Really, I am posting this for Trooper, and maybe for BK to come in and tell us even more. BTW, Conde Nast’s Portfolio magazine is where I found this and they have many other great articles.

Christie’s tries its luck at selling a famous home as a piece of art.

Make sure you check out the slide show.

Thank G.  I saw the Shulman pics when I went to his exhibition in PS a few months ago.  I love the backstory about the couple that bought it and restored it back to it’s original form (after Barry Manilow et, al….destroyed it architecturally with renovations).  Oh, by the way…they are selling b/c they are getting a divorce.

Anywho, I Googled and found this:
“The night’s proceedings also included the Christie’s Realty International, Inc. sale of Richard
Neutra’s Kaufmann House. Along with Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House and Philip
Johnson’s Glass House, Neutra’s Kaufmann House is one of the most important examples of
modernist residential architecture in the Americas and remains singular as the most important
example of mid-century modernist architecture in the Americas to remain in private hands. It sold
for $16,841,000 – and the buyer exercised an option to buy the orchard, taking the total for the
house to $19,025,000”.

I drive by a Neutra at least once a day in HWD, so I get my fix.  Love my Lautner’s, too.  Thanks.

Hey Troop,

How would you feel about North Carolina?

Nice find Eva !  That’s a neat house….check out this story on it….. Historic home needs a savior.  It appears ready to undergo the wrecking ball…. :(

Those are nice houses.  We’ve been contemplating where we want to buy a home.  We are glad we only rented when we lived in Irvine because we realized the area just wasn’t for us.  We love where we live now, but we haven’t found a house or a floor plan that we have fallen in love with and we really don’t want to do major construction again.
 
Does anyone have a recommendation for town in Southern California where we could find a nice house < 3000 sq ft. We would love to find a house with character - small but nice. Our only requirement is that we live about 30-60 minutes from an airport.  We love Coto, but I’m itching to move again and try a new area.
 
I was thinking the Calabassas area. I like the Coto country feel, so I thought Calabassas would be a nice area.  We might take a short vacation and check out the area.
 
Any other thoughts?

CG, someone on the IHB used to lived in Calabasas….can’t remember who.  Why don’t you create a topic in “Real estate outside of OC” and see if anyone has any input. 

Don’t forget that Countrywide is headquartered in Calabasas…..I’ll bet there are some deals to be had what with all the execs losing their jobs/homes.

San Marino, South Pasadena, Bradbury (gated!), or the Chapman Woods area of Pasadena.  Also, if you like woods, you may also like the hilly areas of Arcadia, Monrovia, or Sierra Madre.  Depending on where you have to travel to, you are near Burbank or LAX airports, and depending on traffic, even Ontario airport.

How about this one?
You like Craftsmans?

I forgot about La Canada / Flintridge.  Flintridge is an equestrian community, so you might like that. 

Here is a nice one in La Canada.  And here’s another.

Wow! Thanks! I need to start checking out some of those areas. We would probably try and stay around 1m and under.  My New England background keeps me ultra conservative with mortgage payments. It took me over a year to recover from the shell shock from housing prices in California.
 
Troop, I may start a thread on this topic a bit later. My husband’s company is still reorganizing his territories so we need to wait and see where they put him.  So far he has west of the Mississippi, but then again he may get reorganized out of a job too
 
I see some mini vacations ahead of me. Thanks again. 

Neutra’s Maxwell House moved at the crack of dawn

This morning, Fox 11 showed a helicopter shot of Richard Neutra’s Maxwell House being carted through the streets of Angelino Heights as it was moved from its original home in Brentwood to its final resting place. The home was apparently cut into multiple pieces with plans for reassembly on site.

I’m still trying to figure out why Angelino Heights ?  The only thing that comes to mind when I think of that neighborhood is Victorians !  Sheesh, couldn’t LA have put it in a park or something ?  The poor thing didn’t sound very wanted….. (“it will sit behind a Victorian 4-plex” - read the comments from the above link)

Here is another link with some more of the back story:

Neutra moved

Trooper is sad for Maxwell House.

Angelino Heights will be to the next run-up like Silverlake was to the last one, if I may speculate.  Buy it all up in 2015 when it seems like total garbage!

Oooops.  Kaufmann House fell out of escrow !!!  Shocker.

It’s now on the MLS for $ 12,975,000…..a mere 4 MILLION dollar haircut from the alleged 16.8 Million it went for at auction. 

MLS listing

Trooper - 02 July 2008 11:39 PM

Thank G.  I saw the Shulman pics when I went to his exhibition in PS a few months ago.  I love the backstory about the couple that bought it and restored it back to it’s original form (after Barry Manilow et, al….destroyed it architecturally with renovations).  Oh, by the way…they are selling b/c they are getting a divorce.

Anywho, I Googled and found this:
“The night’s proceedings also included the Christie’s Realty International, Inc. sale of Richard
Neutra’s Kaufmann House. Along with Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House and Philip
Johnson’s Glass House, Neutra’s Kaufmann House is one of the most important examples of
modernist residential architecture in the Americas and remains singular as the most important
example of mid-century modernist architecture in the Americas to remain in private hands. It sold
for $16,841,000 – and the buyer exercised an option to buy the orchard, taking the total for the
house to $19,025,000”.

I drive by a Neutra at least once a day in HWD, so I get my fix.  Love my Lautner’s, too.  Thanks.

Oops… looks like the credit crunch has hit the uber-high end.

Price drops for big-name architect homes

The owners bought the landmark home for about $1.5 million in 1993 and spent mega-bucks—some $11 million—bringing the place back to its former glory and purchasing additional land to increase the site to more than 2.5 acres