This historic home built on 1.27 acres in 1887 will be on the market for $2,995,000. From the U-T:
The owners of a Queen Anne architectural gem in Carlsbad have appealed to the city in hopes of saving the historic house from the wrecking ball.
“The home was built by Alonzo Jackson Culver, who also built the Twin Inns,” states a letter from Rebecca Holbert and Paul Abodeely, two of the eight family members who inherited the property.
The Twin Inns were mirror-image Queen Anne-style mansions built in the 1880s on what is today Carlsbad Boulevard. In the early 1900s, they were restaurants famous for their chicken dinners among coastal travelers.
One of the twins, known as the Wadsworth mansion, was torn down in 1950. The other most recently was occupied by the Land & Water Co. restaurant, which closed in October 2019, but the building remains part of Village Faire shopping center at the corner of Carlsbad Boulevard and Carlsbad Village Drive.
“Leftover lumber from the Twin Inns was used to build this sister home,” said Hollbert and Abodeely, whose great uncle Gerald Capp purchased the Culver House on one acre at the corner of Highland Drive and Oak Avenue in 1969.
Originally, the house was on 30 acres and had numerous outbuildings, including a blacksmith shop and a well house. It was built entirely with manual labor using pine from Julian, wooden nails, limestone, rock and sand, according to old news stories.
Capp lived in the Culver House until his recent death. He installed an electrical system, repaired the stained glass windows, plumbed the house for an indoor bathroom to replace the outhouse, and planted many of the Torrey pines, fruit trees and cacti that still grow on the property.
Also known as the Culver-Myers-Capp House, it is one of 19 properties that the City Council designated as local sites of historic interest in 1986. The artist Gertrude Myers, considered the “Grandma Moses” of Carlsbad, lived there from 1936 until her death in 1965.
In recent years without an occupant the two-story building has fallen into disrepair, which the family hopes could be resolved by new owners.
“The reality is that the house will likely need to be sold and the proceeds divided,” the letter states. “We do not want this house to be torn down and the land divided. We are writing in the hopes that the city … might be able to purchase the house and land in order to preserve it as a historic landmark and park for the enjoyment of the people of Carlsbad.”
The Carlsbad Historic Preservation Commission reviewed the family’s request at its March 8 meeting and agreed to ask the City Council to consider ways the property might be preserved.
“I’m not saying the city should buy it, necessarily,” said Commissioner Lauri Boone. “But there has to be some way to preserve this unique property and its history. There is an estate house, a carriage house and a second lot with old cars on it. There are so many creative ways this can be worked out.”
The Mills Act Program is one tool available, said Carlsbad Planning Commissioner Alicia Lafferty, an alternate member of the Historic Preservation Commission.
The program is an economic incentive provided by the state with oversight by the city for the restoration of qualified historic buildings by private property owners.
“This is a local historic resource … a really important piece of architecture … fast being lost,” Lafferty said.
Here’s a great snapshot of how the vast majority of listing agents handle multiple offers. They just grab one, and kiss off the rest – which isn’t good for the sellers, it’s not good for the losing buyers who might have made a better offer if there was a highest-and-best round, and it’s not good for the buyer-agents who should have the right to compete fairly to sell the home.
But the listing agent gets to go back to sleep, so there’s that.
The most common response? “I just did what the seller wanted to do”. But isn’t it your job to advise them of a way to create a fair competition that could get them a better offer and more money? I think so.
While I usually handle the sales part in the beginning, in this case Donna handled everything from start to finish. Sellers are going to want to list their homes with her – which is ok!
Home buyers deserve to have their own representation.
The broker cooperation system which allows every agent to share their inventory with all other buyers via the MLS has worked well for 100+ years. But it has been under attack for years, and it may not survive the tight-inventory era where sellers and listing agents want to minimize or eliminate buyer-agents altogether.
An agent sent this in today:
Do you know that Lennar is no longer paying agents a commission or referral fee?
I have been working with a client for almost a year. She wouldn’t have known about the Lennar at Treviso community without me bringing her there. I registered her as my client and when her name got called on the list, they told her they’re no longer cooperating with agents and if she tried to include me she’d lose the house. Thank you Lennar for putting my client is a horrible position. Hey builders. Don’t ostracize the brokerage community! The market may be busy now but when the tides turn, you’re going to need us again. This is bad business.
I know for a fact that Lennar isn’t paying commissions on any of their SD communities currently.
I agree that it’s bad business to have an agent sign in their buyer as required to receive the commission, but then rescind their offer of compensation when the buyer steps up to purchase. But nobody cares about buyer-agents, and the abuse will continue. Lower or no commission being offered, no clarity on how multiple offers get handled (other than the usual “I just let the sellers decide”, which is a lie), and no easy path to show and sell.
What is the result of buyer-agents being snuffed out?
Buyers don’t recognize the need for getting good help.
An apprentice from a realtor team will suck them in with the promise of getting them an ‘off-market deal’, but then get sold a 1,200sf two-story house in a gang-infested area for 10% to 20% over value (true story).
We should probably just drop the seller-paid commissions – though they should have the right to offer a bounty – and have buyers pay their own agents. Those who value good help will seek out the best agents, and those who don’t will get what they get and wind up with regrets.
Add this to the list of reasons why demand is so hot…..
For the first time since 1980, the cost of living is rising faster than the average mortgage rate.
The Consumer Price Index for April tells us U.S. inflation is growing at a 4.2% annual pace, the largest jump since the bubble days of 2008. Meanwhile, Freddie Mac’s rate for a 30-year mortgage averaged 3.1% in the same month, a smidgen above record lows.
That puts the cost of home loans at 1.1 percentage points below inflation. Let my trusty spreadsheet tell you how topsy-turvy that really is: Over the past half-century, mortgages were an average 4 percentage points above the inflation rate — though that gap’s been halved in the past decade.
Inflation rates topping mortgage rates have happened in just 34 of the 601 months — that’s 50 years — since this loan index started in 1971. That’s just 6% of the time. The last occurrence was August 1980, when inflation was an ugly 12.9% and mortgage rates were 12.6%.
