What follows is the first in a series of long-form blogs by real-estate broker Brian Linder about the market for architecturally significant properties.

“You’ve got to get down here,” my assistant told me over the phone one morning last April. “They’re already lining up.”

She was calling from the front yard of a plaster-white, one-story home designed in 1947 by Gregory Ain, one of 52 Ain residences in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Mar Vista. The open house would not start for two hours, and already people were lining up.

It was an extraordinary turnout, particularly since the housing market had begun to soften, with the sub-prime crisis making its early headlines. It was all the more impressive for pre-tax season, which is usually the worst moment of the year to sell a home.



Despite the inauspicious timing, I was sure the listing would draw a crowd. Homes with a design heritage tend to resist the vagaries of a fluctuating market and this was a chance to own an authentic piece of California mid-century modernism.

I arrived at Moore Street 15 minutes before the start of the open house to find 300 people lined up. To be sure, not all were prospective buyers. Some were students and mid-century architecture fans hoping for a look inside, and there was a smattering of reporters and real estate agents.

In any case, the turnout corroborated my contention that the Ain homes in Mar Vista were mid-mod classics. I had buttonholed my most design-minded clients, explaining that these gems had been obscured by the community’s origins as a development tract.
Ain had worked in the studios of Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra, becoming a top-flight, second-generation modernist. He wanted to bring modernist design to the masses, and with the Mar Vista Tract he succeeded.

The developers planned to build 100 “Modernique Homes” on a former citrus grove and sell them for  $12,000 apiece, in part, to workers in L.A.’s booming aeronautics industry. They were among the first homes in America designed by a well-known architect for families without servants.

A series of renovations masked mush of the Moore Street home's history. For example, a previous owner had inserted glass blocks into the horizontal window strip just below the roofline, and removed the sliding pocket walls used to partition the living spaces.



These alterations occurred before the Mar Vista Tract became the first mid-century neighborhood protected by a city program as a preservation site.

Three years earlier the Moore Street home had languished on the market for seven months before selling to the current owners for $850,000. Over the years, I had kept notes on neighborhood transactions in a little black book, recording relevant details and anecdotes. I now checked my book to determine the highest sale price for a Mar Vista home, compared square footage, and set my magic number.

“I want to list the place at $1,295,000,” I told Greg and Linda, my clients. My suggestion brought them up short. Paradoxically, it seemed both high, and not high enough. “In this market,” Greg said, “why not go higher and see what happens?”

At carnivals, operators traditionally placed the gold ring on the merry-go-round close, but not too close, so that reaching for it is an enjoyable challenge. As a broker, my goal was similarly to entice multiple offers and counter-offers.



If I listed the Moore Street house at $1.5 million, it might fetch a single offer. On the other hand, a lower asking price might set multiple offers and counter offers into motion, and the sales price could easily tick above $1.5 million.

With 24 hours I had three written bids, all of which exceeded the asking price. The highest bid, for $1,620,000, was a “statistical outlier,” meaning it would likely exceed the appraised value of the home. In such cases, bank loans become more difficult and buyers are obliged to pay a heftier percentage in cash. To make matters worse, I had difficulty verifying the prospective buyer’s home-equity line of credit.

I advised my clients to proceed with the highest bidder and I would get binding back-up offers from the other two high bidders. One of them kicked up their offer by $100,000. The Moore Street house now had a $1.695 top offer and $1.620 million back-up bid. In either case, the sale would be a record for a Mar Vista Tract residence.



The high offer never went to contract. The final sales price came in just over the appraised value of $1.5 million. The new owners, a Hollywood couple, immediately started a three-week crash renovation during which they restored many of the home’s details to their original form.

News of the sales price hit the neighborhood like a thunderclap. This was uncharted territory, and residents were enthused and appalled in equal measure. Their homes had appreciated greatly, but they feared a higher turnover rate in the vicinity as their neighbors cashed in.

That hasn’t happened yet. But as a broker and architect, I know that the sales curve of such homes will always be higher than new construction. This is in large part because people simply enjoy living in beautiful, thought-out environments.

“The only time people move out of this neighborhood,” said one long time resident, “is when they get divorced or die."