711 Olivia Street, Key West

Buyers who missed getting that special little Key West house at an affordable price should take note of the new listing at 711 Olivia Street in Key West. I had an opportunity to show this sweet, but untouched in decades, Old Town home a short time ago. I think it has a lot of potential for that special someone with an urge to renovate. I dug down into my old shoebox and found the black and white photo below taken back in 1965. Note the two story house located next door to the east. I could not find a photo of that place. That two story house has since been razed and a new one story garage sits in its place. The lot measures 67' X 50' (3340 sq ft).

I then searched the Historic Sanborn Fire Maps and quickly learned that this home appeared in the 1889 Sanborn Map and was then identified as 418 Olivia Street. The street number was changed to 711 Olivia Street on the 1892 map. The house sits at the corner of Galveston Lane. Last year I wrote about the house next door to the rear at 845 Galveston Lane (photo below). That eyebrow house underwent a thorough renovation and expansion and then sold for a whopping $2,300,000 in September 2016.  The one and a half story home to the west is currently under renovation.

The Monroe County Property Appraiser shows 711 Olivia Street as having 1124 sq ft under air with first floor having 624 sq ft and the second floor 520. (I took the floor area measurements from the Appraiser's website.) The difference between first and second floor area is the rear one story sawtooth addition to the main structure. Renovations of homes like this normally change the total interior configuration.  Back in the old days these houses had smaller one purpose rooms. Today I could envision a new owner rearranging the layout, vaulting the ceiling in the sawtooth addition, adding French doors on the east side to open out to the new pool. Just as the Galveston Lane eyebrow house was transformed into a thing of beauty, the charming facade of 711 Olivia and its interior will be updated to look and function with 21st century perfection.

Longtime blog readers may know that our Historic Architectural Renovation Commission will have to approve any renovation of this property including what might be done to the existing 359 sq ft garage.  I was surprised to learn that the garage includes a toilet. That suggests to me that a new owner might try to include that building as a part of the renovation of the entire property. It might become a guest cottage. Someone more ambitious might try to add a second story - a two story house used to exist there. First first thought was to raze garage to create a large pool and garden area.  The thought occurred of adding a small linear pool between the main house and the converted guest house. There still would be off street parking space available at the front of the lot.

711 Olivia Street is an easy stroll to Duval Street located two blocks to the west. Olivia Street is one of the longest streets in Old Town. It runs from the edge of Ft. Zachary Taylor State Park and Beach to Eisenhower Drive - about 1.5 miles. Olivia is a one-way street and is used more by locals than tourists as they have no idea where they are going most of the time. There is a little neighborhood store located about two hundred feet east of this home. I should also mention an agent in our office sold the large two story house visible in the above earlier this year for $2.2 million. I suspect 711 Olivia would fetch a pretty heft price if it were to flipped rather than lived in by a new owner.

The listing agent informed me that this property has been actively shown in the past couple of weeks and advised any potential buyer to act quickly. That is good advice. I am surprised it is still available. 711 Olivia Street is offered for sale at $650,000. CLICK HERE to view the Key West MLS for more detailed information and then please call me, Gary Thomas, 305-766-2642. I am a buyers agent and a full time Realtor at Preferred Properties Key West.

Key West - The Accidental Bodybuilder

 The Accidental Bodybuilder

Several years ago I worked at a Key West real estate office with a young lady whose boyfriend was a house painter and a semi-professional bodybuilder. I remember meeting him for the first time:  the guy was massive. He had shocking red hair and a surprisingly tanned body. I guess when you work outside most of the day with your shirt off, you can get pretty tanned. Nobody could could overlook his amazing body. All people might not admire his physique,  but nobody could miss seeing it.

One of my favorite true stories about life in Key West involves this bodybuilder boyfriend. One day he was standing on extension ladder at the corner of Simonton at Fleming Streets were he was painting the exterior of the Marquesa Hotel. That particular corner has s stop light. We all know that drivers are supposed to stop to allow traffic from the alternate street to pass through the controlled intersection.

