Sold in Belmont: An Overpriced Cape Required Owner to Take a Haircut

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Photo: A nice Cape in Winn Brook, but is it worth $789,000?

A weekly recap of residential properties sold in the past seven days in the “Town of Homes.”

• 208 Grove St. Center-entry Colonial (1940). Sold: $782,000. Listed at $729,000. Living area: 1,750 sq.-ft. 8 rooms, 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths. On the market: 125 days.

• 76 Hoitt Rd. Cape (1951). Sold: $700,000. Listed at $789,000. Living area: 1,659 sq.-ft. 6 rooms, 4 bedrooms, 1.5 baths. On the market: 129 days.

• 100 Lexington St., Condominium (1977). Sold: $230,050. Listed at $219,900. Living area: 756 sq.-ft. 3 rooms, 1 bedrooms, 1 baths. On the market: 37 days.

Is there an unwritten rule in Belmont that says home sellers and salespeople are required to suspend all reality when pricing real estate?

For example, a simple, clean, classic Cape on Hoitt Road, a block from the Winn Brook. A past owner made a terrible mistake by knocking down a wall to supposedly create an open floor plan – sorry, but it looks like a VFW function hall with that pillar in the middle of the room – but all-in-all, an OK place.

So what were they thinking originally listing it at $789,000? Really? Did the salesperson take a good look at the 80s kitchen, the 70s bathrooms and the 50s upstairs bedrooms? You are asking someone to pay out nearly $3,500 a month in mortgage payments (5 percent down, 4 percent mortgage) for 30 years (!) to live in a house with less than 1,700 square feet? That comes out to $450-per-square foot. That’s nuts. The town assessed the house for $632,000 last year.

That price was so out there one has to believe the seller is thinking they are living in Belmont, California where the medium house price is greater than a $1 million.

And once again, the broker/seller had to swallow hard and admit a mistake was done after potential buyers too a step back when they heard what it would cost them. And they swallowed $89,000 to a far more reasonable $700,000.

Why not price all homes at $1 million and see where it goes.

On the Market: A Classy Colonial, A Heavenly Backyard, It’s Standing

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Photo: 208 Grove St. 

A sample of Belmont homes “on the market” ranging from the affordable, the average and the quite expensive.

21 Garfield Rd. Colonial (1937). 2,506 sq.-ft. of livable space: 8 rooms, 4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths. Two-car garage. A quarter-acre lot. Price: $1,195,000.

What’s special: Colonial + dead-end street + Belmont Hill = $1 million-plus. This house is a statement of restrained good taste; the interior molding is period perfect, wonderful light oak floors, high sill windows, a new (but smallish) kitchen with cabinets matching the floor’s coloring, a porch off the living room and understated rooms upstairs (but what’s with that half-bath with the stand-alone shower? A bit too narrow to work) that includes an attic office space. Only glaring issue: why did they scare the roof by jamming in a pair of skylights? They’re an eyesore and skylights never work they way you hope. A bit pricey at nearly $1.2 million for 2,500 square feet, but it works. 

The first sentence of the sales pitch: “This classic, hip-roof Colonial, with 4 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms, is ideally located at the end of a cul-de-sac on Belmont Hill.”

208 Grove St. Center-entry Colonial (1940). 1,750 sq.-ft. of livable space: 8 rooms, 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths. One-car garage, attached. A .16-acre lot. Price: $729,000.

What’s special: The backyard. It’s fantastic; a patio for eating and sitting, a great grass yard and a perennial garden on the edges. Great for kids and adults who want family time outside. The house has a finished basement (that could use a refinishing), nice details – a solid mantel over the fireplace – a renovated kitchen and a full-year porch. While it does face a busy roadway, an owner/family is just a walk from Grove Street Playground. Hopefully, the new owners will remove that silly stone paneling on the right side of the front door. No one’s saying, “My, what intricate stone work!” They glance at it and think, “What are they hiding?” 

The first sentence of the sales pitch: “Pristine, ‘move-in-ready’ center-entrance colonial, in desirable Burbank School area. 8 Rooms, 3 bedrooms and 1 full and 1 half bath comprise the 1,750 sq.-ft. living space.”

51 Davis Rd. Ranch (1953). 1,137 sq.-ft. of livable space: 6 rooms, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths. No garage. A tenth-of-an-acre lot. Price: $550,000.

