomas Guide) in hand, off I drove. And drove. And drove, thinking, "Oh, God; where am I? This is so funky..."  I cannot remember one thing about this woman; not her name, her face or what she told me. All I remember was the Silver Lake of it all.
   My second visit to Silver Lake, not long after that first ill-fated one, was when my late sister-in-law was in L.A. directing a project for AFI. She had swapped her New York apartment in Little Italy with a guy who owned an astounding home on the far side of the Silver Lake reservoir. He was only the third owner, the first owner-before 1920-having been some very successful vaudevillian. As we sat on the roof terrace, having drinks at dusk and watching the sun set over reservoir, the lights of the houses surrounding the reservoir began to pop on. I remember thinking "Wow. In 1919 this must have looked like heaven on earth. No wonder they called it Silver Lake."

    The truth of how Silver Lake got its name is a bit less romantic, which I discovered at our temple one morning, waiting for my son to finish Sunday school. It is the oldest congregation in Los Angeles (having been heavily financed by the Warner brothers and Max Factor) and there is a hallway with a picture display which is a history of Jews (or at least Reform Jews) in Los Angeles. It was there that I learned that Silver Lake was named after the man who used to own all the land surrounding the reservoir: Morris Silver. I liked my glimmering reservoir version better.
   Cut to 7 or 8 years later when Silver Lake comes onto my real estate radar, as it's starting to take off and become the hippest, or hipsterish, part of town. At this point  it also became clear that Silver Lake actually has great housing stock, including numerous mid-century classics. Much of the housing stock had become, over time, very run down. But somehow, what never left Silver Lake was it's very fierce underlying feeling of independent spirit. While it remains home to some of the city's oldest, staunchest lefties, let's not forget it was also the home of Ayn Rand. Most telling, however, is how all of greatest mid-century architects were commissioned for projects there. When I drive through the streets of Silver Lake now, almost daily, what also catches my attention is the original  impulse to build homes throughout these hills, which could not have been easy.
   The other day, I was dropping my daughter off at her friend's house in Silver Lake, on my way to go see a listing that had just hit the market. She asked me, as we were driving, what my favorite architectural style is. What I didn't tell her is that, when it comes to architectural styles, I'm like a bad boyfriend-I will become infatuated with the next good house I walk into, whatever the style, as long as it is well done. What I did tell her was that if I were to buy a house now in Los Angeles I'd be looking for a great mid-century. Little did I know that's exactly what I was about to walk into:

  Sitting just above the reservoir, on one of Silver Lake's best streets, is this 4 bedroom/3 bath 3,000+ square foot classic. From both the street and the rear....

...it's size is deceptive. Built on 3 floors, the layout is a dream come true, with a top floor consisting of a gorgeous master suite, with views of Mister Silver's "Lake".

    The main floor contains, besides two more bedrooms with bath, a wonderful, open entertaining area...

..and kitchen, all of which opens to a deck overlooking the yard and the solar heated, salt-water pool.

  There's a lower floor with den, laundry and guest suite and the entire house has been impeccably and cleanly renovated-nothing is overdone, everything serves the simple, clean architecture. It is, in short, a find. Asking price is $1,679,000.

  I'm not actually looking to move at the moment, so my loss is possibly your gain.If it's of interest, I'd say hurry. This will not sit on the market for long. 

  Jamie Foreman

The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming....

...an Epilogue.

...an Epilogue...

to Goldlilocks Does Beverly Hills.

You may remember when Goldilocks turned her pre-surgery nose up at the chance to purchase Rihanna's abandoned digs...

..but clearly not everyone felt the same way about this property, which has now been sold. The owner is listed as the Vladimir Rumenniks Trust. So far I can't trace with certainty exactly who Mr. Rumenniks might be, although there is a Russian baritone named Vladimir Rumennic. If Mr. Rumennik/c is one and the same, I certainly hope his talent with a hammer matches his vocal skills because he clearly has his work cut out for him. And I'm guessing he secured the house in a bidding war, as he paid more than $500,000 over the asking price. Either that, or long days at the conservatory prevented him from attending math class.
   And he's far from being the only Russian burying cash in Ameican real estate, as evidenced by Yuri Milner, who paid ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS recently for this....

...cozy little complex in Los Altos, California. But even more astounding was the recent purchase in Manhattan, of the penthouse at 15 Central Park West...

..by Eketarina Rybolovlea, a 22 year old college student and heiress to a Russian fertilizer fortune. Young Ms. Rybolovlea paid 88 MILLION DOLLARS for the 6,700 square foot penthouse. That breaks down to around $13,000 per square foot. I'm taking a guess here, that being known as a fertilizer heiress may cause one to slightly overcompensate when shopping. Exactly which American college she attends is being kept secret; let's hope it's some place ivy covered and that she's not an economics major. And who knows? Maybe she's planning on having roommates. She bought her pied-a-terre...

...from Sanford Weill who, judging from this picture, enjoys having a sculpture or two in his entry foyer. Mr. Weill was formerly head, at varying times, of Shearson, American Express and Citigroup. Four years ago, as the first owner of the apartment, he paid $42,000,000 for it, so he's done quite nicely for himself. Actually, he maintains he is donating the proceeds to charity, which is certainly a step up from donating your 20 year old Honda Civic to NPR. Years ago he attended Cornell and, again I'm guessing here, clearly attended an econ. class or two.

    But the bigger picture here is not the Russians finally coming to take over the United States, if piece by piece and having to pay for it, but the fact that foreign investment in U.S. real estate,  including in Los Angeles, is peaking. Nor is this a new phenomenon.

   In the mid 1980's, when I first started working in real estate in Manhattan, a number of new buildings went up when New York eased its condominium laws. At that point, like now, when various foreign economies were wavering, individual investors were coming in and buying packages of  new apartments, not because they had a desire to become landlords, but because they wanted a safe place to store their cash and have its value grow. Which is exactly what it did-apartments purchased then for $500,000 are now worth 3 to 5 times that. Each year I could figure out which country's economy was getting shaky by who was buying up the apartments.

   All of which boils down to two very simple, clear messages: this is the time to buy and premium U.S. real estate is an optimum place to park your money.

   By the way- Ms. Rybolovlea's father, Dimitry, happens to be in the middle of a very contentious divorce, his wife having accused him of 'serial infidelity' (wasn't that TV Guide's weekly description of "Dallas"?). Estimates are that her settlement could be anywhere from 3 to 6 billion dollars. Should you run into her and discover she's also looking to buy, don't hesitate to give her my number.

  Jamie Foreman