On that particular day the boyfriend was wearing only a pair of fairly short shorts and shoes. His massive body loomed large seemingly suspended in air exposing his huge back, arms, and legs. The inevitable happened: some driver paid too much attention to the big muscular guy on the ladder and not enough attention to the stop light. Two vehicles collided. 

Key West After Irma - Dealing with Real Estate Looters

It happened last week, but I was prepared. I had seen this movie before. I would not fall for it again.

I got a phone call shortly before dinner. A man with what I thought was a New Jersey accent introduced himself and started on a very quick exposition about something. He talked so quickly that I thought he was one of those internet website salesmen who call me at least once a week to try to sell something. I interrupted him to ask "Are you trying to sell me something?"

He replied "No! I am a cash buyer.  I am looking for a Realtor to help me buy real estate in Key West. I can buy residential or commercial. It does not matter. I can close next week." Then he added "With all the destruction that happened after the hurricane, there will be a lot of sellers who just want to get out quick. I want to take advantage of that."

I paused for a mili-second.  I had seen this movie before. It did not end well. A few years ago another guy pulled the same maneuver after the FAKE British Petroleum Oil Spill hit Key West as reported by CNN and the Weather Channel. Oh, the BP oil spill was a real disaster and real oil did land on much of the coast of Florida, but it did not reach Key West. But the story got out that the Florida Keys also had been damaged by the oil sludge. The public bought into it. Our tourism business was deeply damaged. Our real estate business was severely impacted as well. We were still recovering from the 2008 real estate collapse. The fake sludge turned our recovering market upside down for a couple of years. There were some "deals" that did occur as a result. I tell buyers that sellers are always dying, getting divorced, moving out of town for some reason. Sellers who have to sell make the best deal they can at the time. Sellers who don't have to sell can wait it out. That's why smart money normally wins out over time.

I had one buyer who was so convinced that the oil spill would ruin Key West's tourist business that he talked about walking away from his pending contract to avoid a loss. He was going to buy a very large and quite special Shipyard condominium unit. His contract price was half of what the existing owner paid for the place a couple of years earlier. That seller who bought as an investment short saled the property thinking the Key West market was jinxed. I convinced my buyer to close the deal. (He sold the  unit a little over a year ago and almost doubled his investment.) Another agent told me about his customer who walked away from a $50,000 earnest money deposit to avoid a much larger perceived loss down the line.

The potential buyer I mentioned earlier did not want to buy a house. He wanted to get a really good deal. He had CASH and he thought his cash was the end-game. He could swagger in, flash the cash, and take some other person's prized property at a bargain price. I sent him various MLS listings and described why the various properties might play into his investment strategy. He ended up not buying anything.

So when the fast talking guy called me last week, I decided that I really did not want to waste my time dealing with someone whose goal was the same. I explained that Key West did not sustain the same kind of real property damage that happened in the Lower Keys. The physical damage shown on national television showed sections of island homes ripped apart to varying degrees. That did not happen jn Key West. Instead, Key West lost many canopy trees, palm trees, and tropical foliage. Some our largest banyans, mahoganies, and royal poincianas were toppled. This is a multi-generational loss.

I told him our housing stock is and has been very expensive for years. Our sellers know the value of their homes, the value of Key West as a destination location, and that almost every home on the island is a beneficiary of our consistent price appreciation that beats the national average year after year. I told him in the few days after Irma there only a few new listings and only a few price reductions. I hypothesized that prices will continue to rise as Americans vote to buy in  Key West rather than far away and more vulnerable locations.

I told the man I couldn't help him. (I could. But I knew he would not listen to what I had to say. He already had his mind made up as to potential bargains galore as Key Westers wallow in pity.  I would be wasting my time and his.)

