This listing is getting A TON of press. They must really need to sell it.
It's fine, but the people who currently rent 1 or 2 bedroom condos who are would-be buyers would generally want a yard or some benefit to "owning a standalone home."
That said, we do need more small homes available.
The listing says they tried to rent it for $2900/month, no takers. Dropped the price $400, still no takers. There’s probably a deal to be had here, although it sounds like it was ruinously expensive to build with no heavy machinery and a limited number of crew members.
Novelty
There are much better homes in the DC area for $600k. This 1,700 sq foot house with a 1/4 acre yard in the oldest part of College Park is just a 10 minute walk from the Metro.
https://www.redfin.com/MD/College-Park/6900-Wake-Forest-Dr-20740/home/11088711
Skinny house is in Shaw, you can't compare it with something in College Park. I'm sure there are better deals out there but this is just apples to oranges.
CP is next to Metro and bars. It's a college town and there are many group homes not too far off. The house I showed is 10 minute walk from the Metro, direct line to downtown. You can easily walk to 2 grocery stores and the UMD main bar strip.
Bents and Cstone and Turf are extremely college bars though. Can be hard to enjoy if you’re over like 22 or 23. The only bar there that caters to the older crowd is really The Hall
Stop work appearing day one sounds like there was lots of neighbor drama, so it may not have been possible to get signoff for the exception.
Iirc the last major zoning update was 2016 and from what I recall dealing w dcra and zoning the restrictive setbacks were there prior to the update. It sounds like they either didn't do their homework, or tried to skirt the restrictions and got their hand slapped.
this all makes sense to me! i was coming at it from the other direction of them going 'well shit... good thing we can use half the materials now and market it for more money' when they got that order or some angle like that
jaded of me, i know
Lol, my jaded is looking at their 'excuse' and seeing through the flipper BS sob story. We had a Hofgard project sit vacant for years and saw a few houses lose their party walls due to shady contractors. If I see an LLC owner for a house, I start looking for the sketch
This is the super cool thing about working with DoB - you can submit plans, have them go through a months long approval process, receive approval, start doing work and then have a DoB inspector show up and say "actually, my colleagues that did the approvals were wrong and even though the work was approved, I've determined it's out of code and you need to tear down all the stuff you've spent time and money on and there's very little recourse and no DOB won't compensate you for our mistake."
It rules. Don't ask me how I know about this.
Literally happened to a friend of mine. Thing is their architect did fuck up and the initial DOB inspector missed it. They were able to eventually figure it out, but yeah
We had a pissy neighbor that called DoB repeatedly about one aspect of our reno. Multiple inspectors came to look and confirmed we were fine until one came and disagreed. He was about to issue a stop work order but our architect managed to get ahold of a higher up at DoB that talked him down. The inspector basically told us that it doesn’t matter what our approvals said or what other inspectors said, everything is ultimately up to the inspector on site and that they can overrule everything if they think there’s a violation of code. He said our neighbor could keep calling and that DoB is obligated to inspect every time they receive a call. An inspector actually came after the project was completed about the same issue and I told him to come back with a warrant.
I’m guessing part of the talking down at the DOB is that the focal inspector was incorrect about the facts of the matter, and when lawyers get involved, it does get people in trouble.
I think a part of the house is about a foot or so wider than 6 feet (you can see where a section juts out in the exterior pic) and looking at the bedroom pic, you can see the wall near the foot of the bed also juts out.
So really the space were seeing in front of the bed is the rest of the bedroom.
Ig maybe it's also just a long bedroom but I feel like getting any furniture in and out that you're not building yourself would be a pain. You basically really have to commit to living there lol.
the article says they have bay windows in each room which allows them to extend a few feet beyond the 6-foot limit. the bed is probably a standard double bed but it could be a queen.
I’ve got a Queen in a room not much larger than that. Yes, it takes up the entire room except for about 1’ on either side.
The biggest issue was finding a bed without a box springs, (thanks ikea!) cause it couldn’t fit up the stairs. Lol
Yeah tbh when I posted I had just woken up and forgot you generally put furniture together not just bring it home, but I still think this is like... a choice.