What’s special: Your entry point into Belmont. This is a classic post-war house, built fast to accommodate the demand for single-family homes in the 1950s. Not much to look at but no one is buying this as anything but their jumping-off point to something better. Not a charmer (the town assessor’s gave it a quality rating of “C”) but this ranch does have a finished basement, it’s close to businesses and the bus to Harvard. Bet it’s sold sooner than you’d think. It appears sturdy enough to stand a few more years before a contractor demolishes it to throw up a new, bland and boring two-family on the site. 

The entire sales pitch: “A chance to make this home your own, this wonderful 3 bedroom, 2 bath corner lot home offers a great location. Close to schools, public transportation, and other amenities.”

Sold in Belmont: The Single Ugliest Residence in Belmont Sold, Which is a Good Thing

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Photo: The ugliest residential building in Belmont. 

A weekly recap of residential properties sold in the past seven days in the “Town of Homes.”

• 92-94 Baker St. Concrete multi-family (1971) Sold: $744,000. Listed at $699,000. Living area: 2,688 sq.-ft. 12 rooms, 6 bedrooms, 2 full, 2 half baths. On the market: 42 days.

There is only one addition that could improve the esthetics of the multifamily sitting near the corner of Hittinger and Baker streets, and it comes at the end of a timing fuse.

The Baker Street two-family apartment building is Belmont’s ugliest residence. It’s a concrete block of nothingness that, unfortunately, plays into the area’s industrial vibe.

Certainly residents will say the equally deplorable condo tower in Cushing Square (built around the same time), the apartment blocks on Lexington Street or some of the Hill’s new upscale “McMansions” – we’ll get to them soon enough – are equally as awful. And I am not just speaking from a Belmont perspective: this eyesore would be inappropriate in any community, be it Belmont, Lexington, Somerville, Malden or Dorchester.

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The building is so unappealing the salesperson could not find a single photograph for the sales portfolio that didn’t create an impression that the structure was anything than a wing of a prison complex. I guess the best photo is one which the evergreens shields the unsightly image from the public.

The exterior’s unlovely coldness is equalled inside with boring square blocks for rooms with a lone interesting architectural detail, a fireplace without any depth or volume. Everything is flat and dull – windows flush to the wall, doors that are more like panels – although the living and bedrooms do have wood floors. It’s a building that demonstrates an architect who never attended to spend even the most minuscule effort on this structure.

This building demonstrates the ethos of modest housing development in the 1960s and 1970s: build it cheap without regard or thought to whoever would be the resident. Blame the contractor and town officials at the time for allowing the construction of this abomination to occur.

Yet, this afterthought sold in just over a month at nearly $50,000 more than its original list price. People saw beyond the hideous nature of the structure to purchase it, so it won’t – hopefully – be demolished. And this is a good thing. It’s ugly, inappropriate and, more important, affordable. Because of its unappealing look, it will never reach the same rent or price of a similarly-sized unit in a two-family on, let’s say, Hammond Road. 

Even if this building remains an apartment or is converted into condominiums by an off-site owner, these units will allow a couple or a young family to get their toes into a town that doesn’t have many reasonably-priced housing outlets for those seeking a safe place to live with a (still) good school system.

So let’s take the good with the really horrible, horrifically bad.

 

2014 Was a Good Year to Sell Real Estate in Belmont

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It’s official: 2014 was a very good year for anyone selling real estate in Belmont as the average sales price for a home – be it a Colonial, a condo or an up-and-down two family – increased by more than five percent, according to the data compiled by  McGeough Lamacchia Realty of Waltham.

The firm included an Infographic “map” of Belmont real estate data.

The housing market remained strong in Belmont in 2014, with a total of 320 homes – single-family, condos and multi-family – sold at an average sale price of $748,839, about five and a half percent increase from 2013.  The total number of homes sold in 2014 is 11 fewer than in 2013, which is part of a trend that contributed to overall home sales in Massachusetts being down 1 percent in 2014.

  • Single-family: 169 sold in 2014 versus 179 in 2013, for an average price of $976,919 which is $60,000 more than last year’s average of a little more than $910,000.
  • Condominiums: 91 condominiums sold in 2014 compared to 98 in 2013, with an average sold price of $595,454, an increase from 2013’s average of $573,301.
  • Multi-Family: 60 homes sold in 2014, as opposed to 54 in 2013. The average sale price in 2014 was $674,145, nearly $35,000 more than the average in 2013. This makes multi-family homes the only category to both see more homes sold, and an average higher sale price.

