I’m super excited about our new listing at 1106 S Highland! When you drive south on Highland past Wilshire, there’s a barrier at Edgewood, and the street turns into Edgewood and takes you to La Brea. This property is south of the barrier at Highland & Edgewood, where Highland becomes a quiet tree lined street in Longwood Highlands. The offering is a fully vacant Spanish duplex with 3 beds + 2.25 baths in each unit ,and a super unique floorplan for a duplex where the kitchens overlook the extra large sprawling backyard!  Each unit has a large living room that opens to the dining room, and both rooms have deep windows that bathe the property in sunshine. There’s a bonus room off both units next to the dining room, perfect for an office or den. The kitchens are large and have adjacent breakfast rooms + laundry. Of the 3 bedrooms in each unit, one is en-suite, the second we staged as an office in each unit, and there’s a large shared bath off the hallway for the 2 secondary bedrooms. The rooms are all unusually large, and at the same time, the layout feels uniquely cozy + cohesive, more like a home than a duplex. Most unusual is the huge sprawling backyard, perfect to create long stretches of grassy lawn or a pool. The location is central & friendly, and of course it’s amazing that it’s fully vacant, so easy to show and ready for an owner to occupy! I can’t wait for our first open houses today, Sunday 2-5, and Tuesday 11-2!
We have an Off Market Opportunity that’s a Handsome Hancock Park Brick English Tudor on a beautiful tree lined street with 5 beds, 5 baths, 4768 sq ft on a 13,862 sq ft lot. There’s a bedroom suite + powder downstairs, and a primary suite + 3 additional beds & 2 baths upstairs. There’s gracious formal living + dining rooms and a huge den that opens to the yard. The backyard features a covered al fresco dining area & a sparkling pool, surrounded by lush hedges for privacy. There’s a freestanding garage + porte cochere behind a remote access gate + long driveway for off-street parking. The house is currently tenant occupied so subject to a lease and notice to the tenants to show.
We closed on the sale at 2327 Camden Ave this week! I loved working with the lovely buyers, who were a total treat to represent! I love that the house is elegant, designer-done, and perfectly move-in ready. In 2013 a previous owner added a primary suite to the house, with an attached bath and walk-in closet, making the house now have 3 nice sized bedrooms + a sunshine filled big office + 4 full bathrooms. I love the way the pitched beamed ceiling living room opens to the dining room (that has double doors to the front porch), which opens to the remodeled kitchen. I wish our sweet buyers all the happiness in the world in their new perfect home!
On a property that’s closing this week where we’re representing the seller, the buyer set out to get homeowner’s insurance & they were notified that the sellers filed an insurance claim in 2020 for a water leak. For the buyers to get insured, they need a “letter of experience” from the seller’s carrier who covered the 2020 claim + they need to install a Flo by Moen Leak Detection System.Â
On a property where we’re representing the buyer, we had to take non photoshopped pictures of every exterior elevation and send them to the insurance broker, along with a roof report. Insurance companies are making site visits, researching past seller claims on properties, and flying drones over roofs as regular practice.Â
On Friday we had a scheduled buyer final walk through for a sale we’re closing this week. Our buyers arrived early & the across-the-street-neighbor pulled them into her garage and feverishly fabricated a very colorful embellished tale about her next door neighbor who she described to be a serial felon (with wacky details of the crimes he commits), terrifying my buyers. With the listing agents’ help, we got a very caught off guard seller on the phone who was shocked but reassuring. I requested the phone number of another neighbor on the block so we could confirm that the stories were not true. I walked with my buyers and knocked on the next door neighbor’s door, where we met a very nice gentleman who lived there for 50 years, and he reassured us more by the shocked look on his face when he heard the story, than by the words he said letting us know it’s absolutely not true. Luckily I have a fellow agent friend who lives on the block who can confirm too. The listing agent hypothesizes that he upset that across-the-street neighbor when he asked her to remove her political lawn signs before his open house so people with all beliefs and affiliations would feel welcome on the block. That was a little more “getting to know the neighbors” than we usually see…
For the days before July 4th, Seth and I visited Baja California to snorkel in the Sea of Cortez! We were fascinated to see that the Gulf of California in summer is completely & totally deserted. Barren cliffs the color of sun bleached bricks slope gently into the sea, their folds and deep grooves surrounded by water a brilliant navy hue, goats climb the craggy mountains, cows roam freely across the highway, and there are absolutely no humans in sight. The productive waters of the Sea of Cortez churn with megafauna: whale sharks, hammerheads, orcas, sea lions, dolphins, blue, sperm and humpback whales, turtles and mobula rays, to name only a few. Mobula rays (Mobula munkiana)—also called Munk’s devil rays—are the manta’s smaller, shyer cousins. They congregate en masse to mate and give birth. In addition to their impressive ability to gather in the hundreds of thousands, they are also phenomenal jumpers. They can reach vertical heights of nearly 10 feet. When they splash back into the water, the sound cracks the surface like lightning, earning them the nickname “flying tortillas” from local fishermen. It was magnificent to see the flying Mobulas above water, and to slide quietly into the water and observe the schools of mobulas swim past underneath us in the water. A hammerhead shark swam right beside our little boat. And on our way back to shore, there were rapid-fire silvery flying fish moving faster than we were! In Cabo Pulmo National Park we watched a sea turtle swim with all four legs, swiftly climb to the surface of the water for a breath of air, and then plunge back down to the depths and swim away. We saw eel, snapper, parrot fish, schools of Jackfish + Sturgeon fish. We’re so lucky to live so close to the Sea of Cortez; we want to go back in winter to see all the whales!
Wishing everyone an amazing Fourth of July weekend!
Xoxoxoxo,
Sheri
