Category Archives: Real Estate

Hurt Home Meeting Announced for June 9

The District of Columbia is in the process of selling the historic Hurt Home at 3050 R St. Last November the city announced that the leading candidate was the Argos Group. Actually, they were the only party to submit bids for the property. In November they previewed their plans to convert the building (which was a home for the blind for most of its existence) to 41 condos. These plans were not well received by the neighbors. (Full disclosure: GM is one of those neighbors, although he is neutral on the developer’s plans).

The problem facing the developer is that the building is in terrible shape. To get the building up to decent shape will cost a lot of money. To recover its investment, the developer either has to sell a lot of reasonably priced condos or a fewer amount of more expensive condos. Fearing both a loss of street parking and an increase in traffic, the neighbors want fewer, but there’s a distinct possibility that the developer could end up building condos too expensive to sell (as was widely perceived to be the problem at Wormley Row, although GM has heard that recently they have made a good deal of progress actually selling those units). Continue reading

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More Details on the Fillmore School Deal

GM reported on Monday that the Corcoran College of Art + Design had sold the historic Fillmore School building at 1801 35th St. to EastBanc. Few details were available at the time, but since then GM has learned of some more key elements of the proposed plan:

The Condos:

A EastBanc representative confirmed the project to GM and added that the main building will be converted to approximately 15 condo units. This is only one more than the number of condos that were built in the old Phillips School building, which will likely serve as a model for EastBanc’s project (they could theoretically look to the Wormley School conversion as a model, but in that case the developer made the units too expensive and has had a tough time selling them off, so EastBanc should probably treat that project as a warning not a model).

Townhouses:

Much like EastBanc’s proposals for the Georgetown post office, they are also contemplating building townhouses where the Fillmore School parking lot is right now. The parking is rather large. By GM’s eyeballing, it looks to be about 4-5 times larger than the parking lot of the post office, where EastBanc has proposed to build four townhouses. So it would reason that EastBanc could proposed somewhere around 16-20 townhouses.

The Phillips School also involved townhouses being built on the parking lot. At that property, the developers added fourteen townhouses to the parking lot, which was slightly smaller than the Fillmore School parking lot. That would seem to support a mid-teens prediction for the Fillmore project. Continue reading

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Fillmore School Building Reportedly Sold to EastBanc

GM started hearing rumors a week ago about the possible sale of the historic Fillmore School building. On Friday, he heard it confirmed from reliable sources that the building was in fact sold.

The building at 1801 35th St. was built in 1892 and named after our last Whig president, Millard Fillmore. It was surplussed by the District in 1998 and bought by the Corcoran Gallery of Art. The Corcoran has since then used the property for classes and gallery space.

Word has spread that the Corcoran has sold the building to EastBanc. GM reached out to both the Corcoran and EastBanc, but neither responded to emailed inquires. Continue reading

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Ridiculous Georgetown Home Featured on Teen Cribs

(Sorry for the lack of embed, it just wasn’t working for some reason. Also, skip ahead to 14:30.)

The crib in question is the home of Ben and Deb Johns at 1633 29th St. GM’s walked by it a million times and knew it was awesome. He just didn’t realize it was Teen Cribs awesome.

(Disclaimer: This was from a reader’s tip. GM doesn’t as a practice watch Teen Cribs. He only watches normal Cribs because he’s a purist.)

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Real Estate Results Dip Further First Quarter 2010

After getting good news crunching the crime numbers yesterday, GM turned to the first quarter real estate numbers. And they’re less than rosy. (Unless you’re a potential first-time buyer, then it’s more than rosy).

This is what GM found:

There were 33 homes sold in Georgetown during the first quarter 2010. There were 45 homes sold last quarter 2009. That’s a 26% decline.

Fourth quarter 2009 Homes sold on average 7.3% below first listing price. Through the first quarter of 2010, homes sold for 8.0% below first listing price. Continue reading

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Thrift Shop Charities Building For Sale

Last month, the stately Washington Antiques Show held its last hurrah. As reported by Carol Joynt:

After 55 years of bringing Washington’s collectors and socialites together in a celebration of the rare, the beautiful, or the simply unusual, the Washington Antiques Show has thrown in the towel. A source confirmed, “The Thrift Shop Charities did vote not to continue the Washington Antiques Show next year.” This brings to an end an annual event that was the beginning of the winter social season here.

Joynt later reported that the alleged reason the show was coming to an end was that the Thrift Shop Charities got itself into some tax problems. Worse, the popular thrift shop on P St. would have to be shut down and the building sold. Continue reading

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Evermay Slashes its Price. Again.

The Evermay estate, which has been up for sale since October of 2008, has just slashed its price again. Harry Belin started off asking $49 million for the historic property. By last April, however, he lowered the price to $39.5 million.

Oddly that low, low price still had no takers so Belin has now dropped the price down to a bargain basement $29.5 million!

Besides Belin, who else might be a little bit disappointed about this? How about media mogul Robert Allbritton. Why him? Because he paid about that same amount of money for the Bowie-Sevier estate in 2007. Yes, the Bowie-Sevier estate is one of the nicest estates in Georgetown.

But it’s not Evermay.

All kidding aside, that’s a pretty dramatic price drop. At this rate it’ll be selling for $500k by the fall.

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About Your Tax Bill…

2011_assessment_map

Last week the Washington City Paper published the neighborhood-by-neighborhood map of how residential real estate assessments rose or fell from 2008 to 2009. It came as no big surprise to GM that Georgetown’s numbers were down. Specifically, the total assessment of Georgetown residential property fell from $3,743,858,260 to $3,666,092,440, a 2.08% drop.

So does that mean Georgetowners can expect a lower tax bill next year?

Probably not, unless you’re a recent newcomer. Continue reading

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Casa Stephanopoulos Under Contract

Courtesy of TTR Sotheby's International Realty

As reported here in January, the Stephanopouli are leaving Georgetown and put their 31st St. manse up for sale. Well it appears that it is now under contract. It was listed for $6.35 million, but GM guessed it would sell for $5.67 million. What do you think the final number will be?

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Washington Fine Properties Reinvents the Word “Block”

GM was browsing the real estate listings on the back of the Georgetowner the other day and he came across this puzzling listing:

The home is a modest two bedroom row house, virtually identical to dozens and dozens throughout Georgetown (particularly the East Village). But this home offers something that no other house in Georgetown can: a two block walk to the Metro!

Wait a minute, what?

Two blocks to the Metro? How is that possible?

This house is on 26th just above P St. What is the walk to the Metro from there? Continue reading

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