While hardly anyone can call the average housing price as “cheap,” Belmont remains affordable compared to Cambridge and Lexington, where a single-family home can cost up to $314,556 more when you look at average sale prices. Arlington, Waltham, and Watertown come underneath Belmont’s average price for a single-family home by anywhere from 34 to 53 percent.

Sold in Belmont: Supply and Demand Effecting Prices on Farnham

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A weekly recap of residential properties sold in the past seven days in the “Town of Homes.”

• 119 Farnham St. Cape (1938) Sold: $750,000. Listed at $699,000. Living area: 1,200 sq.-ft. 7 rooms, 2 bedrooms, 1.5 baths. On the market: 52 days.

• 33 Trowbridge St. Brick spilt level (1957) Sold: $600,000. Listed at $685,000. Living area: 1,435 sq.-ft. 6 rooms, 2 bedrooms, 2 baths. On the market: 148 days.

• 115 Farnham St. Sideways Garrison Colonial (1932) Sold: $728,000. Listed at $799,000. Living area: 1,740 sq.-ft. 7 rooms, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths. On the market: 52 days.

Three homes close enough to the commuter rail line for their new owners to hear the trains traveling to and from Boston were sold this week at prices well below Belmont’s median price of $845,000. What may come to a surprise to many, it was the smallest of the trio – a classic Cape on Farnham Street, a five-minute stroll to Belmont Center – that brought in the most for its seller, a cool three-quarters of the million dollars for 1,200 sq.-ft. of livable space. Compare that to the house one door down the street with an extra bedroom, half-bath and 500 sq.-ft. sinking to $728,000.

Sure, there are plenty of reasons for the difference in price: needed repairs, renovations, lot size, the terrible decision to place the side of the Colonial facing the street and more. Or it could have been the entry of the a second home into the market at a price that appeared to be a bargain. Let’s see how it worked out.

The larger house at 115 Farnham went on the market in November, 2014 at $799,000, more than $110,000 greater than its assessed value by the town. Likely the coming holidays and winter’s arrival deadened the market and so it sat at that price into the New Year.

Come Jan. 6, 119 Farnham hits the market at $699,000. While it too is well above its assessed value of $571,000, it’s the bargain on the street compared to the house one door down. The pressure of added supply and a lower cost alternative forced the hand of those selling 115 Farnham, who cut the price by $50,000 that day.

Here’s where supply and demand took charge: greater eyes viewing the more “affordable house” at 115 Farnham brought in more competition and bids at the expense of the larger house a few feet away.

When the sales were completed, the smaller house sold for $180,000 more than its assessed value while the larger home brought in a little more than $50,000 above its value. The winner in this case are the new owners at 115 Farnham, getting a bargain while over at 119, the new owners will love their new house just as much at $625 per square foot.

On the Market: A New Manse, a Ranch and a Trip Back to the ’20s

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 Photo: The newest manse in Belmont.

Examples of homes “on the market” in Belmont ranging from the affordable, the average and the very expensive.

529 Concord Ave. New construction, blown-out Colonial (2014). 4,954 sq.-ft. of livable space: 12 rooms, 5 bedrooms, 4 full and two partial baths. Two-car garage. Half-an-acre lot size. What’s special: Just about everything (it’s just been built) from the view – yup, that’s Boston out your window – to the custom mill work, red oak hardwood floors, high ceilings (calling all Boston Celtics seeking a cool place to live) and a granite backsplash in the kitchen. This place has six separate heating zones and is full of “smart home” technology. Although one person pointed out recently the owners will like catch the lights from cars traveling west as they ascend the twisting hilly section of Concord Avenue. Price: $2.25 million. 

The first sentence of the sale’s pitch: “Perched atop Belmont Hill and sited in an exclusive enclave with other significant properties, this newly constructed Colonial-style residence features views of Boston and beyond.” 

 

103 Shaw Road. The typical 50’s style ranch (1955). 1,562 sq.-ft. of livable space: 7 rooms, 3 bedrooms, 1 full and two partial baths. A garage for a very small car. Just less than a fifth-of-an-acre lot size. What’s special: It’s got a new roof! If you like ranch homes – not on most people’s list of favorite styles – it doesn’t appear to need much renovation work to bring out the charm and a return to the era of Laura and Rob Petrie. But it does seem a bit pricey although it’s in a nice location. Price: $809,900.

