Rostad Realty

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  As nice looking as these designs are, I feel that some of the concepts are a bit outdated.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.