Austin ModHouse

I've just spent the last three days in another real estate class, ten hours each day.  realtors are often wide assortment of strong personalities.  often resulting in an entertaining verbal volley of sarcasm and wit.

on the second day we had a field trip to view properties.  I decided I'd be better off driving the big red truck than being stuck in some other car as we raced (zig zagged) between properties.  some have bigger issues with their phones than others.  despite the fact that there were six other people in the car, we were all subjected to a constant barage of phone converstaions regarding a garage apartment.  by the end of the day the other six could easily quote her sales pitch. 

so then we viewed an MCM, the real deal.  I was a bit shocked at what I heard next.

it was suggested, "this is a six hundred thousand dollar tear down".

it seems many realtors are unaware that people would actually be seeking this particular style of home, funky old fixtures and all.  this one was a real diamond in the rough and in a highly desirable area.  I had to object to the teardown suggestion.  the home could benefit from some sympathetic updates, but I'd hate to see it scraped.  this area is plentiful of million dollar homes, 640k isn't a bad starting point for a gated home with indoor pool in an upscale neighborhood near lake austin.

I was able to use my iphone to produce modernaustin.com where there is an entry for this home complete with comments from other people who have seen it.  it seemed my positive opinion of this home was shared by others.  I was able to introduce the class to a new term; Mid Century Modern (MCM).  they found some humor in this. 

another good site for MCM is lottaliving.com, especially their message board.

another site that is specific to modernism and green building methods is livemodern.com

livemodern.com is where we made first contact with our architect mark meyer