Twisted Key West - Egg Beats Tourist

This is a true story. The guy in the photo has nothing to do with today's story except that he was a Key West taxi driver and tour director. His name was Ramon Navarro, and no he wasn't the famous actor of the same name. Mr. Navvaro was famous for showing tourists around Key West in style.

Back in the 1890s horses were the primary horse and buggies moved people up and down Duval Street past 336 Duval pictured above. The building was once the school. Years later it became the home of Knight Realty, later Prudential Knight and Gardner Realty, and now Berkshire Hathaway Knight and Garner Realty. 

More than a dozen years ago I was a real estate agent at Prudential Knight and Gardner Realty located at the corner of Duval Street at Eaton Street in Key West.  Floor duty is the time a Realtor spends in the office waiting for someone to walk in the door or call on the telephone to inquire about buying or selling a house or other property. A lot of agents hate it because few  agents convert an inquiry into a transaction. I liked it as I aactually got buyers out of walk-ins, some of whom I have written about in my blog.

 0 Duval Street - The Gulf of Mexico

Southernmost Beach - the end of Duval Street and the beginning of the Atlantic Ocean

Duval Street runs about one mile long. It starts at the Gulf of Mexico three blocks to the north and ends at the Atlantic Ocean eleven blocks to the south. Eaton Street is one of two streets that traverse all of Old Town.  The other is Truman Avenue. This intersection is a crossroads of humanity in our little town. This is a terribly busy corner starting around 10:00 AM or so when most shops open for business. Depending on the time of year and the time of day the sidewalks can be almost impassable with tourists walking around not paying attention to anything or anyone.  Right now Key West is experiencing Spring Break with thousands of daily tourists de-boarding cruise ships mixed in with college kids, gays, and families who have flocked here for fun in the sun. Delivery trucks, cars, people on bikes, skateboarders, pedicabs, taxi cabs, trolley cars, and tour trains clog Duval Street which was made for horse and buggies. Sometimes it's enough to a person go crazy. 

I remember the events of one particular afternoon quite vividly. I was sitting at a desk in reception area of our real estate office looking out the south facing window to the intersection of Duval and Eaton. St. Paul's Episcopal Church was located diagonally on the far side of the intersection. It happened in a flash. There was no warning that I recall. For a period of only a few years there was an alternative taxi company called Egg.  On that day an Egg driver jumped out of his vehicle, ran over to a German or Dutch tourist, and cold cocked the guy knocking him to the street as his wife watched in horror. The Egg driver started screaming at the man lying on the ground and waving his hands around in panic and horror.  

The cops arrived in a flash. There is not much crime in Key West so when somebody does do something, there is a lot of whoop-ass that comes down on whoever did something wrong. The tourist started to cross the street against a red light which prevented the Egg drive from making a right turn on red. The tourist foiled the turn and the Egg driver became the Egg beater. End of true story.

Open House Today - 713 Emma Street, Key West

OPEN HOUSE SUNDAY

March 11th

12:00 to 3:00 PM

713 Emma Street, Key West

This is a sweet two story condominium in a small condominium association of only four units all built in 2005. This two bedroom, two and one-half bath unit has a first floor/office with half-bath that can double as a third bedroom The unit has GE Smart House technology and is outfitted with Viking Range, SubZero refrigeration, crown molding, high baseboards, Brazilian cherry hardwood floors, recessed lighting, and lots of features you'll won't find in other condos or single family homes priced below $700,000. I'm confident of that. If you doubt this Mr. Thomas, stop by and check it out.  Or look at the YouTube video below. I prefer that you see it in person. You'll really like it. I promise!

From Duval Street at Petronia, walk or drive four blocks to Emma Street. Santiago's Bodega is on the corner. Turn right. Located 1/2 block on the right.