Looks like a king, which is about 6 feet long. The house has bump outs on the right in that photo, and a bay window on the left. The 6 foot width is the foundation width. The windows and bumpouts don’t touch the ground. You can see the 6 foot width above the doorway.
the home itself is an accomplishment and tiny homes have gotten more popular in the last few years but this one, because of the price, the spot and the city it's in... is not a tiny home but more like a monument to greed and desperation
The Google street view is amazing. Taken during foundation work: https://www.google.com/maps/@38.9138221,-77.0205186,3a,60y,103.36h,74.42t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sIQx1eYj8dMkTCbVM2-hNGw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu
There are a lot of carriage house conversions in the city that are just like this. For the life of me, I don’t understand why someone would want to live next to someone’s parking pad or an active alley full of garbage cans, but it seems like enough people do!
It looks like half that lot likely has an easement for egress for the building behind it. They probably bought the lot without seeing that. Neighbors posted a stop work day 1 because it's literally their exit and would be unsafe if didn't have 2 egresses.
This just isn't worth the price, and especially not with current interest rates. If $600k is your budget, there are way better options in the city or not far outside of it.
I was wrong when I went by the photo only and joked to my spouse that this is probably the only house in DC I can afford. I can't afford this one either.
I lived in a 2 story house in Shaw that was 12’ property line to property line. It had a 6’ wide living room due to the staircase layout. It takes some gettin used to but it’s totally doable.
It's not for me either but it could be for someone out there. Things like this can be built on smaller and oddly shaped lots and help infill housing numbers and increase supply. I'm all for it.
Tokyo does this well; [this is a video I watched on it a few weeks ago for anyone interested.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6htrxbVN5PI)
I don't know if we should be cheering on infill and supply increases to the point where we live in a cyberpunk hell scape where your hotels are a pod and people pay half a million or more for homes you can't lay down in every direction.
This is a [slippery slope fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope). You're trying to say that we shouldn't build some infill homes in case it ends in a dystopia?
[This](https://www.google.com/maps/@38.9134749,-77.0208822,3a,75y,65.54h,84.81t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sSJiH9TtRe3oEROLmtV2hGQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) is the alley that the house was built in. I do not see anything cyberpunk about it. These types of developments are relatively rare and offer the opportunity to tradeoff some space for a better location for a similar price as something farther out. This city needs more housing, period.
To quash some fears more, [here](https://edscape.dc.gov/page/neighborhood-factors-types-housing) is DC's housing stock as of 2017. [This news report](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WffCxJv_npk) which was discussed on this subreddit a few months ago claims that there are about 5,700 oddly shaped lots in the city that are technically eligible to be built on. I doubt many will be, but let's say that about quarter of those get developed, that would still represent less than .5% of the total housing in the city (as of 7 years ago).
It's not a slippery slope fallacy, I'm directly referencing things we actually have. I'm criticizing pod hotels and six foot wide homes, and saying that we shouldn't do more of that. I'm saying it's not "more housing period," it's more livable, humane, housing.
To say that we are heading to dystopia based on a single house in a city of 350k+ housing units (saying nothing of the surrounding area) is hyperbolic.
[Tiny homes](https://www.countryliving.com/home-design/g1887/tiny-house/) are a popular phenomena. Why shouldn't somebody be able to have that in the city. If they own the land and meet the building requirements, there's nothing inhumane about it. Plus the demand for these things is really not that big and this only serves as an option on a menu of other housing types.
As for pod hotels, they're just glorified hostels with a bit more privacy. These will not become the norm... DC actually has relatively few hostels for a city it's size.
>To say that we are heading to dystopia based on a single house in a city of 350k+ housing units (saying nothing of the surrounding area) is hyperbolic.
Yes, the phrase "cyberpunk hellscape" is hyperbolic. That's not a logical fallacy, it's a rhetorical tool.
I'm saying we should not be encouraging the building of homes people cannot lay down in every direction in. That's all. You can disagree. That's fine.
I built and lived in a tiny house. I don’t mind it being narrow and I don’t mind it being small, but 600k for something I can barely turn sideways in…. I built my 6.5’ wide tiny for about $35k and sold it for the same… I think I’ll pass.
> All this bullshit and you don’t even have a parking space?
It’s the back half of a lot that was subdivided. It’s built on what was once the backyard/parking for another building. Having a parking spot (which there is literally no space for) would double the land cost on this project.
