Two families displaced in 1489 Newton fire, fundraiser on Dec. 4

Recently a fire burned a few units in 1489 Newton Street NW, a recently renovated affordable housing coop called Newton Street Cooperative, making two families homeless and destroying everything they had. It's a shame for them and for the building, which has the building has been a nice story -- residents are transforming it and making it nicer while still keeping it affordable. 

Luckily the fire didn't spread to neighboring units or buildings, but the damage was severe for the residents. Here's an email from Jim Graham's chief of staff, passed along by ANC1A chair Kent Boese.

My neighbor, Wayde Curry who is also copied in on this e-mail , was one of the first persons to action on the day of the devastating fire that took place at 1489 Newton St NW. .
He jumped into action and alerted and warned the adjacent properties of the fire. Thank God after the smoke cleared we found that there were no casualties or serious injuries. .
There were two families directly impacted and displaced, Mrs. Jane Lewis , 70 yrs. old in apt. 22 where the fire originated, is staying with her son for the time being and the second tenant Ms. Dale Walters, in apt. #2 was displaced because of the water damage. She has 4 children. She was headed to a hotel on 14th Street , sponcered by the Red Cross, who was on the scene and working with both families.  

Mr. Curry is planning a fund raiser for both tenants, on Wednesday December 4th at 6:00pm, at 1477 Newton St, NW Washington DC , in the community room. Please come out and show your support to our neighbors on this very special time of year and share this message with everyone you can.

A neighbor sent this too, with some more info:

On Nov 27, our neighbors Mrs Jane Lewis (74) and Miss Dale Walter of 1489 Newton Street became homeless due to an early morning fire that destoryed all they owned!! (A day before Thanksgiving). 

We their concerned neighbors have decided to host a fundraiser on Dec 4 at The Haven House Building (Meeting Room) at 1477 Newton St at 6 pm. 

There Mrs Lewis and Miss Walters will be present.
Please come out and share your love and your support.
For more information, please contact Wayde Curry (202) 710-0064

Want to live in a huge former auto garage in an alley off Irving? Coolest house ever?

I don't often write about real estate, but this is pretty awesome: a friend forwarded a listing on Redfin for a 4000 square foot garage located in an alley off the 1000 block of Irving Street NW. Formerly an automotive garage, the place has a lot of really awesome-looking murals (including a Chuck Brown one) and graffiti is wide open inside. As my friend said: "this is the coolest house I've ever seen."

It's listed at $849,900 and I'm sure it would cost a fair amount to make it a liveable space (and to bring it up to code to get whatever permits you'd need) but it looks like it could make for a really amazing warehouse-type living space. The listing says it has 1 1/2 bathrooms, which presumably means there was a shower and toilet in this garage -- I guess that makes sense, mechanics can get messy. It looks like it used to be a business called JC Auto & Frame Repair, but I don't remember ever seeing it open.

It looks like earlier in the year, developers asked to add two more stories and make it a multi-family residence, and the city said no -- this is the result.  Imagine the possibilities for your place -- art studio, band practice space, your own bowling alley or bocce court or mini-golf course, or Josh's loft from the movie Big. Or you know, something tasteful and refined.

So, anybody got $900,000 they want to give a local blogger to make a sweet house? What would you do if this were your place?

Small housing coming to vacant building at Holmead and Otis

Always nice to see empty buildings getting filled -- a reader asked about the corner of Holmead Place NW and Otis Place NW, and and Park View DC tipped me off that a small, two-unit residential renovation will be coming to the location.

The building had been a convenience store some time ago, and more recently it was, I believe, a small church that had some really great music and singing on Sundays (unless I have my corners mixed up.)

Each of the two will be about 2,100 sq ft with three bedrooms each and a private roof deck too. The renovation looks really nice too, compare it to the existing property (below), which needs some paint and other TLC.

Nice to see this!

Architect's rendering from Park View DC

Looking for housing (or anything else?) Craigslist now has maps!

This looks like a boon to apartment, bargain and whatever else-hunters: Craigslist now has a map for many of their listings. Simply click on your category, then map view, and pow, all the results are mapped out. The results are clustered, so zoom in and they'll start to spread out. Then click and you can see the listings.

They also added a "grid view" with big pictures and a "pic view," oddly with smaller pictures.

Of course, that's reliant on the people accurately putting their locations on there, but for things where that's important (like, say, apartments) you'd hope they would. I would guess that means it's less handy for things might not put their address in the ad, like stuff for sale, but still, pretty handy.

I wish I had this when I was looking for places in the past. Definitely a big help.

