Selling Camelia

Every Real Estate agent should have to sell something of her own every so often in order to be able to empathize with her clients. So here I go selling a piece of property that I love dearly. I bought it on a whim with my then husband, Dennis after running into it on tour one cold Thursday in late November of 1996,

It belonged to the estate of a kinetic artist named Sid Gordin. He had apparently lived and worked there for many years, taking a simple West Berkeley Victorian with a yard and some land on the side and filling every inch of the yard with house and studio whenever he had any extra money.

This video shows some of the rooms. When the photos were taken by the able Jenn Kelly of Red Oak Realty, our son Jonah was still using some of the studio to store his sculptures there.

In the future the new owner can use the studio for her or his own purposes; art being one of them.

There is more to be said but I am very sleepy after launching three new properties today: 1415 Keoncrest Drice listed at $595,000,
1633 Portland Avenue listed at $699,000 both in Berkeley, and with Janet Kaplan, 5490 Kales Avenue in Rockridge listed at $995,000. These launchings are the result of two months work . Now we market the hell of them all and then we wait until the week of the 20th to see what the fruits of our labor will bring. I think that they will be rich and juicy but there is no telling.

Camelia, by the way is a fabulous live work property at the corner of 7th Street. It measures 3400 square feet and sits on 4300 square feet. It is a block from Picante and is 104 years old. It has a long driveway with a sexy yellow roll-up door and the potential for a wonderful roof-top garden. Right now the roof-top garden has steps to get up there but needs a serious railing to make it safe.

We have listed Camelia at a very realistic $895,000. The last time that we listed it, in 2008, we had our heads in the sand and had it listed way too high. Now we are my advice and pricing it to sell.

I will talk more about all of these properties when I am not so tired. Stay tuned.