I have been selling houses in Key West for 23 years - mostly to rich people because it's the rich who can afford to buy here. (Rich to me is anybody who can afford to buy a second or third home for $500,000 or more. Up north, in America, most people don't spend that much on their primary residence.) Most of my buyers are cash buyers, but unlike the guy I turned away, my buyers are looking to buy a home - a place to either live full time or part of the year. They have a dream about living in the Keys. They should all make money on their homes when they sell.  Prices go up, not down, in Key West. And during the in-between years, home owners can have one wonderful time living in Key West.

I had to stop at a stop light today on my way to my office. I noticed most of the mahogany trees on Simonton Street which were stripped bare by the storm have already got their leaves back. 

The clean-up of fallen trees is proceeding ahead. Within a few weeks Key West will look pretty much like it did before except for a lot of tree losses. I found a photo of the county court house taken in February 2017. I went over to th court house this morning to take a photo to show the same viewpoint and a second photo to show the remains of one huge uprooted trees. It is sad to lose so many lovely trees. Our buildings and our old houses survived just fine.  

Key West After Irma - Kudos and Complaints

In an earlier blog I wrote about why I stayed in Key West to weather the storm that Hurricane Irma would unleash on my island home. Later I wrote about the damage to Key West and specifically to the Old Town area which most of my readers are concerned about. I am glad that I stayed but I endured a lot of personal distress. Don't get me wrong, I am not feeling sorry for myself. People who fled Irma to Miami, Ft Lauderdale, Ft Myers, Tampa, and other larger Florida locations had to cope with some of the same losses we had in Key West, principally no electricity, no cell phone service, no internet service, no potable water and really hot temperatures with no way to cool down. People with generators did have electricity for a while, that is until the propane tanks were emptied. This blog does not address the huge losses to the people who live in the other Keys.

Earlier I wrote about going to Searstown to get some ice. I was driving east on Flagler Avenue around 11:45 AM to get to Searstown where ice, food, and water were going to be distributed starting at 12:00. I had 104.1 FM on my radio. I think it was former State Senator Ron Saunders who was conducting a telephone interview of a FEMA spokesman from Washington. Saunders was on the air every time I was in my car driving somewhere. He always spoke rationally. He offered reliable information as to assistance that was available at the moment throughout the Keys. And on that day and time he interviewed the FEMA guy who was the worst example of federal government incompetence. Saunders asked several simple one sentence questions as to what FEMA assistance were readily available now to persons effected by the storm. He pointedly asked about persons who had evacuated and how they could get assistance for temporary housing if they return to a home or apartment that was damaged or destroyed.

The FEMA spokesman told Saunders and the listening audience to go online and register at the FEMA website. When Saunders gently pressed for more information, the FEMA guy said he would get back to Saunders with more competent answers. At another point he offered to discuss certain matters "off air". I was so enraged I shut the radio off three different times in the five to seven minute ride to Searstown. What an incompetent jerk this was. He was the face of FEMA at that moment. His voice of incompetence was being broadcasted the 100 miles of the Keys. He offered nothing - not a scintilla of hope to people whose lives were forever changed by this storm.

Later I hear US Senator Marco Rubio being interviewed on 104.1 FM. He remarked about the lack of electric power, the lack on internet and cellular service in this the most powerful and wealthy county in the world, and the immediate inability of FEMA to be of aid. He remarked that the NAVY (which had positioned help ships in Key West) had power, internet and telephonic communication and said something like we can and must do better.  You think?


Readers of my blog may recall me writing on occasion about the Conch telegraph.  That is a euphemism about how life stories in Key West are communicated - you tell one person something and within minutes it can be all over the island with the true story often getting mangled in the process. That happens anywhere but news and gossip move with light speed in Key West especially when we have cell service.

I think it was the first but perhaps the second day after the storm that someone climbed a telephone pole in Old Town and dropped a phone wire down to ground level where an old fashioned push button phone was affixed to the pole. I found out about the phone and called some of my customers to report the condition of their property. People waited in line for their turn to talk to the outside world who thought Key West might have been obliterated. It wasn't.

