Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Wednesday Vignette: BEAUTIFULLY LANDSCAPED GROUNDS

A couple of months back my friend Heather shared an old real estate listing for her home that appeared in our local paper. She gave me the low-down on how to look up our address and I found these, from the late 1940's and early 1950's (our home was built in 1948).

There are so many things to comment on, especially considering the ad is only 5 and a half lines long. First of all, large? There is nothing about our home that could be considered large, even in real estate romance speak. But what really stood out to me was the bit in all caps: BEAUTIFULLY LANDSCAPED GROUNDS. What?

Okay first of all "grounds" denotes acreage, right? We're on a pretty average Portland lot, 45' wide by 111' deep. Secondly I want to know what the yard looked like back then. When we bought it in 2005 there was nothing but weedy lawn and foundation plantings. Was it really exceptional back in the day?

This next listing also SCREAMS about the yard, it's MOST BEAUTIFUL...and good lord $10,500 — we paid, a little more than that (add a zero and then double plus some)...and it's now worth roughly double what we paid. Crazy.

Funny though, I doubt I could find a modern day real estate agent who thought the current garden was anything worth screaming about. They'd probably see it as a liability.

Weather Diary, March 20: Hi 62, Low 33/ Precip 0

Wednesday Vignettes are hosted by Anna at Flutter & Hum. All material © 2009-2018 by Loree Bohl for danger garden (dg). Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude.

27 comments:

  1. Can you share how to look up old real estate ads? I'd love to know what they said about my house! It was built in 59, so perhaps a little too late for your archive...

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    1. I would if I could remember! I think it has something to do with the Multnomah County Library system.

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  2. Well, standards DO change! Houses in general seem to have been smaller back in the 40s and 50s, although the tiny house phenomenon may be shifting trends some. My brother found ads for the house we both grew up in, built in 1954, that listed it as a part of a development of "estate" properties! I think it's about 1500 square feet and sits on a 1/4 acre lot, literally just a 100 or so feet from a railroad track.

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    1. Sometime between the original owners and the lady we bought the house from a family with 3 daughters lived here. One bathroom, two bedrooms! I can't imagine. Did you grow up in California Kris? I can't remember.

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  3. Like you, I'm really curious to know what the "beautifully landscaped grounds" looked like back then. All caps screams that it was exceptional. If your garden is a liability, I'm sure mine is even more so, with a greenhouse smack in the front yard.

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    1. Luckily we don't garden for resale value.

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  4. Maybe back when your house was built it was considered large. If you were moving out of a room or an apartment it might feel large. Funny how things change over the years. A gardener would love your garden. I am sure a real estate person would tell me to plow up the back garden and put down grass. Not gonna happen on my watch.

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    1. That's exactly what happened to a friend's garden. Beautiful plants and it was all leveled for lawn, after she sold.

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  5. How fun is that? Your garden would definitely be an asset if a prospective buyer were a gardener!

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    1. I wonder how you find those buyers? Not that we're selling anytime soon.

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  6. Oh, how cool! You're going to have to show me how to do that some time... Funny - I still have a record of what our front yard looked like when we moved in. All I have to do is look to my neighbor to the east. It looked EXACTLY like that! As for the impact of real estate agents - as I write this, there is a stump grinder working outside our window. Our neighbor to the other side took an ancient Arborvitae out - because their agent told them to. Oddly, I don't mind too much - it might actually mean just a little more sun in my western side yard. My elevated Yucca will be pleased!

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    1. Does thst mean you are getting new neighbors, Anna?

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    2. I'm hoping our new neighbor's to the south remove a couple of the giant trees in their backyard. Here's hoping that if you're getting new neighbor's they're good ones.

      Oh and ask Heather how, I've forgotten (I did this awhile a go)

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  7. Standard changed over the years. Large families shared bedrooms and managed with a single bathroom. It would be cool to get on Google Earth and see the old photos of your house, circa 1950.

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    1. It would! I did find them far enough back that I know there was once a large tree in our backyard. Gone when we bought.

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  8. Oversized houses weren't the norm in that period. In that sense, at least, they really were "the good old days." Most houses are just way too big these days. Then again, some of those tiny homes are ridiculously small. Where's the happy, sensible medium? As far as the "BEAUTIFULLY LANDSCAPED GROUNDS", given the time period I'm picturing a perfectly manicured lawn with a few tortured--I mean meticulously-clipped foundation shrubs.

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    1. I was going to say the same thing! Maybe some rhodies and camellias? A nice pieris or a laurel hedge in the back?

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    2. Here's the happy sensible medium! And Heather you just mentioned exactly the shrubs that were here when we bought. There's no way they were 57 years old when we moved in though.

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  9. Given the lack of any housing stock at the end of WWII, I think your house was probably considered a dream property. Our former house was an 1899 Queen Anne in the central city and the lot was probably the same depth as yours but not as wide. But it is so cool that you found this. Can you find the city property records from when the house was originally built?

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    1. There's a city website called Portland Maps that lists a lot of the info going way back. That's as much as I've done.

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  10. So interesting! Standards have definitely changed since the first post-war housing. Today, anything smaller than 2000 sf is deemed small to modest.

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  11. That's very cool. $10,500 was what my Mom & Dad's house cost in 1951. Their mortgage payment was $32 a month. Their refrigerator (which I still have) was $79.

    I think maybe in your garden culture city the beautiful grounds would be a plus.

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    1. $32!? A $79 refrigerator that still works. This is crazy talk.

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  12. That’s a fun thing to find. I’d love to see some earlier ads for my house. And just imagine what a realtor would think of your excellent winter use of the FCB!

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    1. Oh I'm sure they'd think that was a liability too, somehow.

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  13. Your garden is not a liability!! I do not want to live in a world where a well designed space and living things and a beautiful garden are unwanted. Your garden is all these things.
    Interesting about the MOST BEAUTIFUL YARD listings from the 50's! It is amazing how fast a garden goes fallow without the love of the gardener. There IS something about the bones or the feeling of your "house-to-garden" (all the same thing, in a way--the home and its garden). I'm sure you put the beauty there! But it's interesting to think there's a spirit in it, as well, from long ago.

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    1. Yes! Your last sentence. That idea of spirit made me happy.

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