862 Loggerhead Lane, Sugarloaf Key Florida - Bank Owned

Rest Beach - Key West Florida - 1937 - Before Everything Got Perfect

Sometimes when I go through my old shoebox looking for photos to put in my blog, I see pictures of the way life used to be in Key West and environs and I wish that I could go back to those simpler times. The above photo was taken at Rest Beach in 1937. This was in the Great Depression when life was hell for most Americans. But still on that day and at that location life was wonderful. It still is in Key West and our nearby islands.

I often write about the slow lanes of Key West. Well, I found a real slow and quite friendly lane not too far from here. If you are a buyer who is looking for an affordable home located near Key West, this Bank Owned three bedroom two bath house located at 862 Loggerhead Lane on Sugarloaf Key may be the place you have been hoping to find. This is a stilt house meaning it is built on concrete piers. The home has 1285 sq ft of interior living space plus a very large second floor rear porch overlooking the canal below. Read on my friends because there is more here than you might imagine.

I took a photo of the house across the street from 862 Loggerhead Lane which sits on a larger lot and is obviously a more impressive home. It shares the same location and has the same soil and sunshine. The other houses on this lane are mix of smaller homes like today's offering and others just about as nice as the house above. I missed 862 and drove to the end of the lane. The owners of one house were exiting their front door and waived at me as I drove by. When I headed back they waived again. I thought to myself how great a little lane this is. When I arrived back at 862 and saw the house across the street I immediately recognized that this place has a lot of potential.

I walked up the exterior staircase and entered into the living room. It looks to be freshly painted as do most of the other rooms in this house. There is a door that opens out to the second floor deck. The kitchen and dining room are located opposite. Then I noticed a bank of windows looking east and saw the home across the street. I thought to myself this home has potential!

There are three bedrooms and two baths in this home. The master bedroom with en suite bath are located at the far side of the house. The two guest bedrooms are located just off the living room separated by a center hall where the guest bath and laundry are located. It wasn't until I got back to my house and started to write about today's blog that I realized the Key West mls datasheet (below) may be in correct as to the physical size of this house. That potential error, if it is an error, is because the data on this house and all others is automatically populated from the Monroe County Property Appraiser records which show this house as being 1285 sq ft. The typical stilt built home like this is 1200 sq ft. But this home has three bedrooms and is much larger than that. Many homes built in the same era as this (1988) have front, side,and rear porches with access doors so that homeowners can walk on the decks to install shutters in the event of a storm. But this house has only the rear deck..

The property appraiser website shows a building permit was issued in 1994 to "enclose porch". I think the front porch was totally enclosed and that the side porch became an addition. I checked the prior mls listings which showed this house as being 1389 and 1581 sq ft. The correct size will be determined when this home is appraised for a new mortgage.  But it will have an impact on what you will have to pay when you make an offer. The home is listed at 1285 sq ft which equates to $2800 per sq ft. If the house is actually 1581 sq ft the price per sq ft would amount to $227 per sq ft.

There's more good news! The roof was replaced within the last two months. There is new carpeting in the bedrooms. This pretty much makes this home move-in ready. You're gonna need to buy a refrigerator, washer, and dryer. Otherwise, bring your toothbrushes and start to create your new home on this lovely lane.

862 Loggerhead Lane is located about 20 miles (25 minutes) from Old Town. The Sugarloaf schools are located on Crane Boulevard which happens to be the main road that leads to to this house. Your kids could walk to school in about ten minutes or so. If they walk. CLICK HERE to view more photos of this house and the school.

Borrowed from an earlier listing of this home. This shows the boat hoisted - waiting like a dog to be taken for a walk. This could be your house and that could be your boat waiting to go out to the sea.

CLICK HERE to view the Key West mls datasheet on 862 Loggerhead Lane located on Sugarloaf Key, Florida. Then please call me, Gary Thomas, 305-766-2642 to set up a personal showing. I am a buyers agent and a full time Realtor at Preferred Properties Key West. This house is worth looking at!

Key West Horror Story No. 4 - Once Removed

Long before I moved to Key West I did commercial loan workouts in for a bank in Denver. My job was to recover money from borrowers who lost their way in life and who refused to give back the money that they borrowed. This was at a time when character still mattered and failure to repay a debt went down on one's permanent record. My job entailed the management of outside bank litigation, foreclosures, recoveries of all types, and the sale and disposition of real estate acquired through foreclosure. Recovered assets were classified as OREO (other real estate owned) by our bank. Some banks refer to these assets as REO for real estate owned.

Another asset manager in my department had started to foreclose a town home in Aurora located near the Cherry Creek Reservoir. For some reason I never understood, he initiated the legal process to foreclose but them abruptly stopped. After he left the bank, I inherited some of his problem loans including this one.