The photo at the top of today's blog shows my next door neighbor's once majestic tree that dominated the Casa Marina Area. I used to lay on a raft in my pool and look up at the top of the tree where a hawk sat keeping an eye on everything below. I have not been in the pool since the tree fell. The hawk not sits up on the power line on the opposite side of the street.  The city and the tree clean-up contractors have done a remarkable job in cleaning up the tons of tree debris. Kudos to those hard working men. I am happy to report that the majority of damage to Key West was to our trees and not to our homes and not to our people. We will get past this.  Key West is officially open for business.

CLICK HERE to view photos of Key West pre and post Hurricane Irma.

Hurricane Irma - Key West - Part Two

Earlier I blogged about Key West before the storm hit our town. I used photos to show how Key West prepared to meet what Chad Myers on CNN predicted as a 'catastrophic' hurricane.  He warned of a tidal surge of ten to fifteen feet and winds that would wipe out all the old wood houses in Key West. In my earlier blog I  detailed why I elected to stay in the newly constructed building located behind the soon to open Marquesa 4-1-4 Hotel on Simonton Street. The new building was constructed to withstand winds of 200 MPH. I have stayed in all other hurricanes except one since I moved to Key West 24 years ago. I wasn't worried about the winds as I know our old houses were built to withstand the winds despite what Mr. Myers thinks. His non-stop warning about the ten foot tidal surge scared so many locals that they ended up fleeing on the Thursday and Friday before the storm. My second floor room was beyond reach of a surge if one were to occur.

We lost power around 8:00 PM the night before the storm. Key West. I took a sleeping pill and went to sleep rather than fret about what might happen. I woke up the next morning to brisk blowing winds, but I experienced worse during Hurricane Wilma which were accompanied by driving rain. I looked out and found lots of tree limbs had snapped including ancient mahoganies on Simonton Street. In my opinion Key West stood up strongly to a powerful category 4 hurricane - perhaps a once in a century kind of event. We incurred major tree damage across the island, but we did not suffer building losses and flooding predicted by CNN and others. The storm was massive in size and took several hours to pass by Key West. Around 3:00 PM I left my hotel room to survey what had happened.

Mahogany trees on Simonton Street snapped. A large mahogany in the 300 block of Simonton had toppled. I knew this was not good. Was it an omen of other losses? I walked over to Duval Street. I could see standing water down toward the Pier House and decided not to go there. Instead I walked east on Caroline Street where I found another majestic tree toppled at the entry to the Curry Mansion.

As I head east on Eaton Street noticed the totally exposed renovation going on at 704 Eaton Street (mentioned in my earlier blog about construction projects in Key West). The back end of the house was removed as part of the renovation. This house withstood the winds of our Category 4 hurricane. That is something you did not see on CNN.  It does not fit the scare tactics CNN and other networks use to hype hurricanes. Readers need to understand that TV networks get viewers by making events seem worse than they are. Irma devastated the Lower Keys but it did not devastate Key West.

I walked east along Eaton Street another fifty feet or so and spotted another huge tree at the corner of William Street. As I got close I could see the huge old banyan tree next to the Eaton Street Seafood Market had totally uprooted. Note the propane tank hanging midair.  It took about four days to clear the street from this monster tree. I stopped to talk to a multi-generation Conch who told me to go over to the 600 block of William where three large banyans had fallen. On my way I noticed several banyans at the Harris School on Southard Street at Margaret had also fallen.

I could not believe my eyes when I got to the 600 block of William .  I saw one huge banyan toppled into the street. I looked south and saw another that had fallen against the late Shel Silvertein's former house - about 75 feet up the street. As I walked closer I could see that two separate trees had uprooted and fallen into the house. I went back the next day to take more photos as the pics I took on Sunday were all obscured by the haze and moisture in the air.  I took the photo immediately above in February 2017 which shows the north banyan tree which uprooted and fell into Shel Silverstein's house.

I then walked one block south to the end of William Street. I turned right to walk up Windsor Lane when I notice two more large trees had fallen into the lane. I recognized the house as I sold it a few years ago. It was the former home of writer John Hersey. Even though the trees uprooted on either side of this cottage, it did not appear to have been damaged in the process.

