FSBO - $239k - Kerrville
For Sale by Owner in Kerrville, TX (about 2 hours west of Austin).
Download brochure (includes all contact info)
Pictures:
Add comment August 7th, 2008
Open House - Aug 3rd
Aug 3rd
Link Ave - $465k - 11am to 1pm (pictured above)
These houses are pretty much open every Sunday (at until they sell):
2 comments August 1st, 2008
For Sale - $399k - Canyon @ Red Willow
The basic backstory is a developer planned on building 9 homes, built this one as a model home (which is apparently very well appointed in quality) but then bailed on continuing the development.
I was asked my opinion of it and it strikes me as a hybrid. It wants to be modern influenced but didn’t carry it out to the fullest. It shows up in particular in trimming items like choice of doors. Otherwise, it is pretty close to the FAB designs out at Agave.
Add comment July 25th, 2008
Open House, Sunday 7/27
Sunday, July 27th
Highland Hills - $435k - 1 to 4pm (pictured above)
Rivercrest (Westlake) - $2.990M - 1 to 4pm
Oltorf - $499k - 1 to 5pm
4 comments July 25th, 2008
(un)civil war sale at IF+D
Sale this weekend at IF+D. See below.
Have you ever wondered what the US Civil War would looked like if it had been fought by cute, tiny Japanese toys?
Strangely enough, this is our rather oblique way of introducing our store-wide sale, which is part of the 2ND on Sale event which runs from Thursday through Saturday. Everything everywhere is on sale. Thursday night we will be open until 9:00 to kick off the weekend. Bizarre dioramas will be on display. There will be beer(s).
As far as the actual, you know, sale… we’ll have 20% of all Gus Design (our Canadian friends), mark-downs on everything else in the store, and most importantly, all thimble-sized Japanese figures will be just 25 cents. So yes, even with high gas prices, you too can afford to drive down, buy a couple of handfuls, and build your own bizarre Civil War scene. (The only rule is the Union always has to win and you can’t make any silly comments about state’s rights.)
All proceeds from the sale of ridiculously cute Japanese toys will benefit Austin EcoSchool.
Add comment July 24th, 2008
The golden triangle
Those in business, particularly the product development side, like know about the golden triangle: resources, features, time. The real estate version is: price, location, features. That is the hardest thing to come to terms with when buying a house. It doesn’t help that there are several other dynamics in the market like competitors (other buyers) and inventory availability.
We started looking more in earnest late last year. Before then, I was definitely keeping an eye on the market but wasn’t fully comfortable with buying yet. A lot of that had to do with our moving around so much. Also, as first time buyers we were bound to go at a slower pace. The market of prior years didn’t really lend itself to well considered buying given the competitiveness for the better places.
One unfortunate side effect of looking at listings for nearly 3 years was a level of burn out and paralysis had begun to set in. Too much information can as paralyzing as too little. Hence creating a framework for a decision is important.
First we set some boundaries.
Price. Our plan was to say as close to historical averages of income to price as possible. Modern convention had people buying at ratios of 5x or more but that seemed simply insane. Further, we also wanted to use only one of our incomes in the calculation. Lots of reasons but it boils down to: flexibility in career & freeing up income for other investments and activities.
Location. This was a bit harder. What area is right for you is pretty personal. Obviously location and price do have a strong link in real estate so picking target neighborhoods had to match our first criteria. We don’t have kids, nor plan to, so schools don’t matter. We do like a walkable area, but much of Austin fits that pretty well. At the end of the day, a lot of it was about how we spend out time and where our social life interactions occur. We like our friends and want to see them often, so that was a big factor. Reasonably close to a lot of things is important especially since the cost of driving (cost, time, carbon) is so high.
We ended up focusing on Hyde Park, Brentwood / Crestview, Allandale, and to lesser degrees adjunct areas like French Place / Cherrywood or Windsor Park. Places like Highland Hills, Travis Heights, and Barton Hills are very attractive for many reasons but rarely shook out when considering other factors so they seemed less likely as viable ares for us.
Setting boundaries on price and location help a lot but in many ways the easier part. The hard part is when they start to become at odds with what you want in a house (aka the Features). Defining priorities is critical and seemingly impossible at times. That will be the topic of the next post.
1 comment July 22nd, 2008
For Sale - $640k - Balcones MCM
Needs some mild updating but great bones on this MCM. Love the exposed beams and ceiling (though must be hell on energy efficiency).
2 comments July 21st, 2008
Modern in China
photo: Doug Kanter of the NY Times
The NY Times put up this nifty multimedia tour of some of China’s new modernist building. Not even sure of modern is quite the right phrase as these leap beyond the original form / function thing into the realms of digital art come alive.
Here is the virtual tour. It includes some detail and renderings about the underpinnings of the buildings.
2 comments July 13th, 2008