How does the city deal with abandoned building owners it can't find? Answer: it's tricky

The City Paper has an interesting article today on how the city deals with abandoned buildings, especially those where the owner can't be found. And in short, it can't do a lot.

That's not to say the city doesn't try. The article talks about the process for finding homeowners (they send letters to the owner's address and visit the building) and if nobody responds, the city's Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs can declare it vacant, which means the owners pay $5 per $100 of assessed value (the normal rate is about $0.85 per $100). If the building is in bad shape, the city can declare it blighted at $10 per $100. That's a steep rate, and it does result in some owners either paying or fixing it up.  The Office of Tax and Revenue handles the tax part.

DCRA will make sure the blighted buildings are not dangerous, by sending the abatement team (whose funny nickname is the A-Team) to cut the grass, make sure windows are boarded up, and the like, and then they file a lien against the owner for the amount of money it cost to do that.

However, that assumes people pay. The article says the city has a list of 698 owners who it can't find or are deceased without heirs. But due to the legal limbo if a house hasn't gone through the probate process, there isn't a whole lot the city can legally do. You don't want to seize a building when you aren't sure who actually owns it, or they're fighting over it. (Or, do you? Maybe it would get some of these problems fixed faster, like the saga of 1483 Newton Street NW where groups of heirs are fighting.)

Since there isn't much to be done and the people can't be found or won't respond, that often means that liens and tax bills keep piling up, so the house wouldn't be very attractive for a tax sale. Tax sales are fairly rare anyway, and rarer still are those where the city will just give away (or sell very cheaply) houses with big outstanding tax and lien bills. The city's Department of Housing and Community Development can seize houses too to use as public or discounted housing, but that hasn't happened yet this year -- they currently are more focused on getting the properties they already own developed.

And not having owners around means a lot of the taxes levied aren't collected -- only $3 million of the $10.3 levied last year were actually obtained by the city.

So, what's to be done? The City Papers suggests merging these various functions into one office, rather than three that currently handle it (and there's also the Department of Public Works, which handles vacant lots separately) and also passing some laws giving the city more enforcement.

It's a tricky problem, and while it sounds like the city isn't doing a lot, that's not really true -- they do work hard to identify, tax and keep vacant buildings safe (just see the map I published a bit ago with how many there are in Ward 1 alone) but the enforcement is where it gets tricky.

What do you think? Any suggestions?

Harris Teeter coming to Sherman and V? And Trader Joe's coming to 14th and U after December

Holy crap! I hope you like grocery stores, because it seems our area may be getting two good ones: a Trader Joe's is supposedly coming to the Louis development at 14th and U (next to the McDonalds) and a Harris Teeter may coming to the area where Florida Ave, Sherman Ave and V Street meet up -- specifically the Atlantic Plumbing building, the one with all the gum on it.

Pretty big news. The Trader Joe's just received a permit and Borderstan reports the building is supposed to be finished in December 2013 so TJ's would open after that.

The timeline for the Harris Teeter is fuzzier, especially since the redevelopment of that building hasn't even started and they still need to buy some property, but apparently have a commitment from Harris Teeter. The Louis building, on the other hand, is going up as we speak.

The Louis project sounds impressive: it's going to be big at 42,000 square feet of retail and 125 fancy residential units, including a rooftop pool, though it will be maintaining some of the existing facades.

They also have the weirdest ad campaign I've seen: it's some kind of candy-colored futuristic Black Eyed Peas meets King Louis XIV thing, or something, complete with pink dogs. It annoys me for some reason:

Is your rent dropping? Bloomberg says yes

Apparently one news source thinks your rent is going to drop -- but I'm not buying it. Bloomberg, the business news website and TV station, has an article out about rent in different US cities and claims rent will drop in DC by 2% this year.

Of course I'd like this to be true, but I can't imagine it. It's nice enough if landlords don't increase rent, let alone drop it. Plus if anybody has tried to find a place to live lately, it's crazy out there: huge open houses with tons of people, long questionnaires for potential housemates, and snap decisions due to places being filled really quickly.

There are some problems to Bloomberg's analysis though: they include the entire metro area, meaning the numbers are skewed by the burbs. They also say there's too much supply, but this doesn't seem to be the case in our area, where apartments are going for more than $2000 in new buildings. I know some buildings have been converted from condos to apartments, but as far as I can tell, those are being snapped up.

In Real Estate Business Intelligence's latest housing report for the 20010 zip code, there are fewer houses on the market now than 1 year ago, but prices are up 17%, which to me means there's still demand.

So if your rent has really dropped, I'd be shocked -- and good for you!