Rostad Realty

I am offering up a very unique piece of property that I own personally for sale.  The asking price is $375,000 $350,000.  The address is 8811 NE 116th Place, Kirkland, WA 98034.  I give you the address with a word of caution.  Don’t go visit the site without allowing one of us to meet you there.  It is very hard to determine the boundaries and orientation of this property without a guide who knows the land.   More general information on the listing can be found here.

What makes this property unique? This lot is a short walk from Juanita Beach, yet it feels very private.  the actual lot is just under 17,000 square feet but it sits just to the south of the Finn Hill Meadows.  The Meadows is a plat created by the Kirks (founders of Kirkland) in the 1920s.  There are 27 lots in the meadows that are all circular and roughly 1/4 acre each.  Those lots sit inside of 35 acres of open space.  This land is completely platted and will never change from what it is today.  There is a Meadow adjacent to my lot which has grazing horses in it from time to time.  The closest home this direction is over 300 feet away.  To the West is a large ravine with an existing home on the other side of the ravine.  In it’s current use, the ravine provides a nice natural buffer from your neighbor.  You don’t see that home without stepping well into the woods.  To the south is a 2 acre parcel with an large older home on site.  The property is impacted by two streams which means that platting not likely possible and redevelopment is not likely since the home is quite charming and not a teardown.  The property is heavily wooded and provides a good buffer from the harsh southern sunlight.  To the east is one neighbor with a very nice daylight rambler built in the late nineties.  There are even some views off this direction of Juanita Bay.  The access comes from this direction as well.

Where are the utilities; will I have to bring them in? This property is fully developed.  When I first purchased the land, there was no sewer in place.  Something odd happened with the platting process many years back and the sewer easement was never written.  Through negotiation with the neighbor to the south, I obtained a sewer easement and installed a six inch sewer line stub onto the south-eastern corner of the property.  As for the power, an undeveloped King County right of way borders the Northern side of the property and there is a power pole there.  The water main is right at the North-eastern corner of the property near the neighbor’s water meter and the gas is within close proximity of the water main.  Having the utilities at the site eliminates several unknown costs when compared to pieces of raw, undeveloped land.

What do I need to start construction? If you decide to use our floorplan which I will describe below, all you need to do is pick up the permit at King County.  It has mostly been paid for.  The remaining balance is roughly $7,000.  I will sign a transfer of applicant status form with King County to allow you to build with this permit.  You can start building right away!

What are the problems with the site? All sites of some issues.  Some worst than others.  You may look at this property and see that has some slope to it.  This is not a big issue.  The slope is less than 15% meaning that we are able to use a standard foundation with a standard footing.  We have a soils report written by a licensed geotechnical engineer that backs this up and states it clearly.  The next issue is that the access crosses a stream.  The county is requiring those to be removed and replanted with native species that we have specified already.  We are not paving across the stream for access, but it is necessary to pave in the stream buffer.  This is an issue that we have already dealt with through mitigation.  We have prepared an exact plan of what needs to take place.  There is a small portion of blackberry bushes near the access.  That’s it!  Last issue would be the road to the site.  For some, this is an issue, for others, it’s not.  The road spurring off of Juanita Drive is a one-lane road.  It is not heavily traveled but when a car approaches from the opposite direction, you will have to pull to the side.  There are many pullouts so this isn’t usually a problem.  The road in itself is eclectic and charming.  The cars that do go up and down the road tend to travel more cautious and slowly.  This is certainly not a bad thing for a neighborhood.

The site has lots of trees, can I clearcut it? In a word, no.  You WILL, however, be allowed to clear all of the trees that sit where the proposed structure is and all of the trees within close proximity of the structure.  We have drawings that show exactly which trees go and which trees will stay.  You may be allowed to clear even more trees, I did not ask to though since I didn’t feel there was any gain by doing so.

Do I have to build using your plans? Use our plans or build your own.  An architect and I have designed a fantastic 5600 square foot home to be built on this property.  The home features 5 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms and an open, casual floorplan with large spaces that are perfect for entertaining big groups of people.  There are two media rooms, and a den on the main floor as well.  If you wanted to save some money, you could always leave the basement unfinished to save costs.  This would shave the square footage down to 4100 and leave you with 3 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms.