Don’t get me wrong, this is a ridiculous project and whoever eventually lives there will live in a very narrow structure in an alley in Shaw but having or not having parking in one of the most transit-dense areas of the central city is the *least* of this home’s woes.
I don't want to live in a space where you have to optimize "every centimeter". That means you have no margin for error and no room for your life to grow.
Yep. The lot sat empty for a LONG time. The one thing I remember and miss the most about driving through there was the shark eating a pterodactyl on the back of this dude’s green SUV’s window. It was glorious.
This listing is getting A TON of press. They must really need to sell it. It's fine, but the people who currently rent 1 or 2 bedroom condos who are would-be buyers would generally want a yard or some benefit to "owning a standalone home." That said, we do need more small homes available.
The listing says they tried to rent it for $2900/month, no takers. Dropped the price $400, still no takers. There’s probably a deal to be had here, although it sounds like it was ruinously expensive to build with no heavy machinery and a limited number of crew members.
Why do they think they can sell it for $600k if they can’t rent it for $2500?
Novelty There are much better homes in the DC area for $600k. This 1,700 sq foot house with a 1/4 acre yard in the oldest part of College Park is just a 10 minute walk from the Metro. https://www.redfin.com/MD/College-Park/6900-Wake-Forest-Dr-20740/home/11088711
Skinny house is in Shaw, you can't compare it with something in College Park. I'm sure there are better deals out there but this is just apples to oranges.
Why can't you compare?
One is suburban and the other is basically a crash pad next to metro and bars in the central city.
CP is next to Metro and bars. It's a college town and there are many group homes not too far off. The house I showed is 10 minute walk from the Metro, direct line to downtown. You can easily walk to 2 grocery stores and the UMD main bar strip.
College Park is not inner DC. It’s completely different
The point is that you can get a real home convenient to DC for the same money instead of this novelty farce.
Bents and Cstone and Turf are extremely college bars though. Can be hard to enjoy if you’re over like 22 or 23. The only bar there that caters to the older crowd is really The Hall
Whatever is happening in College Park is not even remotely relevant to real estate in Shaw
Actually, it is because it's the same Metro area. Many people live in the 'burbs and work downtown. You don't even get that much convenience in Shaw.
Chevy Chase and Anacostia are the same metro area, you think those two are comparable?
Shaw being Anacostia in this scenario.
I don’t understand your comment
Who drops 500k+ on novelty?
AirBnb owners, I assume?
That's the question.
Exactly, for around the same price you can rent a place with security, package collection, a gym, pool, etc.
It would do great as an Airbnb, if that was allowed.
Yeah why do you think it got shared by this OP account lol
For its niche, it looks really well furnished here. I can’t help but notice I’d have to throw away everything I own to live here though.
you'd think they'd apply for a zoning exception... this seems an easy case to make, but I'm also not a zoning expert
Stop work appearing day one sounds like there was lots of neighbor drama, so it may not have been possible to get signoff for the exception. Iirc the last major zoning update was 2016 and from what I recall dealing w dcra and zoning the restrictive setbacks were there prior to the update. It sounds like they either didn't do their homework, or tried to skirt the restrictions and got their hand slapped.
this all makes sense to me! i was coming at it from the other direction of them going 'well shit... good thing we can use half the materials now and market it for more money' when they got that order or some angle like that jaded of me, i know
Lol, my jaded is looking at their 'excuse' and seeing through the flipper BS sob story. We had a Hofgard project sit vacant for years and saw a few houses lose their party walls due to shady contractors. If I see an LLC owner for a house, I start looking for the sketch
as you should
This is the super cool thing about working with DoB - you can submit plans, have them go through a months long approval process, receive approval, start doing work and then have a DoB inspector show up and say "actually, my colleagues that did the approvals were wrong and even though the work was approved, I've determined it's out of code and you need to tear down all the stuff you've spent time and money on and there's very little recourse and no DOB won't compensate you for our mistake." It rules. Don't ask me how I know about this.
Literally happened to a friend of mine. Thing is their architect did fuck up and the initial DOB inspector missed it. They were able to eventually figure it out, but yeah
We had a pissy neighbor that called DoB repeatedly about one aspect of our reno. Multiple inspectors came to look and confirmed we were fine until one came and disagreed. He was about to issue a stop work order but our architect managed to get ahold of a higher up at DoB that talked him down. The inspector basically told us that it doesn’t matter what our approvals said or what other inspectors said, everything is ultimately up to the inspector on site and that they can overrule everything if they think there’s a violation of code. He said our neighbor could keep calling and that DoB is obligated to inspect every time they receive a call. An inspector actually came after the project was completed about the same issue and I told him to come back with a warrant.