 The day after the storm I walked up and down Duval Street and Whitehead Street to see if either had sustained any significant damage. I can report the buildings stood up strong to wind. Margaritaville and the other icons were not damaged. There were individual businesses that tree damage which may alter the way they appear and function. The buildings were not damaged from what I saw. There is one house located at the far end of Fleming Street which I wrote about a couple of years ago. Two giant banyans stood sentry at the front of the lot obscuring the house from view. Maybe that house will now sell since the banyans are no more. Key West lost a lot of trees - Mahogany, Royal Poinciana, Gumbo Limbo, Sapadillo, and Banyans. But there are many that were not damages or only slightly damaged. Palm trees that were lost can be replaced. They thrive.

CLICK HERE to view more photos some of which do not appear in either blog. Readers may freely use any of these photos.  Readers are encouraged to visit Key West again or to come for the first time. We endured a major Category 4 hurricane. Our homes and businesses withstood the winds.  I have not been outside of Key West yet. I know there is major damage in the Lower Keys but have been told by people who seen the damage that the homes impacted were built prior to the strict building codes adopted by Florida after Hurricane Andrew and subsequent. The use of modern building materials does save property and lives.  Old Town is bouncing back and is already open for business. 

3312 Northside Drive #401, Key West, Florida

Readers up north may not appreciate how expensive it has become to live down here in Key West. Key West used to be a bargain. But popularity of our island paradise has caused housing costs to rise far greater than wages for most full time residents.  Finding a place where you would actually like to live and can also afford is often difficult  As a result many people must rent or share their living space - often with people they barely know. Or maybe they decide to rent a place with a person they know, but learn to despise because of their roommate's habits. A few years ago I took the photo below of an actual rental in Old Town. The tenants had to use the bathtub as the place they cleaned their dishes. I kid you not.

The new Preferred Properties Key West listing at the Santa Clara Condominiums is an affordably priced alternative to roommate living. And after Hurricane Irma the place may become more desirable than before simply because of the existence of such an affordable unit.

The listing broker describes 3312 Northside Drive Unit 401, Key West this way:

"Affordable Key West living. This large studio apartment at Santa Clara has a full kitchen, living room and full bath plus an alcove. The balcony looks out over the tennis courts and pool side of the property. Santa Clara is a secure building which had recent upgrades and is well maintained. There is ample parking, a gated entrance and beautiful amenities including the large pool and two tennis courts. Very convenient location in Key West. Pets are not allowed at Santa Clara. This is a great value."

The asking price on this 408 square foot unit is just $195,000. The monthly condo fees are $358 which cover building maintenance and insurance, pool and common area maintenance, and sewer. This is a large condominium development which is professionally managed. A qualified new buyer may get 90% financing and could potentially own this place for a price cheaper than paying rent.  I found several loan products of $800 +/- per month.  Real property taxes will be about 1% of purchase price or $1950.00 per year. That would equate to a total monthly payment of $1320.  I urge readers to checkout monthly rentals in the Key West Citizen or Craigslist. Compare the price and consider the possibility of owning a place without sharing space with a roommate.  I have not been inside this unit myself (yet) but I am familiar with the building.

 

If you work in the hospitality business or at the hospital, you can ride a bus or ride your scooter to work.  You can be almost anywhere in about 15 minutes any either means of transportation.  The building has a large pool and tennis courts. You can actually layout by your own pool, get some rays,  relax and enjoy your life in Key West and not have a second job (or third job).

Alternatively, if you are simply looking for a Key West getaway place that won't break your bank account, this property may be the one you have been hoping to find. Too many buyers think that being near Duval Street is the answer to all their needs. Houses and condos across the island get to share the same sunshine and great weather. 

CLICK HERE to view the Key West MLS datasheet on  3312 Northside Drive #401, Key West, Florida. Then please call me, Gary Thomas, 306-766-2642, to set up a private showing. I am a buyers agent and a full time Realtor at Preferred Properties Key West.