The first sentence of the sale’s pitch: “Custom crafted single owner 3 bedroom Ranch in prime Burbank location offers fireplaced living room, formal dining room with chair rail, eat-in kitchen with Italian tile flooring, a full finished lower level with fireplaced family room, storage and utility rooms, 1 full and 2 half baths, walk-up attic with expansion potential plus a three season porch and direct entry garage.” 

39 Bartlett Ave. Colonial-ish (1927). 1,400 sq.-ft. of livable space: 6 rooms, 2 bedrooms, 2 baths. One-car garage. A small lot of about 3,000 square-feet. What’s special: You may have a tiny backyard but who cares when you a stone’s throw from a town playing field? PQ is next door which is great for the kids. The exterior is tired but the inside has some nice features including an enclosed porch for that bit of Southern livin’, wooden floors, good architectural details from the 1920s including the brick fire place and up-to-date Home Depot-ish cabinets and drawers in the kitchen. A real bargain in Belmont. Price: $525,000  

The first sentence of the sale’s pitch:”Charming two bedroom two bath colonial with enclosed front porch and level backyard in MOVE IN CONDITION!”

Sold in Belmont: What Would You Have Bought? The Renovated Condo or One of the Smallest Houses in Town

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A weekly recap of residential properties sold in the past seven days in the “Town of Homes.”

• 68 Unity Ave. #1 Condominium (1924) Sold: $489,750. Listed at $439,900. Living area: 1,018 sq.-ft. 6 rooms, 2 bedrooms, 1 baths. On the market: 33 days.

• 33 Knox St. Ranch (1957) Sold: $526,000. Listed at $549,000. Living area: 1,027 sq.-ft. 4 rooms, 2 bedrooms, 1 baths. On the market: 92 days.

The town residential properties that sold last week in Belmont are similar in two ways; each are affordable relative to the median value of homes in these parts – nearly $840,000 according to town data – and each a tad more than 1,000 square feet of livable space. While the Unity Avenue property is a single-floor condominium on the Cambridge line, the Knox Street ranch is snug in Belmont Hill.

So, which would you have bought?

The ranch: The structure is yours, you don’t have to share common spaces and parking have a neighbor living above you – God only knows who’ll move in next year – or pay a condo fee on top of property taxes. It’s located on “the hill,” it’s quiet and you can jump right onto Rt. 2.

But it’s just a smudge more than 1,00o square feet of interior space, making it one of the smaller homes in Belmont. You better be on good relations with whomever you are living with because there is limited private space available. It’s one of the few houses in this one-time subdivision previous owners didn’t build-on extra space. In fact, a look at the interior shows a great deal of original detail. Ranch developers wanted to put them up as cheaply as possible. The result: middling-quality material that should be torn out and replaced. The ground floor rooms need extensive rehab and fast.

The condo: As a South End developer once told me, people who buy condos are “purchasing air,” as the owner’s property rights extend only to the four walls in which the condo lies. Want to improve the common area? Renovate the garage? Replace the grass with stone in the backyard? Hello, neighbor! You are constantly seeking someone else’s cooperation to increase the properties value, improve your quality of life or just park your car in a slightly different location. It’s like being a kid again, living in the same room with your brother. That’s fine if you like him; if not, it’s potentially a nightmare.

But just look at the Unity Avenue condo’s interior: now this is great detail. French door, built-in cabinets, closets with real doors, hardwood floors that you can polish, an open kitchen design with new everything. Recently renovated, you can move in and not worry about putting mucho dollars into the property. It shouldn’t surprise anyone the condo sold for $50,000 above asking in only a month.

I pick the condo.

Sold in Belmont: Century-Old Two Family Only Sale during Snowy Week

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Photo: Two family on Hull Street.

A weekly recap of residential properties sold in the past seven days in the “Town of Homes.”

• 60 Hull St. Multi-family (1930) Sold: $607,000. Listed at $625,000. Living area: 2,432 sq.-ft. 11 rooms, 5 bedrooms, 2 baths. On the market: 126 days.

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Sold in Belmont: An English Cottage With Chinese Accents

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A weekly recap of residential properties bought in the past seven days in the “Town of Homes.”

