Front Elevation: Art House
Owning an architect-designed home is akin to living in a work of art.
July 1, 2005
Design is your passion. You have traveled the world, attending the most prestigious auctions to find exquisite furnishings for your home—pieces by Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Josef Hoffmann. Every element in your house is masterfully designed, from your everyday flatware to the fixtures in the master bath. Equally important to you is the architecture of your home. Size does not necessarily matter, but design integrity does. The term “McMansion” makes you cringe. To you, a home worth living in is a home designed by a legend—an architectur-ally significant property created by the likes of Richard Meier, Frank Lloyd Wright, John Lautner, Richard Neutra or Frank Gehry.; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
Hummingbird House, a Will Bruder Architects residence in
Paradise Valley,
Ariz., listed for $3.6 million. (Click image to
enlarge) Bill Timmerman, courtesy
Jarson & Jarson, www.azarchitecture.comFor you, and those who share your affinity for design, a home crafted by a famed architect, either past or present, is more than an investment: It provides the rare opportunity to act as a champion of historic architecture.
"These properties are works of art,” says Mike Deasy, a partner at Mossler Deasy & Doe, a Beverly Hills, Calif., real estate firm that started selling architecturally significant properties in 1978. “We were the first to market these properties and had the first web site of this kind.” The company’s 7-year-old site, www.architectureforsale.com, showcases more than 400 architect-designed properties from around the world. Recent sales include a 3,300-square-foot Richard Neutra home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles that sold for nearly $4 million. “Homes of the same size in the neighborhood are going for low to mid-$3 million,” he says. In Bel-Air, the 5.2-acre Singleton house by Richard Neutra sold for $6 million. Neighboring houses that are commensurate in size are valued at $2 million to $3 million.“Buyers have a design consciousness that did not exist before,” says Mossler Deasy & Doe broker Brian Linder, a licensed architect and contractor who lists his properties on his own web site, www.thevalueofarchitecture.com. According to Linder, many of his firm’s clients consider themselves conservators of important works of art. “It’s a passing-of–the-torch thing,” he says. “They make an effort to find the next caretaker of their home.” A case in point is Pierre Koenig’s Case Study House No. 21 in Los Angeles, which came on the market just after the Maslon house, a Richard Neutra masterpiece in Rancho Mirage, Calif., was razed in 2002. (The Maslons sold the home to a “preservationist” who quickly bulldozed it, causing a public uproar.)
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A Paul Rudolph–designed home in Sarasota, Fla., owned by
realtor Martie
Lieberman. (Click image to enlarge) Photography
by William S. Speer
“The Case Study No. 21 seller said, ‘I have to put a price on this house to prevent it from being sold for land value,’ ” Linder recounts. “He wanted to keep it out of the hands of predators.” The 1,320-square-foot home sold for $1.58 million—or $1,200 per square foot (the neighborhood average is $400).
While the work of 20th-century masters—Neutra, Rudolf Schindler, John Lautner, Harwell Hamilton Harris, Thornton Ladd, Paul Williams and Wallace Neff—put Southern California on the global design map, other regions in the nation are experiencing a similar demand for architect-designed homes. Says Dallas broker Douglas Newby: “Today’s buyers want couture architecture. Design trumps square footage.” Architecturally significant homes in Texas by modernists such as Bud Oglesby, Mies van der Rohe pupil Howard Meyer, Edward Durrell Stone (of the Kennedy Center and U.S. Embassy in New Delhi renown) and Frank Lloyd Wright protégé Charles Barglebaugh, are selling for up to 40 percent more than non-designer homes of the same size in their respective neighborhoods. According to Newby, the most expensive estate in the Dallas area, designed by New York and Palm Beach architect Maurice Fatio and worth more than $50 million, received multiple offers and sold for more than 25 percent over its appraised value in 1999. “These houses live bigger,” he says. “Name and pedigree add value.”
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A Malibu, Calif., residence with views of the Pacific by
Buff, Smith &
Hensman. (Click image to enlarge)
In Palm Beach, Fla., Addison Miz-ner’s Mediterranean-style manses—in addition to the designs of Fatio, Marion Sims Wyeth and John Volk—continue to sell well. “Anything of the Mizner era is highly sought after and commands a high price,” says broker Bill Kirk. On the Gulf Coast in Sarasota, the rare, innovative designs of the Sarasota School of Architecture are “hotter than a firecracker, especially the Rudolphs,” says broker Martie Lieberman, a self-taught modern architecture expert (and owner of a 1955 Paul Rudolph home) who matches preservation-conscious buyers with endangered properties.