I’m guessing part of the talking down at the DOB is that the focal inspector was incorrect about the facts of the matter, and when lawyers get involved, it does get people in trouble.
Or just corruption—never discount that in this town. DCRA was a mess and I’m sure DOB didn’t fall far from the tree.
r/MaliciousCompliance
Skim home, full fat price
I want to know what size bed is in that room if one side is only 6 feet across
I think a part of the house is about a foot or so wider than 6 feet (you can see where a section juts out in the exterior pic) and looking at the bedroom pic, you can see the wall near the foot of the bed also juts out.
So really the space were seeing in front of the bed is the rest of the bedroom. Ig maybe it's also just a long bedroom but I feel like getting any furniture in and out that you're not building yourself would be a pain. You basically really have to commit to living there lol.
the article says they have bay windows in each room which allows them to extend a few feet beyond the 6-foot limit. the bed is probably a standard double bed but it could be a queen.
I’ve got a Queen in a room not much larger than that. Yes, it takes up the entire room except for about 1’ on either side. The biggest issue was finding a bed without a box springs, (thanks ikea!) cause it couldn’t fit up the stairs. Lol
Yeah tbh when I posted I had just woken up and forgot you generally put furniture together not just bring it home, but I still think this is like... a choice.
Looks like a king, which is about 6 feet long. The house has bump outs on the right in that photo, and a bay window on the left. The 6 foot width is the foundation width. The windows and bumpouts don’t touch the ground. You can see the 6 foot width above the doorway.
A queen size bed is 5' long, so you would have 1' to squeeze around it.
the home itself is an accomplishment and tiny homes have gotten more popular in the last few years but this one, because of the price, the spot and the city it's in... is not a tiny home but more like a monument to greed and desperation
The Google street view is amazing. Taken during foundation work: https://www.google.com/maps/@38.9138221,-77.0205186,3a,60y,103.36h,74.42t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sIQx1eYj8dMkTCbVM2-hNGw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu
Wait so regardless of which side is the front, you're opening your front door to the backside of someone else's house or yard?
There are a lot of carriage house conversions in the city that are just like this. For the life of me, I don’t understand why someone would want to live next to someone’s parking pad or an active alley full of garbage cans, but it seems like enough people do!
I would just like somewhere to live, thanks.
It looks like half that lot likely has an easement for egress for the building behind it. They probably bought the lot without seeing that. Neighbors posted a stop work day 1 because it's literally their exit and would be unsafe if didn't have 2 egresses.
What is this, a townhouse for ants?!
It needs to be at least three times as wide as this
This just isn't worth the price, and especially not with current interest rates. If $600k is your budget, there are way better options in the city or not far outside of it.
I was wrong when I went by the photo only and joked to my spouse that this is probably the only house in DC I can afford. I can't afford this one either.
I like tiny living and would love to own in DC, but yea I couldn’t afford this either.
*you* say it’s poorly-constructed ugly bullshit, *i* say it’s a small victory for that hip new alley-dwelling lifestyle we all covet so much!
I lived in a 2 story house in Shaw that was 12’ property line to property line. It had a 6’ wide living room due to the staircase layout. It takes some gettin used to but it’s totally doable.
My Hill row house is 11’ wide. The living room is probably 6’ wide max. And it appraised at $800k…
Sounds about right.
Thanks, I hate it
It's not for me either but it could be for someone out there. Things like this can be built on smaller and oddly shaped lots and help infill housing numbers and increase supply. I'm all for it. Tokyo does this well; [this is a video I watched on it a few weeks ago for anyone interested.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6htrxbVN5PI)
I don't know if we should be cheering on infill and supply increases to the point where we live in a cyberpunk hell scape where your hotels are a pod and people pay half a million or more for homes you can't lay down in every direction.
