A Kansas City Real Estate Blog by Realtor, Sarah Snodgrass

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Ah, Sunset Hill. You are so lovely, yet so expensive. This house is for sale for $889,000, and it really isn’t all that large or extravagant. It just has so much beauty and charm, and the lot is perfectly landscaped (in an eclectic and creative way) and the location is unparalleled. The house itself has 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, and 2 car garage, plus plenty of living space and lots of windows providing ample natural light. Sunset Hill is a beautiful subdivision nestled in the hills just south of the Country Club Plaza, just west of Loose Park. For those of you unfamiliar, I would encourage a leisurely Sunday stroll or drive through (i’m sure the neighbors would hate me for that). Anyway here are a couple photos.

(The house is listed with David and Sally Costello with Re/Max Premier Realty)

I love kitchens, both personally and professionally. Personally, I would love to renovate my kitchen and I have finally found cabinetry that I love.  The picture at left is of metal kitchen cabinets by St. Charles Cabinetry. I actually saw them in a photo in the House + Home section of the Sunday Star newspaper and fell in love at first sight. The are so cool and retro - I love that they are metal, and the colors are super cool and would fit in perfectly with my little retro house. Currently I have white painted wood cabinets, with little white octagonal tile counter tops. It is cute, but they are all starting to show their age, plus I could benefit from some clever spacial re-working…

Professionally, kitchens are #1 most important room in real estate. People will by a house based on the kitchen - even if the rest of the house is painfully outdated. Also, it is an investment that pays you back. Many times my sellers will say they have put $X amount of money into their house, so they expect to get it all back. Well, this is true if you are talking about improvements, but if it is a maintenance improvement like a roof or gutters, then don’t expect to get that back out of your house. Also, even though you will add value to your home, don’t expect to get 100% back on what you spend. The annual cost vs. value report can help you to determine what kind of return to expect.

A new website is available for Kansas City area folks who are at risk for foreclosure called www.KCForeclosureHelp.org. This site is geared towards helping people find the counseling and resources they can turn to if they are in need of guidance. One very interesting thing I found here is a map of KC area foreclosures. It is really wild to see it mapped out like that, and really it makes total sense when you consider the appreciation rates and economic status of the different areas. No big surprises here, unfortunately.

Hopefully my readership is not at risk, but if you are please call for help. You may find that there is a way to keep your home and modify the details of your loan so that you can keep up with your payments.

Affordable housing in downtown Kansas City? Seriously, why would you buy anything else? They are practically giving these suckers away and they are really nice. Not everyone can qualify though, there are income restrictions you must meet in order to purchase this development; you can find those rules on their website. Present tenants and city employees were given the first chance at purchase, but now it is free to anyone who meets their requirements. Prices range from $79,500-$89,500 for one and two bedroom condos, with upgrades available. Also, for the first residents, a $3000 downpayment assistance grant is being offered. Wow! This deal just gets sweeter and sweeter.

For those of you who don’t know, Quality Hill is a historic area on the west side of the downtown loop, at about 10th and Broadway. Quality Hill has changed over time, but for the last 20 years or so, it has been an area with nice, well-maintained apartments - built to look like brick walk-ups. I guess there will be a different developer converting some of the other apartments soon, and I believe it will be a more normal pricing structure based on market prices so it seems to me that these are the ones to buy if you can qualify. Why, you may ask, are the developers offering such low prices??? Well, I’m not exactly clear on this but it has something to do with some sort of tax development deal… There are appreciation and rental restrictions for a certain period of time.

Feel free to ask me questions or learn more at the Quality Hill Square Condominiums Website

How would you like to own Architecture Magazine’s 2004 Home of the Year? Well then hurry to this sleek Studio 804 home before it sells! There are only four of these amazing prefab, modern architectural marvels in the greater Kansas City area, and they are in high demand. For the uninitiated among you, Studio 804 is an architectural design+build studio course for architecture and urban design students at the University of Kansas. These students must conceptualize, design, research, and build a home in a single spring semester. The class professor and founder is the much celebrated local architect known for his cutting-edge dramatic modern structures and embracing the newest materials and trends, Dan Rockhill.

This particular home was built in 2004, and was the first home where the students left Lawrence and broke into the Kansas City housing market. It is located just down the street from the University of Kansas Medical Center, and the 39th Street shops. It is built on a private & spacious double lot, with a wooded lot behind. You’ll see in the photos that this home is very sleek and modern - but also feels very light and airy. It is a 1200 square foot, 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom home, with a 2 car garage, and it is being offered for sale at $199,950. Feel free to contact me with questions or for a showing!

Okay, in the interest of full disclosure, this is my new listing and I will get paid when it sells, but that’s not why I am writing about it. I am writing about it because it truly is an adorable house. It is located in the heart of Brookside’s most desirable subdivision, Armour Hills, and it is on one of the most picturesque streets around. It is totally move-in ready, it has an updated kitchen and bath, and it is elegant and stylish. This house has lots of original charm including crystal doorknobs, beautiful hardwood floors, and an inglenook (fireplace corner with bench - I just learned that word). It has a new deck surrounded by eclectic native landscaping, great for a little backyard retreat. It has an office with new tile flooring, and it has a finished room in the basement - great for a hobby room. All this can be yours for the sales price of $198,000.

