A Kansas City Real Estate Blog by Realtor, Sarah Snodgrass

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Yesterday I spent the afternoon looking at houses in the historic old northeast neighborhood up by the Kansas City Museum on Gladstone Boulevard. There are three neighborhoods in Kansas City where you can find the largest, most beautiful and ornate turn of the century historic homes in Kansas City: old Northeast (Scarritt-Renaissance National Register Historic District), Roanoke, and central Hyde Park. If you haven’t taken a spin through the old northeast, you should do so; these homes will blow you away. Below are a few photos I took of some gorgeous mini-mansions - notice the brick and stone, large porches, and the architectural details such as decorative columns and Victorian towers (first photo is a church).

This photo is taken at the corner of 27th and Holmes. I’m not exactly sure what to call the area - Dutch Hill, Longfellow, Hospital Hill, near the dental school, near Crown Center, Just off Gillham - take your pick. I have a fourplex fixer upper for sale on that corner, so I am there often. From the porch of my listing, I have a great view of the neighborhood which illustrates is diversity. I can see commercial buildings, gorgeous and well-maintained brick victorian’s, shirtwaist homes, other fourplex or apartment buildings, etc… The area feels very bohemian, with beautiful architecture and prices still within reach. In the photo above you see brick victorians and a brick building on the corner. There is a sign on the residential/commercial building on the corner - it looks to be for sale with Colliers Land Advisory Group, Charles Mussorici. I have long admired that property - it looks very cool and I’m sure it has great interior spaces. Because my husband works from home full time and I also do half of the time, I am always looking for interesting space for someone with a home-based business.

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.

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!

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.

I saw this very stylish mid-century modern home yesterday in Prairie Village. There are a few tucked-away pockets of modern ranches in Prairie Village and Overland Park, and this home is located in one of them. It is located at 7717 Canterbury Street in Prairie Village, Kansas, and it was built by local mid-century modern building pioneer, Donald Drummond. It has white-painted, wood-plank vaulted ceilings which create a very clean, open and bright atmosphere. Also, the layout is very smart with large living spaces and ample natural light. These mid-century modern homes were designed to bring the outside in, and this home is no exception. This home is for sale for $329,000. Contact me for more information or for a private showing.

Cape Cod style residential architecture can be found all over the Kansas City area, but large concentrations of especially good examples can be found in Prairie Village, Fairway and Brookside, but most especially in Prairie Village. The photos above and below are a few good examples of Cape Cod style homes that are for sale in our area. You’ll notice they have similar characteristics such as:

• Dormers
• Steep Roof with side gables
• Small roof overhang
• Symmetrical - common for door to be in center
• Wood shingles or siding (cedar shingles common here)
• Hardwood Floors
• Shutters

In Kansas City, these smaller, traditional cape-cod style houses were built from the 30’s-50’s. Cape cods were built post 1950’s and are still being built today, but generally not in the same way or in such high concentrations as they were built in the early part of the 20th century. The Cape Cods in Brookside and Fairway are generally going to be a bit older than the ones in Prairie Village just because of how and when the city was developed and the history of our sprawl, but just because they are newer doesn’t mean they are necessarily better. Many of the homes in Prairie Village were built with cinder block foundations which have not held up as well as other foundation types. But that’s a separate subject… Anyway, the history of the cape cod style dates back to the homes that were built by English settlers on our new england coast 17th century, with adaptations over time. The renewed interest in the Cape Cod style sprung back up in the 1930’s, as they began filling many neighborhoods across the country because of their small, efficient size and the relative ease to mass-produce.

This home for sale is the pick of the week for a couple of reasons. First, the location is fabulous. I love the area right in there behind the Kansas City Art Institute, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art. This home is just a nice short stroll to all three. Or, for a short time- you can also walk to the Wild Oats Market at 43rd and Main (rumored to be relocating and expanding within the next three years - I hear talk of 51st and Main and/or Downtown). And you really aren’t too far to walk to the Plaza either, though many probably wouldn’t unless it is a gorgeous day and you were wearing your favorite trainers.  My second reason for choosing to highlight this home is the historical details and charm of this house. Sure, it doesn’t have a brand new granite kitchen, and there is some serious painting to do - but this house has so much to offer in the details. It has a large amount of living space, beautiful woodwork, stately architecture and a pretty lot. Plus, the bathrooms are probably the coolest vintage baths I have seen - all white/grey marble on the walls and floor, very cool vintage pedestal sinks, and the baths have these intricate old  shower heads that are huge - very reminiscent of the rain shower fixtures we see on the shelves today - and I think they might have been made of copper as they have a slight patina but that’s just a guess. One other detail that excited me were the unusual doorknobs. Typically in older homes I see the ones that look like cut crystal or carved metal - but these were like little crystal balls. They are really special.

For more information about this house - feel free to contact me!

There is an incredible home FOR SALE located at 4425 Terrace Street in the Westport/West Plaza area (photo above). It was built in 1938, designed by the notable Kansas City architect Philip T. Drotts, and is a great example of an International Style home in Kansas City. It was commissioned by a local cement contractor Emil Rohrer, which may explain why it was all built using concrete block construction. More common for the times and the neighborhood was more of a shirtwaist or craftsman style home - this stucco and concrete home really stands out with its flat roof, balconies and glass block among homes with wood siding, gables, and pitched roofs.

According to Wikipedia, the International Style of Architecture was a major style of the 1920s and 1930s. The general characteristics of the International Style were that of “a radical simplification of form, a rejection of ornament, and adoption of glass, steel and concrete as preferred materials”. This movement also took place in Western Europe and is associated to the Dutch de Stijl movement and the German Bauhaus movement. I found a Flickr Group called International Style Architecture which has some great photos - check it out.

Sometimes people refer to a house as having “good bones”. But what does this mean? Well, around here in the older parts of town, it is important to consider a home’s bones when buying. How is the foundation, the floors, the walls, the layout, fireplace? What type of materials was it built with - brick, stone, stucco, concrete? Who was the builder and when was it built? Many times all this will be satisfactory, but the maintenance will have been neglected - or maybe it just had a bad decorator and it needs some scrubbing and painting. The potential is there - you just have to see past the 60’s wallpaper and see the beautiful solid pine floors underneath the shag carpet. The bones are the things you can’t change (or can’t easily change) - think of it as a naked house. Things you can change are paint, kitchen counter tops, terrible lighting, ugly carpet… It is important to keep this perspective when you are out there looking at houses because it is easy to be romanced by a shiny new kitchen with granite counter tops especially when they are throwing in that flat-screen plasma tv… Try to keep your eyes and your mind open to the diamond in the rough.

The photo above is of a house for sale off Ward Parkway that has “good bones” - but needs a bit of updating to bring it around. According to the listing notes, it is a Dible Tudor.

Found a good blog recently called Mrs. Blandings. It’s a home design/decor blog in Kansas City. She posts often and generally has some good eye candy and it’s a good place to find inspiration.

In a follow-up to my recent post about Vintage Kansas City Postcards, the Kansas City Museum will host a lecture by Northeast News Publisher, Michael Bushnell, titled “Historic Postcards of Old Kansas City.” The lecture is scheduled for 2 p.m. Sunday, November 18th at 2 p.m.

Apparently, Mr. Bushnell has quite a collection of interesting Kansas City postcards, and has even written a book on the subject.  See the Events Page of the Kansas City Museum website for more info on the lecture (be sure to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page).