If you wish to design and build your own house instead, you will have to resubmit for a building permit.  I have done all of the hard work such as installing the sewer line, obtaining geotech studies, etc.  You may need to update the soils report but it shouldn’t cost anywhere near the price of starting from scratch.  You may also be able to re-use certain studies and determinations that the county has already rendered for this parcel.

Here is a video tour to show you the general shape of the home.  This video was never finished so the front porch is not present, the basement is missing some of it’s windows and the other window don’t match the architectural drawings but the general structure is will give you a rough idea of how the house sits.

How is the location; What is nearby? Instead of telling you, I would like to simply show you:


While you probably won’t be able to sell your car and walk EVERYWHERE here, you should certainly take note house close Juanita Beach, Starbucks, Spud Fish and Chips and Juanita Village are.   Another thing I should mention is the school district.  This property sits within the Lake Washington School District.  This is one of Washington’s finest districts.  The elementary school is Sandberg Elementry, the middle school is Finn Hill Jr. High and the high school is Juanita High.

Why would we sell such an incredible building site? We put a great deal of effort into obtaining the building permit on this property.  It took us over three years to get the final approval from the time we first purchased the land.  During this time, we grew anxious to move to a new location so bought an existing home.  While our home is not nearly as nice as the Juanita Point one will be, we don’t wish to move again.

If you want more information on this unique building site, please contact Rich Rostad at 206-841-8460.  Visit this page for more information.

Northwest corner of the building

Southwest corner of the building

Back side of the exterior

Overview floorplan

Detailed view of the service areas

As a real estate agent, I see lots of interesting architecture.  Some of it is new, some is older.  I tend to gravitate towards late 50’s and early 60’s designs mostly.  In California, these would be older since many of the concepts originated there but in the Northwest here, the early 60’s is the sweet spot for mid-century modern types of designs.  As nice looking as these designs are, I feel that some of the concepts are a bit outdated.  People these days tend to want larger kitchens, high ceilings and a place to put their tv.  Back in those days energy concerns and cost were primary design factors.  We are getting back to that now that we are past the McMansion era but people still want high ceilings, big kitchens and a place to put their tvs.

One type of real estate that we often list is vacant land.  Vacant land is notoriously hard to sell because buyers lack the vision of what a property could be and what the total potential is.  What we have started doing to market these properties is to actually draft preliminary home designs that fit within the city’s lot use restrictions.  So far, we’ve had fairly good response with this method.  Our presale home listings are getting roughly 3-4 times the traffic the vacant land listing counterpart.

Sometimes I will hire an architect to help me with a design but in this case, I came up with the design on my own.  I call this design the Studio House.  My goal was to design a structure that could be offered at an EXTREMELY competitive price on a lot that we own.  The site this home is designed for has many land use restrictions.  It is a 14,000 square foot lot but the city will only allow us to use 3,000 total square feet.  The rest of the site has to be cleaned up, replanted and then fenced off and not used for day-to-day activities such as installing a playset.  The final outcome will be a very low maintenance yard that may best be suited for a single person with a unique lifestyle.

This home is a big open room.  Think of a downtown loft style apartment, but standing alone on it’s own piece of land with 3 sets of double doors that connect it to the back yard.  The home will be extremely bright but remain private due to the placement of the windows and the floating clerestory roof section.  Two more noteworthy exterior features are the covered front porch that fades away as you walk towards the carport and the section of CMU bricks on the Southwest corner of the building.  I feel the styling is a nice mix of old and new.  The final measurements are 905 square feet.  It has a large closet in the back, a coat closet to give your living space some privacy as you walk in the front door, and a laundry area that is shared with the closet.  To top it off, there is a one-car carport with tons of outdoor storage cabinets for storaging bicycles, skis & other things that you don’t want to bring into the house.

If you are interested in seeing the home site for this particular house, the address is 90XX 126th Avenue NE, Kirkland, WA 98033.  It sits one lot North of the corner of NE 90th Street and 126th Avenue NE on the East side of the street.  The neigbhorhood is well established.  This just happened to be an infill lot that was never developed because it had no sewer line (until now).  We are offering the home built on our lot with a generous spec list for $299,950.  By far the least expensive brand new single family residence in Kirkland.