923 Fleming Street, Key West - Investment Property with Renovation Potential

Not all that much has changed to the house at 923 Fleming Street, Key West during the 52 year time period between 1965 when the black and white photo was taken and 2017 when the color photo was made. The building is a modified Greek Revival which locals refer to as a "Conch House". This just happens to be extra large.  I checked the historic Sanborn Fire Maps and found a much smaller building on this site as early as the 1889 map.  The 1912 Sanborn map shows the side addition and a long more narrow addition at the rear. The 1912 map shows the front porch extending out onto Fleming Street which was noted as being "brick paved". Some of the most beautiful homes in Key West were and still are located on Fleming Street. The listing Realtor describes 923 Fleming St this way:

"Unparalleled 5 bedroom, 4 bathroom, 2,788 square foot, two story home on a 4,500 square foot lot with a gorgeous lagoon style pool and parking. It has three legal units but could easily be converted into a spacious single family home in the perfect Old Town location. The poolside apartment could become a large one or two bedroom guest cottage and the other apartment could become a downstairs master suite. It is beautiful as-is, yet lends itself to capturing your dreams of creating your personal paradise in the heart of Old Town Key West. Your outdoor options include some of the best porches in town and lush landscaping surrounding a beautiful heated lagoon pool. Off-street parking adds to the convenience, but from this location, you can walk almost anywhere. Once inside, your indoor living is framed by Dade County Pine, a fully renovated kitchen featuring exquisite granite counter-tops and hand-crafted Hansel and Bringle cabinets and an extraordinary number of rooms upstairs and down."

The listing Realtor shows the square footage as 2788 sq ft. This is one very large house with two stories of exterior porches (not calculated in the interior square footage). There is also a small cottage at the left rear. The lot measures 45' X 100'. There is a narrow walking lane adjacent to the east property line which is access to a house located at the rear of 923 Fleming but which is not a part of this property.

I saw this property a few days ago on Realtor caravan - a monthly tour or new listings in the Old Town and Casa Marina Areas. I instantly felt at home, but I had never lived here. In 1993 I purchased a similarly large property on Eaton Street. It had been a 13 room guest house, but was closed for two years after it had been foreclosed upon. I was new to Key West and although I had been in a few big houses on various trips to Key West, I really did not appreciate the value of these big old houses nor the value of good location. I do now. Let me share my thoughts. 
1.  This is a big and well built property. It has been well maintained. The photo below shows us that much of the original character has not been mess around with. The metal louvers are still being used. A new owner might want to install new windows, but a purist might prefer to keep the old character in tact.
2.  The house sits right at the city property line. In fact the Sanborn Map suggests that the easternmost porch may extend out onto the public right of way. This fact and the knowledge the lot is 100 feet deep tells the back yard is very large. We can see the pool in the photo, but it is the size of the yard and the potential it offers to a new owner that is the dominant fact.
3.  It has been my experience that a single family residence in a location like this would be more valuable over time than a multi-family. But a multi-family offers a new owner income and different ways to use the property until such time as an owner wants to convert it into a single family residence. The existing apartments are very nice and should command high rents because of their condition and this great location. The photos show the property when fully occupied. The front main floor unit is the only space occupied so a new owner could move in and occupy any of the other spaces and rent the other.
4.  The attic has been updated and offers additional living space that may not be included in the total square footage of the building. This is an amazing space that offers a lot of possibilities.
5.  I usually tell buyers to live in a home for six months or longer before deciding how to change it. Many of our old homes are too small and buyers try to figure out how to create more living or storage space. This place is the opposite. It's pretty big, maybe too big for most buyers. But that size gives a buyer with money and vision opportunities that less wealthy and maybe less visionary folk cannot achieve. 

The second floor front porch wraps around the front of the house to the west. It is a nice place to sit and people watch all year long. Around 5:30 PM on the last Friday in each October that space will be gold as it offers prime time viewing of the People's Parade during Fantasy Fest. Thousands of revelers will pass this location and many will be deliriously jealous of whoever owns this home. I am not suggesting that a new owner convert this so a single family home and rent it as a monthly vacation rental, but if you did the place should be very successful because of the size of the house, number of bedrooms and bathrooms it could have, the awesome pool and garden area, and the perfect location close to everywhere but far enough away from the hoopla. And, oh yes, the proximity to the other very valuable homes in the same block.

I sold two of the larger homes across the street a few years ago. 923 Fleming Street looks mighty pretty from the front porch of 914 Fleming Street. CLICK HERE to view the Key West MLS datasheet and all listing photos. Then please call me, Gary Thomas, 305-766-2642, to schedule a private showing of this property. I am a buyers agent and a full time Realtor at Preferred Properties Key West.

