Is Valley Village a state of mind?

Where's Valley Village? Is it really Studio City, Los Angeles, or good old North Hollywood? Thanks to the management of the MLS and Wikipedia, we now have a carved-in-stone answer.  Southern boundary: Ventura Fwy.  Northern boundary: Burbank Boulevard.  Eastern boundary: the 170.  Western boundary: the Tujunga wash.  Now, does anybody know the boundaries of Sherman Village?

The past week in real estate and a big DON'T for sellers

This past week brought "more of same" as far as real estate goes. I toured Valley Glen, Valley Village, North Hollywood and Burbank for homes that are 3+ beds, 2+baths, 1200+ square feet, and between $450k and $600k.

You would think that would describe every home on the market in the SFV.

Nope.

I found four homes that were more-or-less decent in that price range. One, on Mariposa in Burbank, faces the back wall of Costco. Another in Burbank was decorated with a highly-developed devotion to knotty pine (as versus the medium-developed devotion so common in the Valley) and a third house had no windows in the master bath.

Which brings me to the fourth house in Valley Village, which is arguably the nicest of the bunch. But: the owners made a 1/2 bath of the master bedroom closet. The master was already small. Sellers, putting toilets where they don't belong is a big turn-off to buyers. Toilets belong in proper bathrooms, not in closets, laundry rooms, garages, or back patios. I've seen them in all those locations in homes for sale, and those homes invariably stay on the market for a long, long time and sell for less than comparable sales. So if you're thinking about adding a "bathroom" in say, the hall closet, for the love of God don't.

Observations and universal truths of the week

I saw a lot of homes this week and, as usual, I experienced several surprises.

Most unpleasant surprise of the week: A home on Fremont in South Pasadena. This $900k house seemed under-priced, but it’s on a busy street. Nope. Although no indication was given that the house wasn’t just perfect, we arrived to find poor maintenance, rotting windows and a green, algae-filled pool. Yes, it had a gorgeous kitchen (see below) but it also had a teenage boy problem (see below). All in all, just plain gross and I don’t know why anybody would pay almost a million for it.

Trend observation of the week: almost every house I saw had a nice, recently-redone kitchen. Unfortunately, that’s as far as the sellers’ efforts went. Sellers, if you want that all-singing, all-dancing great kitchen, fine. But please spare some money and effort maintaining the rest of the house. Like maybe fix the roof. Or paint. Or replace old windows. Or clean the place.

Little house of teenage boy horrors: Teenage boys are the scourge of the earth where real estate is concerned. What did we see in these boys when we were teenage girls? Their rooms are invariably not just messy, they can be scary and disgusting. They leave them for showings under duress, if they leave them at all. And if the teenage boy has his own bathroom, DON’T GO IN THERE. If you must, wear a hazmat suit and blinders. Sellers, please ship your teenage sons off to military school while the house is listed. You’ll be glad you did.

Why is it so hard to show homes? Alas, lockboxes seem to be disappearing. Instead, to preview homes, I had to make at least three calls per house to the listing agent, listing office, seller, what have you, and then come at a narrowly-appointed time. Okay, I can deal with that. But then I got to a house on Zelzah in Encino at my appointed time and the seller wouldn’t let me in. She said nobody had called her. And the three calls made to a listing agent for a house on Miranda in Valley Village went unreturned for about 36 hours. When she finally called me back, she upbraided me for not coming to the six previous open houses or caravans. Whatever. But if I can’t show it, my buyer clients can't buy it.

Nicest surprise of the week: the Sparr Heights neighborhood in Montrose. Still lovely, still well-maintained, and very few homes have been bigified beyond all reason. Not inexpensive, though.