This Old House in the Valley: Can Someone Save It?

We forget that houses are emotional places, each with its own stories, echoes and ghosts. We forget, but Here in Van Nuys doesn't. Take three minutes and read this wonderfully sad little essay about the doomed house at 4107 Troost.

Doomed? Here's why: "It is so old (71 years) that it was already there to witness the devastating February 1938 flood that killed 115 people and destroyed over 5,600 homes....There is a sentimentality, emotionalism and fantasy life to many old homes in this old section of the San Fernando Valley. They are survivors of a time when horses and orange groves briefly lived next to automobiles and movie palaces.... (here comes the sad part) But this property, like so many around it, will fall into the hands of the bulldozer and be subdivided into five lots of ostentatious and cheap ugliness. Hummers will sit behind electronic gates under the glare of halogen. Another corner of this city will be forever changed."

The home is listed here for $1.099 million. Here's what the listing says: "BRING YOUR DEVELOPERS, CONTRACTORS AND VISION SEEKERS."

Comments? Go ahead, get emotional.
Photo Credit: Here in Van Nuys

Comments

[rusty]

these cute neighborhood names are too much. the last time i heard, 'meadows' are large flat grassy places where horses walk around and eat grass. maybe even with a stream near by. colfax meadows ???

[Joan]

Hopefully, this very well-circulated blog will be an invitation to a person wanting a traditional style home with plenty of space to buy it, save it and enhance its traditional charms, memories and history.

[Sam]

How sad, I try to be open to change and know it is inevitable, yet when does it stop. Many of the these houses do have a history that will be gone in the name of money. Thank god I left 15 years ago, because SoCal is now a very different place.

[www.BetterVillage.com]

Hmmm... perceptions are being played with. Two issues: 1) Peter apparently gets it and says "it's in the valley," and includes a link that lets the less than casual reader find out that the house is actually in studio city. I'm fairly certain though that the typical reader will think that the home is really in van nuys and say to themselves.. wow... van nuys has popped through the $1M price level! 2) Does the ".099" really add anything? A home being sold as if it were a sudden Walmart price reduction (credit to original poster). Does this really work on people?

[Mark]

With the recent subprime meltdown removing a ton of foolish buyers from the market, where does the seller expect to find someone dumb enough to pay over $1m for that place ? Newsflash folks... Its 2007, not 2005.

[Kate in the Valley]

Just a few notes on the comments above:

This house is in Colfax Meadows (not Van Nuys by any stretch of the imagination). There's no house under $800k and very few under $1M (all on lots less than 8,000 sq feet). It's been on the market for at least six months. And, it's the 25,000 square feet lot that fetches that price tag not the original home.

[studio city resident]

A property with a cute pre-war duplex across from me just sold for $1.2M so the developer can tear it down and build more condos. The price does not reflect the structure, just the land that it is on.

I live in one of the last original buildings in my neighborhood. All of Studio City is being torn down and turned into condos and the residents here feel assaulted. Yet the nieighborhood council does nothing to oppose it (they can't really, it's a powerless body only there for appearances) and the city could not possibly care less.

The duplexes or cottages with yards and courtyard buildings are mostly gone, torn down within about the last 4 years. I used to know all my neighbors on the block, now everyone is behind big gates and subterranean parking so they don't even have to come out to the street.

So now we have the monstrous McCondos being built all around town in some sort of hideous neo-Meditteranean style and painted yellow and peach. A lot of the newer ones aren't even selling because they are astronomical - listed upwards of $1M on their own - for glorified apartments. Only 6 condos sold in Studio City last month (there are at least that many for sale on my block alone), yet they want to tear everything down and build more, more, more.

Urban sprawl is bad, blah blah, I know ... but when does it stop? Why is it ok to tear down entire neighborhoods and over-develop an entire town within a few years? When is enough enough?