1021 Catherine Street, Key West - Conch Grove Compound

The new listing at 1021 Catherine Street is located in the Conch Grove Compound located two blocks west of White Street in the the South of Truman area in Old Town Key West. The compound consists of eleven unique cottages and single family homes which share a large sunny and heated pool, and gardens. Each cottage or house own is owned in fee simple.  The property owners share ownership of all of the common areas including the sunny pool.  A couple of the cottages are quite small and a couple of the houses are very large. Writer James Kirkwood, co-author of “A Chorus Line”, lived next door at 1023 Catherine Street and was one of the first homeowners in the Conch Grove Compound. He knew a thing or two about a singular sensation. Other original owners included Jay Garon (literary agent who "discovered" John Grisham) and Albin Krebs, a reporter for The New York Times, who wrote obituaries of notable figures. The compound was then and is still today a small enclave of individual homes that share a sunny pool on a quiet little street on a little island out in the middle of the ocean.

I searched through my old shoebox and found the black and white photo below showing 1021 Catherine Street in 1965 long before it was renovated. I then Searched the historic Sanborn Fire Maps to see if I could determine when this house was built. There were numerous small houses on this corner location between the first map in 1889 and 1912 when 1127 Catherine Street first appeared. 1127 Catherine Street was a larger house and faced south as opposed to the smaller cottage that sat on the same lot on earlier maps and which faced toward Watson Street. Several smaller cottages fronted onto Watson and also extended eastward into the property. I am assuming that some of the surviving small cottages dated back to the 1889 era and that 1127 Catherine Street was built after 1899 and was later renumbered as 1021 Catherine St after the 1912 map. Those original 200 sq ft  cottages just did not make sense for long term living for most folks.

The cigar makers of yesteryear and the writers of plays and obituaries of not so long ago would surely be surprised to see how much this little compound and the houses therein have changed  This house has been enlarged on the ground floor and a second floor added in 1995. The Monroe County Property Appraiser website shows this home as being 1862 square feet and sitting on an irregular rectangular 87' X 45' lot. The original front yard is now the back yard which  includes a private spa. The west side yard now has a nice shaded private patio.There is abundant walking space around the entire perimeter of the house.

The original house was remodeled into three parts. A new contemporary building was added at the rear to become the new main entrance to the home. It has clean lines, new opaque glass louvered windows that provide privacy without the use of curtains or shutters, saltillo tile floors, vaulted ceiling coupled with the expansive use of glass, and an open-concept living area.  The main floor of the original house was re-oriented to move the two bedrooms and baths to the front of the original house. The kitchen and bath then became located in the middle of the renovated home. Timber framing was exposed to give height to the spaces. The master bedroom with en-suite bath is quite large and includes a screen enclosed private porch. A second bedroom is now used as an office.  A set of French doors open out to the private spa in the new private backyard.

Do you remember the haunting lyrics of Peggy Lee's "Is That All There Is?" There's more here! When you enter the compound you can move through a winding path toward the common pool or make a sharp right turn where you end up a 1021 Catherine which has its own little private front yard. When you approach the front porch you see a set of exterior stairs that deliver you to the second floor mother-in-law suite. I can tell you from personal experience when you start to get older and see your years waning, you begin to wonder if that is all there is. Imagine your mom arriving at this tree-top nest and how grateful she would feel to live in such a glorious space with such sunny views. That's not a bad way to spend your days, be they be end days or just plain old ordinary days.

As some people get older they start to divest themselves from all the "things" they have accumulated by shopping and shopping over the years. When people move to Key West they realize they probably won't have room for all the stuff they accumulated and won't need as many clothes (especially cold weather clothing). This little nest is perfect for the person who appreciates light and space and fresh air. I'll bet you mom would feel at home, here.

That's the pool. It does not get much better than this. The HOA fee is a nominal $200 per month and covers pool and yard maintenance. Owners are responsible for maintaining their own homes. 1021 Catherine Street is offered at $998,000. CLICK HERE to view the Key West MLS datasheet to view the particulars and see more listing photos. Then please call me, Gary Thomas, 305-766-2642, to schedule a private showing. I am a buyers agent and a full time Realtor at Preferred Properties Key West. Let me show you this singular sensation. There is more to life!