• 16 Payson Terrace. English Cottage (1930) Sold: $822,092. Listed at $850,000. Living area: 2,324 sq.-ft. 10 rooms, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths. On the market: 67 days.

• 19 Lawndale St. #9, Newish design townhouse (2011), Sold for: $865,000. Listed at $879,000. Living area: 2,784 sq.-ft. 9 rooms, 4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths. On the market: 78 days.

• 76 Davis Rd. #1. Ground-floor condominium (1925), Sold for: $362,000. Listed at $389,900. Living area: 1,056 sq.-ft. 5 rooms, 2 bedrooms, 1 baths. On the market: 161 days.

When walking around the Cambridge Reservoir, a favorite detour is to take a walk along one-way Payson Terrace to see a remarkable house. The color alone – a burnt orange that radiates the evening sun – pops out amidst the brown sea of the surrounding brick and boxy Colonials.

The house at 16 Payson Terrace – owned by the same family since 1958 – is as much a residential outlier as the two-family mini-McMansions that have arisen in the Waverley neighborhood. Only this doesn’t crowd out and dominates the surrounding homes; it’s a dash of the exotic in a cool New England town.

The house’s striking hue is just the beginning of what makes this a one-of-a-king residency: the owners inserted whimsical Asian-inspired highlights to the property – a fence with the pickets made with Chinese-symbols, small male and female bronze figurines on the entry post tops and bold Chinese characters and flying, fighting dragons over the main entrance (with a bright red door) and along the eaves.

It doesn’t appear that the family had a direct connection to Asia – it ran Harvard Square’s Colonial Drug on Brattle Street for seven decades before closing in 2013 – so it might just be the joy of having your home be a small part of a far-away land. (I don’t know if a person from China would find this to be a nice gesture to the heritage of their country or oddly inappropriate.)

But it is the exterior that holds your interest: exactly what is it? The salesperson and the town say Colonial, but it is anything like the popular design seen all around town. Rather, it’s a contemporary of when the Colonial had its heyday from the 1910s to 1940s. While you can see many examples of its architectural cousin, the English Tudor, which gained favor in the 1930s, the house at 16 Payson Terrace is an English Cottage design, somewhat rare in Belmont. It has the characteristic distinct and beautiful asymmetrical pairing gables with a free-standing arch and flat-to-the-wall windows. But many “cottages” where built with stone or stucco exteriors; this is a wood frame. Quite distinctive.

The final sales price was lower than the town’s assessment by nearly $100,000 which is explained by a look at the interior: it doesn’t appear to have been touched for decades with the wear and tear of generations living inside. And what crazy wallpaper! I suspect an interior work crew will need about two weeks just to sand, remove, repair and paint the place before the owner would want to step into the house.

While the inside needs a great deal of TLC, a vivid part of Belmont would be lost if the new owners decide to replace the existing exterior color and remove the Asian characters to the all-to-typical “Belmont white.” I ask you: do you want to be just another pearl on a string or the ruby you will always admire?

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Good Investment: Belmont Home Values Increased 25 Percent Since ’05

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Photo: A renovated bungalow at 232 Trapelo Rd. 

While you may have made more money in equities since 2005 – the NASDAQ has grown at about eight percent annually – your Belmont house has been a good investment. And unlike stocks, you can sleep in it. 

The average Belmont residential property has appreciated by 25 percent since 2005, a time span which included a historic economic recession in 2008 and six years of a weak recovery, according to data compiled by the Warren Group, a Boston-based real estate analysis firm. 

“Statewide, the median home price in Massachusetts peaked in 2005 at $355,000. Since then, we have seen 46 communities rebound from the crash in real estate prices and record an increase in the median selling price of homes,” said Timothy Warren Jr., the Warren Group’s CEO.

Belmont is one of the top-ten municipalities to see double-digit increases in home values since 2005, according to the report, which included neighboring communities of Lexington (35 percent jump to $950,000) and Cambridge, which led the study with a red hot 80 percent increase in single-family home values, from $667,500 in 2005 to $1.2 million in 2014. 

The current median price for a single-family home in Belmont is $847,900.

Other towns on the list include Brookline, Concord, Newton, Somerville, Winchester and the Boston neighborhoods of South Boston and Jamaica Plain.

“Proximity to good jobs seems to be the common thread among the top communities. Location matters in real estate, and here we see these key communities adding even more in terms of their home values,” said Warren.