shepherd park: DC's Colonial Village: Once More, It's Slow But Stable - 12/14/11 03:00 PM
Last year, I took at special look at some neighborhood statistics for the third quarter. I’ll do the same now. Why? Because the third quarter is a vulnerable time where trends show up in a more pronounced way. The market typically isn’t as slow as it is at the end of the year, but late summer/early fall is relocation time and often reflects strategic and economic decision home sellers and buyers make--in reaction to the local as well as national economy.
Let’s start with the market activity in Colonial Village. What do we see here?
First of all, it seems that … (0 comments)

shepherd park: When Men Were Still Handy, Part II - 12/12/11 09:04 PM
Well, turns out that--at least in Washington--the average middle class guy in the early 20th century might not have known that much more about house building after all. But we'll get to that later.
Yesterday, I promised more on kit homes. Here we go.
The next amazing discovery I made when I was browsing all kinds of libraries and websites to find out more about the other big pre-cut/catalog companies. (Sears, Roebuck and Co. has not only been the most written about, most well-known and largest in numbers of units sold; the term "Sears home" has also become more or less … (10 comments)

shepherd park: When Men Were Still Handy - 12/10/11 06:07 PM
Original Source: The House In The Post
  1917 Sears mail order bungalow in Washington DC's Shepherd Park neighborhood. Photo: Piers Lamb/Evers & Co.
Last week, my business partner, Marcie Sandalow, and I had a listing appointment at a great old house. The owner mentioned it had been a mail order home, not from the Sears catalog but rather from another, a little less well-known kit company.
That was a neat little fact because there is a growing fan base for these homes. There are dozens of them hidden in Washington’s old “streetcar suburbs” –such as Chevy Chase, Cleveland Park, the … (15 comments)

shepherd park: The Endless Gutter Clutter - 11/30/11 03:19 PM
Original source: DChouseCat--Over And Over Again
 

It's no fun, and one of those endlessly repeating things a homeowner has to put up with.  But it’s so important that I will preach it here again: Clean out your gutters!
If the gutters on your house look like the one on my garage here in the picture, you should actually clean them out NOW! At least in our area, the trees are pretty much done shedding--even the annual leaf collection and cutter trucks have finally passed through most of our streets.
If there was only one thing I have learned from the … (4 comments)

shepherd park: What Does The Shark Have To Do With The Housing Market In Silver Spring? - 07/23/10 12:36 AM
The shark is back! Heading home from the Beltway and approaching Downtown Silver Spring at the DC Line this afternoon, I could see the tail from far away. I fiddled for my cell phone and was lucky enough to catch a few seconds at a red light. Check out that “dorsal fin”—(thanks, Amanda!)—on the roof! The Discovery Channel headquarters are decked out in celebration of the station’s “Shark Week,” a series of scary programs scheduled to run the first week of August.
So, if you live in Silver Spring, or in nearby Shepherd Park/DC and Rock Creek Forest, if you regularly … (5 comments)

shepherd park: A Most Charming Shepherd Park Classic - 02/09/09 12:07 AM
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shepherd park: How NOT To Increase the Curb Appeal Of Your Home - 07/31/08 01:28 PM
We all know that trees, shrubs and ornamental plants can beautify a house and certainly increase its curb appeal. Usually, that is. There are some, however, that don’t help, like when they’ve grown to completely obscure an attractive façade, or when their roots have started to invade the foundation of the home like a malicious tumor, bringing in moisture and threatening the substance of the whole structure.

The "tree" in the chimney here, right at the front of a house I just showed, is probably not a serious threat.  But it's on a beautiful old house on a beautiful block in … (5 comments)

shepherd park: Colonial Village -- Open Sunday, July 27, 2-5 pm! - 07/23/08 06:36 PM
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