Seminole Heights Real Estate Recovering?

I have been watching the listings and prices in our neighborhood, and while my observations are not scientific by any means, I think I am seeing an uptick in both buying activity and prices....I use Zillow (not religiously....there are plenty of bugs) as an unofficial gauge.....it shows recently sold properties and properties for sale....my estimated value has climbed almost $100K over the past couple of months....for awhile it had the lowest estimated value in the area, which didn't make sense to me since we have a double lot. Again, Zillow is NOT an accurate valuation tool, but you can sort of pick up on trends by looking at the sold properties. While some properties have been on the market forever, I do see some movement, and if something is priced right, it sells, unlike the way it had been for awhile where nothing was selling no matter what the price was. My next door neighbor has put his house on the market again at a lower price....I will be curious to see what happens and when. I wish him luck.....
I received our TRIM notice this week, and I was quite happy with it....almost $2K down from last year. That's a lot of wood!

Some New Old History on my House

We attended the neighborhood meeting last night, it went very smooth....there was speculation that a group of people against the Hampton Terrace historical designation would raise a ruckus. Only one question arose in relation to that and it was handled quickly and appropriately. We were sitting across the table from Jeff & Helen Harmon, who are very active in our community (Jeff is Vice President of OSHNA). He was talking about our house and mentioned COW RUSTLERS. Apparently, as many towns had in earlier times, Seminole Heights had a population of cows, and they were led down to Lake Robert to graze, and on their way back from this task, the cow rustlers stopped by our house for some........um.....appreciation. This reinforces the "bordello" rumors floating around, although I thought they were always referring to the "crack/boarding house" era when the house was home to many businesses, including drugs and prostitution. This is way earlier.....I don't know when the cows ceased making their trip to Lake Roberta, but I suspect it was way back.....the 30s, maybe the 40s...maybe not even that late. Everyone who has been in the neighborhood long term knows about the spring and the spigot out front....and a few know about the water tower in back there between 1915 & 1928. This was the first I had heard about the house being an actual Bordello. I'm dying of curiosity over who built it and for what.....could it have been built as a bordello/saloon? Records are difficult to lookup prior to 1920, so we may never know. I have some hope with the neighborhood documentary in progress, someone might remember some more history......I may have to grill Jeff some more......in the mean time, what an inspiration for a Halloween party!!

Oh Well......

Although we are happy to be able to take the new sod off life support with the coming of what appears to be "rainy season", it does present some challenges in our outside projects. It has been a little wet to start the siding project......if it clears up enough today we may start pulling some wood off, but chances are we'll have to wait until next week. Of course the weather may pose some scheduling problems for the next several months...but we will just have to work around it the best we can...this is one of those "have to do" projects that will soon affect the inside with water damage if not addressed. Yeah, we should've done it over the winter......hindsight is 20/20, eh? We will continue to plug away at other stuff we've been working on.....my daughter *had* to paint her room yesterday, and that didn't get finished, so we will tie that up today while she enjoys a birthday party (sucks to be 13).
On another note, I noticed that the house/apartments across the street went up for sale (5309 Branch), no sign yet, but I'm on "ziprealty.com" quite often watching the neighborhood real estate scene and this popped up. This is a bungalow with an apartment carved into it (in law apt?) and two really odd back buildings which contain rental units; one appears to be a garage with an upstairs apt, the other could possibly have been a storage/shelter unit with another apt. The bungalow was built in the twenties, and the other units were build in the 40s/50s. They want $375K for it....I don't know if that's good-they seemed to have had a really hard time getting and keeping it rented, but in speaking with a former tenant, we were told the owners were not willing to make any updates or even let the tenants make updates, and they wanted a pretty steep rent for the condition/size. The main house has been vacant for some time now, and the other two back units just vacated last week. I hate having a vacant property across from us. I think it needs some major updating, but I'm sure the main house could be converted back to a one unit pretty easily. I've been in there once, and the floors are in great shape, and it has a fireplace(a sore spot with me as I feel I have the only house in Seminole Heights without one.I have a charming indoor industrial style sprinkler system, but no fireplace!) If your looking for something to buy...take a look..we would love to have some decent neighbors across the street!