The architect-designed home craze has even penetrated lower-profile markets. Ninety percent of all sales conducted by Arizona firm Jarson & Jarson are architecturally significant—from the works of Al Beadle to Will Bruder and Eddie Jones, according to owner Scott Jarson. In Portland, Ore., broker Jolynne Ash says demand for turn-of-the-century architecture by Ellis Lawrence, John Virginius Ennis and Roscoe Hemenway is growing. A mint condition 1936 Lawrence home (at 2,600 square feet, small by Portland standards) garnered $1.15 million. “It sold for more than most estate homes built at that time,” Ash says. “We may be behind other cities in prices, but the historic district homes are selling for more.” Ash says Oregon homeowners who buy homes listed on the National Register of Historic Places receive a tax incentive: Their property taxes can be frozen for 15 years. Many states, including California, Arizona and Florida, have followed suit with their own incentives.Built in different eras to accommodate different needs, most architecturally significant homes lack modern amenities, from adequate storage to expansive kitchens and master suite baths. And while many designer properties lack desirable locations or square footage, most real estate agents agree that the value of the architecture can somewhat offset the home’s incurable defects. “If a John Lautner home came on the market, I would tell my client to buy it regardless of condition,” says Jan Horn, founder and executive director of Coldwell Banker’s architectural division in Los Angeles.
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In addition to location, the home’s condition and/or renovation, the architect’s pedigree and the baseline price of similarly sized homes in the neighborhood come into play when determining value. (“Has someone fought with the house and lost?” asks Richard Stanley, a Los Angeles real estate agent who has been selling architecturally significant properties since 1987).
The Schindlers, Neutras, Lautners and Wrights occupy the highest tier of architects. Their protégés come in second, followed by modern-day masters: the Frank Gehrys and Richard Meiers. But given the demand for innovative design, even creatively rendered homes by unknown architects are selling very well in today’s market. Consider the home designed by Kirk Shimazu in Playa del Rey, Calif.—a modernist masterpiece of three-dimensional forms and concrete, glass and steel. “We recognized that the right buyer would appreciate the house, and we sold it in the first five minutes of the sale,” Linder says, adding that local real estate agents maintained that the home would not sell for more than $800,000. The purchase price: $995,000.
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The Na Xeman House, on the island of Ibiza, is a home
designed by Ramón
Esteve. It is available for lease for $25,000 to
$35,000 per month. (Click image to enlarge) Courtesy of Mossler Deasy & Doe“This field is like collectors of cars or art—the rare Ferrari or Picasso or Monet,” Horn says. “People appreciate that they appreciate in value, just like art.” Horn, who has been marketing architect-designed properties for 30 years, says this exclusive market accounts for 15 to 20 percent of all listings. “Fewer than 500 were sold in 2004—and not even 2 percent in Los Angeles County,” he says. “These are great architects—historically significant as well as those commanding a huge reputation now, including Gehry and Meier,” Horn says. “Their homes appreciate more than the market is appreciating.”
Horn cites the John Lautner property he sold for $2 million in 2004. “It had not been touched in 50 years and someone paid top dollar for it.” Another client bought the only Oscar Niemeyer in town for $6 million—a total fixer-upper—while another renovation buff set aside $4 million for his next purchase. “He said, ‘If it needs more work, the better,’ ” Horn recalls. “More often than not, homeowners want to buy totally renovated, which can cost more than $1,000 per square foot. But there is a submarket of well-heeled people who want to buy homes that need a lot of work.”Enter Marmol Radziner & Associates, an internationally renowned Los Angeles architecture firm specializing in vintage property preservation. “You have to accept that there’s an economic challenge to the process, and because so many of these homes were altered or not maintained well, there’s a great deal of damage and problems created by time and elements,” says managing principal Leo Marmol. “There’s also an emotional challenge to the restoration process. It can be stressful, but where there is struggle to achieve something, there is amazing satisfaction.”
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The firm has renovated Neutra, Schindler, Lautner and Wright homes, and residences designed by Harris, John Chapman and Albert Frey. Restorations have lasted from less than one year up to five years. Restoring these masterful designs to current building codes without altering the look of the final product adds to the challenge.
Highly respected for investing “greater academic rigueur” in its extensive research for each renovation—from studying the architect’s original drawings to the furnishings and materials, many of which are no longer available—the firm goes to great lengths to ensure authenticity. One example includes the corrugated sheet metal favored by Neutra, which Marmol Radziner reproduced for a project.“The discoveries and thrill of making something that most people never have the courage to attempt is invigorating,” Marmol says. “The objects we live with and live in are inherently more valuable if we design them to support our lifestyle with dignity. Do that with all of the elements in the home, and you gain a greater appreciation for life.”
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tect’s famous “open shelter” concept. (Click image to enlarge) right: Courtesy of Douglas Newby & Associates; below: Courtesy of Mossler Deasy & Doe