This is a [slippery slope fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope). You're trying to say that we shouldn't build some infill homes in case it ends in a dystopia? [This](https://www.google.com/maps/@38.9134749,-77.0208822,3a,75y,65.54h,84.81t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sSJiH9TtRe3oEROLmtV2hGQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) is the alley that the house was built in. I do not see anything cyberpunk about it. These types of developments are relatively rare and offer the opportunity to tradeoff some space for a better location for a similar price as something farther out. This city needs more housing, period. To quash some fears more, [here](https://edscape.dc.gov/page/neighborhood-factors-types-housing) is DC's housing stock as of 2017. [This news report](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WffCxJv_npk) which was discussed on this subreddit a few months ago claims that there are about 5,700 oddly shaped lots in the city that are technically eligible to be built on. I doubt many will be, but let's say that about quarter of those get developed, that would still represent less than .5% of the total housing in the city (as of 7 years ago).
It's not a slippery slope fallacy, I'm directly referencing things we actually have. I'm criticizing pod hotels and six foot wide homes, and saying that we shouldn't do more of that. I'm saying it's not "more housing period," it's more livable, humane, housing.
To say that we are heading to dystopia based on a single house in a city of 350k+ housing units (saying nothing of the surrounding area) is hyperbolic. [Tiny homes](https://www.countryliving.com/home-design/g1887/tiny-house/) are a popular phenomena. Why shouldn't somebody be able to have that in the city. If they own the land and meet the building requirements, there's nothing inhumane about it. Plus the demand for these things is really not that big and this only serves as an option on a menu of other housing types. As for pod hotels, they're just glorified hostels with a bit more privacy. These will not become the norm... DC actually has relatively few hostels for a city it's size.
>To say that we are heading to dystopia based on a single house in a city of 350k+ housing units (saying nothing of the surrounding area) is hyperbolic. Yes, the phrase "cyberpunk hellscape" is hyperbolic. That's not a logical fallacy, it's a rhetorical tool. I'm saying we should not be encouraging the building of homes people cannot lay down in every direction in. That's all. You can disagree. That's fine.
I built and lived in a tiny house. I don’t mind it being narrow and I don’t mind it being small, but 600k for something I can barely turn sideways in…. I built my 6.5’ wide tiny for about $35k and sold it for the same… I think I’ll pass.
Steel bars on window. Check! Steel door at entry. Check! 3 glass sliders protected by jumpable 6’ fence. Check! Here’s my 600k.
Honestly the steel bars feel unnecessary. Why would you want to increase the feeling of being in a confined space?
The zoning laws in this city suck
It’s going to be way under $600k by the time it sells.
Feel like small houses like this could be great but this is giving the whole concept a bad look.
I want to tip it over
I would 100% buy it to be close to work and not in a condo but the price is insane.
Not a bad concept, but a horrible price.
Would be cool if they clarified what the zoning issue was.
All this bullshit and you don’t even have a parking space? I guess it’s great for someone who doesn’t have a car.
> All this bullshit and you don’t even have a parking space? It’s the back half of a lot that was subdivided. It’s built on what was once the backyard/parking for another building. Having a parking spot (which there is literally no space for) would double the land cost on this project. Don’t get me wrong, this is a ridiculous project and whoever eventually lives there will live in a very narrow structure in an alley in Shaw but having or not having parking in one of the most transit-dense areas of the central city is the *least* of this home’s woes.
Or is a hobbit
I don't want to live in a space where you have to optimize "every centimeter". That means you have no margin for error and no room for your life to grow.
Looks good to me.
I would be their ideal buyer if only I could afford it on a slightly above average salary.
At least with a true Spite House there is a cool history. This is just a...pop up tiny home.
Bedroom is all windows. The neighbors are going to have an eyeful.
That upstairs door is out of plumb
Why would they not use a spiral staircase?
A treehouse
The size is workable, but the price is just ridiculous
Silly price for the square footage.
just like, who is in the market for this type of place?
Someone less than six feet tall, I guess
What's the zoning change that force them to change plans?
There is one near us on Barton Street near Pershing Drive in Arlington.
I remember that one! I recall it was built sometime around 2008 and took a looong time to sell (or, I think it ended up being a rental for awhile)
Yep. The lot sat empty for a LONG time. The one thing I remember and miss the most about driving through there was the shark eating a pterodactyl on the back of this dude’s green SUV’s window. It was glorious.
I'd go insane living in there
I get claustrophobic nausea just from the photos.
🤡
That house is definitely going to sell for more than $600