Here are some photos of this home, taken by favorite local photographer, Matthew Collins:

There are two new kids on the condo block downtown, and they are very nice - Wallstreet Tower and The Reserve. It is refreshing to see a project without exposed joists and piping, with a little style and elegance. These projects have all sizes and price points, both have tax abatements, parking, and nice amenities. Here are a few photos I took of them:

The Reserve (living/kitchen area, bathroom, and a door with architectural details):

Wallstreet Towers (sign, entrance, living area, bedroom):

• Johnson County adjusted sales* were down 22.74% from 2007 with 782 contracts for 2008 versus 1,012 in 2007. Sales prices for the month were relatively unchanged. The average price in March was $250,440 versus $251,058 last March. Dissecting the numbers, we see that the average sales price of new construction was down 4.2% to $373,646, and the resale price increased 2.5%, to $227,665. Year to date, the Johnson County average price is dead even with last year. The average price was $254,715, versus $254,731 last year. Johnson County’s new listings were down again in March. New listings decreased by 18.45% to 1,251 units. Inventory was up from last year, up 99 units from March 2007 and up 156 units from last month.
• Jackson County sales were off as well, falling 17.14% from 2007. Units were at 933 versus 1,126 last year. The average sales price for the month was down 7.26% from last year, with an average price of $128,451. New listings in Jackson County were down 549 units to 1,790, down 23.47% from last March’s 2,339 units. Inventory remains higher, up 2.54% over last year and is running at 7,798 units. March inventory is up 193 units from last month.
• Sales for the entire Heartland area were off for the month by 21.9%, or 776 units. The average price was down 3.3%, averaging $168,384.

So, the market is still slow, with a large inventory. Prices are not off by much. As compared with last year, it has declined, but overall there are still a great number of homes being bought and sold in our metro area.

Well, I haven’t really see anything cool this week in my neck of the woods so I thought I would feature this home I stumbled upon while searching online. I have not seen it in person, nor have I ever had the pleasure of driving all the way out to Cedar Creek (though I hear it is actually very pretty), but this house looks totally cool… Lots of clean, modern lines and windows everywhere. Check out some photos:

It is for sale for $739,000. I heard Cedar Creek is like living at a resort so there are sure to be lots of amenities to enjoy. Feel free to contact me for more information or for a showing.

Have I done a post on short sales yet? It is hard to keep up with all the weird mortgage news these day, but I don’t think I have. Most of my clients have heard of a “short sale” but do not know what it is. Admittedly, I did not even know what it was until last Fall.

A short sale is what happens when a homeowner needs to sell his home, but cannot afford to pay off his mortgage note and all the costs associated with selling property such as Realtor commissions, closing costs, title work, and any other liens or debt he may have on the home.

So what do you do if you are upside down and need to sell your home? Well, these days lenders are getting really friendly and agreeing to take less than the mortgage amount on the sale of a home, all in the hopes of avoiding foreclosure. The reasoning is that foreclosures end up costing the lenders alot of money in the long run. Plus, with foreclosures, they have to take ownership of the property and that is also something they hope to avoid. This is not a free pass for everybody though… If you have the cash and/or assets to cover the sale, the mortgage company will not help you. This is only for those people who are leading down the path to foreclosure. Once the seller gets an offer, they send it to their lender asking them to take a discounted payoff on their mortgage, and the lender really studies the seller’s financial situation and the offer before they will give their answer. They also aren’t in the business of giving homes away - so please, don’t call me looking for a “steal”. These are not a sure thing either, the lender does not have to say yes to the short sale. It’s a drawn-out and risky process. It can work out great,  and you can get a great house at a great price, but it could just as easily not come together at all. The moral of the story is to prepare yourself for some emotional turmoil if you plan to engage in a Short Sale.

Okay, so I said it would be a weekly series, and it is becoming more like a monthly series. Oh well!

This month’s featured “where would they live” celeb is the successful and talented coach of the Kansas men’s basketball team, the reigning national champions, Bill Self. Rock Chalk! Hmmm… I think he would have a big house in a pretty and safe neighborhood in the award winning Blue Valley School District. I would put him in Kansas, instead of Missouri, for obvious reasons. And I’d put him out in the burbs so he could have a big, safe private lot. Also, this house is going to be expensive because we all know he just got a mega million dollar raise from KU. I think something like this would be his KC area home:

This is a fabulous brick home all nestled on the beautiful and winding Rockhill Road, near the museum and art institute area. It was built in 1908, which would make it 100 years old this year. Happy birthday to this pretty home! It has many fabulous original details such as leaded glass, hardwoods, built-ins, and fixtures. Feel free to contact me for more info.