Mcm Homes Featured In Today's Wall Street Journal

[rps324]

There is a great article on MCM homes in today's WSJ. Weekend Journal section. It also discusses the recent improvements in Glenbrook Valley.

I can't seem to find a way to link to the article though.

[sevfiv]

i think i'll get in trouble if i post the entire article, but here's some of it (i see you're in there too!)

WHEN MICHELE AND TIM Juengst went house-hunting in San Diego earlier this year, they didn't know much about the midcentury modern school of architecture. But after visiting a 1965 home with a V-shaped roof and open floor plan -- and flipping through a book about the era's architects -- the Juengsts were hooked.

So were four other bidders. Mrs. Juengst, a 50-year-old decorator, turned to her husband and gave instructions: "Don't say a word, just give them an offer," she recalls. When bidding hit $1.1 million, $80,000 over the asking price, the Juengsts were the winners. "Everything is real simple but very functional," says Mrs. Juengst. "You gasp at how pretty it is."

The real-estate boom hasn't just been good to homeowners fortunate enough to cash in on it. It's also helped the reputations of a crop of architects and developers who until now were pretty obscure. Robert Rummer, a builder who brought the flat roofs of California to Oregon in the 1960s and '70s, is becoming a bold-faced name in the Portland area, as real-estate agents trumpet him on the Web. In Denver, a house by the 1950s developer H.B. Wolff sold in March for $274,000 -- $40,000 more than the same home had fetched six months earlier. In Cincinnati, brokers are promoting brothers Abrom and Benjamin Dombar, known for houses in mahogany and cyprus, as apprentices of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Most of these characters never became as famous as their contemporaries, Richard Neutra and John Lautner, who were known for free-flowing spaces and avant-garde theatrics (the living room of one Lautner house was built to rotate on a turntable and become a patio). That's mostly because "midcentury modern," or MCM, was cutting-edge in the 1950s and '60s but dated quickly and lost its popular appeal as buyers returned to more traditional features. Moreover, its sleek, futuristic look was widely copied and over time became associated with cheap cartoonish knockoffs. Then, a new wave of architects came along who considered modernism "bland and boring," says Thomas Hines, a professor of history and architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles. "They wanted to make allusions to the past."

In Houston's Glenbrook Valley area, where broker Mr. Searcy is promoting the MCM connection, sales prices are up 15% this year, after three years of decline, and inventory has fallen to three months' worth, from five. That's in contrast to Houston's median price for existing single-family homes, which is up 5%, according to the Houston Association of Realtors. In Cincinnati, prices for homes by the Dombar brothers have also gotten a boost: In the last year, four of their homes sold after an average of six days on the market, 10 times faster than the city average, says Susan Rissover of Huff Realty, which is handling many of the Dombar sales.

Edited December 23, 2005 by sevfiv

[TJones]

SHAMELESS PLUG Mr.Searcy !!!

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Yes, well, ..... I'm a media whore.

[TJones]

Yes, well, ..... I'm a media whore.

I knew I liked you for a reason.

Edited December 23, 2005 by TJones

[stolitx]

There is a great article on MCM homes in today's WSJ. Weekend Journal section. It also discusses the recent improvements in Glenbrook Valley.

I can't seem to find a way to link to the article though.

Thanks, I'll have to pick up a copy today!