We have known Jim & Donna Klinge for over a dozen years, having met them in Carlsbad where our children went to the same school. As long time North County residents, it was a no- brainer for us to have the Klinges be our eyes and ears for San Diego real estate in general and North County in particular. As my military career caused our family to move all over the country and overseas to Asia, Europe and the Pacific, we trusted Jim and Donna to help keep our house in Carlsbad rented with reliable and respectful tenants for over 10 years.
Naturally, when the time came to sell our beloved Carlsbad home to pursue a rural lifestyle in retirement out of California, we could think of no better team to represent us than Jim and Donna. They immediately went to work to update our house built in 2004 to current-day standards and trends — in 2 short months they transformed it into a literal modern-day masterpiece. We trusted their judgement implicitly and followed 100% of their recommended changes. When our house finally came on the market, there was a blizzard of serious interest, we had multiple offers by the third day and it sold in just 5 days after a frenzied bidding war for 20% above our asking price! The investment we made in upgrades recommended by Jim and Donna yielded a 4-fold return, in the process setting a new high water mark for a house sold in our community.
In our view, there are no better real estate professionals in all of San Diego than Jim and Donna Klinge. Buying or selling, you must run and beg Jim and Donna Klinge to represent you! Our family will never forget Jim, Donna, and their whole team at Compass — we are forever grateful to them.
Dwip left this comment at the post about the Santa Barbara glass house, but because it has two links, it got flagged for approval, and I didn’t see it until much later. Let’s include it now:
If you have an interest in San Diego architecture you might like these:
San Diego architecture:
http://www.modernsandiego.com/
San Diego homes of note by various architects:
http://www.merceryork.com/PostWarHomesForSale.html
This is one of the coolest houses in SD. I used to surf Blacks all the time and would dream about staying at that place overnight and be the first to catch waves on in the morning.
Ahh the breezy days before the coastal commission.
Looks like someone got carried away playing Myst.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myst
Hey Dwip, thanks for the links!
Jim, didn’t you do a video on this house a while ago? http://www.merceryork.com/DelMar21.html
Nearly all the homes on those links are sad evidence of what helped ruin California’s architecture. Had the ’50s-’70s not turned to such poor aesthetic tastes (those homes are the Ford Pintos/Chevy Vegas of style), we wouldn’t have had the severe backlash into the lame so-called “Mediterranean” style that so many complain about today. Would it have been so bad to have stuck with the Colonial-influenced and Spanish Revivals of the ’20s, ’30s? Answer = no.
Think of how different SD would look is most or all of it looked like the early parts of town, and of LA. Architecture evokes emotions, and the development of San Diego flat out ruined the vibe…
@Aztec, I think there are some great looking houses along the beaches. Overlooking La Jolla shores, for instance, are several Bauhaus-inspired structures that I really like. That’s actually one thing I like about San Diego: if you stay on the coast, there are great varities of houses, often right next to each other. Who wants to live in a neighborhood where all the houses look the same. (Yes, I know the irony of that statement given that I grew up in RB.)
I completely disagree with Aztec. While I’m not a fan by any stretch of modern architecture, it is sure as hell better than street after street of matchy-matchy Stepford McMansions. There should be a ban on entire neighborhoods of the same architectural style.
When we lived up in Mt. Helix, I watched this being finished. The guy is an ex-professor at SDSU–amazing use of an otherwise unbuildable lot: http://www.rotatinghome.com/
Have to disagree with Aztec as well. I love unique, custom architecture; it makes a neighborhood more charming, and gives people a greater variety of styles to choose from, IMHO.
It’s the large-scale developers/builders and their ticky-tacky boxes that have ruined California architecture. 🙁
@ all you ;-)…
Please re-read what I wrote. I am totally against the ticky-tack boxes and entire tracts that look the same. And I’m saying that it’s the homes in those links that created a backlash and resulted in what we saw between 1980 to now.
If that horrible style from the ’50s-’70s never happened, we would likely have beautiful Spanish Revivial, Craftsman, Prarie and Ranch styles. That’s plenty of diversity.
Go roll through Mission Hills and RSF. And go to Pasadena and Sierra Madre. You can’t tell me those ‘hoods aren’t unamiguously better looking (and evoke better positive emotions) than the junk we ended up with thanks to “disco” wave of architecture in those links.
I remember surfing at Blacks at night a few times and seeing the lights coming from this place.. and I was completely confused until I found out about it.
That 300 ft tramway is ridiculous!
Getting the trashcans out to the street for pick up must be a pain.
There is a well-established relationship between the rise and fall of styles and peoples’ view of the times. Modern and modernist styles gain popularity when people have an optimistic view of the future, and traditional styles are favored during times when people feel things are going the wrong way and were better in the past. The last period of modernist popularity was during the 90’s, when the “mid-century” trend brought modern designs back from the 50’s-70’s, and for the past 10 years things have trended back toward the past.
Is the tram still usable?