I reviewed the file and assumed this unit must have been abandoned by the owner after the foreclosure was filed. I drove to the property to verify my suspicions.  I went around back and looked through sliding glass doors and saw the place was fully furnished. I saw dog moving about inside. I went back to my office and verified with the Public Service Company (the electric utility company) that service was terminated a year earlier. I called the condo association and learned that water had been shut off a year earlier for non-payment of association fees. I contacted outside counsel and got myself appointed  a receiver to preserve the property during the foreclosure process.

With court order in hand I went back to the property a few days later and met a locksmith who got me inside. A cat disappeared from view as soon as we entered the house. The dog I saw on my earlier inspection was not to be seen. But evidence of the dog's existence was everywhere as there was dog poop on all three floors of the condo. There was dog poop and urine smell everywhere--even on the walls where the dog did his business. The house reeked! The smell was overwhelming.

But the place did not seem to be totally abandoned. The house was fully furnished.  There was a baby grand piano in the living room. The dining room had a formal dining room table, chairs, and breakfront. There were three fully furnished bedrooms. There were pots and pans in the kitchen and clothes in all of the closets. There were remnants of burnt candles all over the place with candle wax on tabletops. The place had a really creepy feel about it. It was as if the house was the setting for some graphic horror novel.  Empty plastic milk cartons littered the house. I assumed the owner brought water in for the pets. I could not imagine humans living in such filth. And there were family photos of the people who lived in this house. The woman was head of Colorado Right to Life at that time. I will never forget that. Never!


I went upstairs and found what I thought was a pool of dried blood in one of the second floor baths. I left the house and called the police. (This was over thirty years ago - long before we had cell phones.) The police came over right away. They quickly determined what I saw was not blood but rather feces and urine from the commode that leaked out onto the floor.. One of the officers refused to go into the basement. There was so much feces on the floor that it was disgusting beyond your wildest imagination. Stephen King could not have written a more horrific tale of a foreclosure from hell. In fact I named the "asset" Cujo OREO because if reminded me of Stephen King's novel about the dog from hell. Foreclosures are our bank were always named for the owner of the foreclosed property.

I called animal control. They captured the cat and took it away. The dog was never found. 

I hired contractors to take out all of the filth and put the place in saleable condition. They had to haul out all of the personal contents. The Salvation Army refused to take most of the furniture and personal property because of the smell. I guess the contractors took most of the stuff to the dump. I remember them telling me they had to wear masks while removing the personal property and while ripping out the interiors. They had to tear out the bottom four feet of drywall throughout the unit to get rid of the urine. The urine had penetrated the floors so badly that the floors needed to be removed down to the floor joists.

They replaced the floors, drywall, and most if not all of the cabinets, appliances, and plumbing fixtures. The place was painted and put in saleable condition.

This was the very worst foreclosure I ever encountered. But I have seen a lot of them over the years. A lot of people who lose their homes destroy the house as they walk out the door. They blame other people for what happened to them.  I could blame the dog for all of the poop and pee. I could. But I won't.

2312 North Roosevelt Blvd. Key West - Water View Commercial Property

I wrote about 2312 North Roosevelt Boulevard in Key West soon after it was listed in April 2015. It's time for a new look as this commercial property with terrific US 1 frontage. The nearly 20,000 sq ft lot (102' X 194')  is located opposite the Key West Yacht Club. There is a recent traffic study available to prospective buyers which discusses the traffic flow that passes this location each day.  North Roosevelt Boulevard is the primary road tourists and locals use on into the Old Town just a few blocks to the west. The Old Town location is the heart of the tourist district as well as where the county government offices, courthouse, and city hall are located.

I dug into my old shoebox and found an aerial photo from the not too distant pass taken by Ty Symroski and Wendy Tucker.  I have added arrows to point out the location of 2312 N. Roosevelt Blvd. just opposite the Yacht Club. The small Hilton Haven residential enclave is located on the backside of the Yacht Club. I also found a photo from 1965 that shows the old Dairy Freeze located at 1704 N Roosevelt Blvd. That once lonesome ice cream stand was razed. Today the location houses a mixed use commercial building. The above photo shows nearby 2330 North Roosevelt which housed the Western Auto store in 1979. Today the same building still exists but houses different tenants. I have lived in Key West since 1993 and watched North Roosevelt's dramatic change.

2312 N. Roosevelt Blvd. Photo in 1999

 A few blocks closer to town the old Royal Castle hamburger stand shown as it existed in 1974 was taken down years ago. It became a Checkers hamburger stand. That building was razed to make way for the new Starbucks that opened this year. I have been amazed to see the traffic this coffee stand generates each day from locals and tourists.The little shopping plaza still remains but with different occupants in the buildings. 

The two year long widening and enhancement of  US 1 from its entrance onto the Island of Key West to White Street was completed in 2014. The transformation of North Roosevelt is now near complete. Four major hotels were nearly totally dismantled and rebuilt in place. One by one the buildings of old Key West are being taken down or being re-purposed. North Roosevelt Boulevard is the principal entryway for most first time drivers into Key West. The old Key West we remember with nostalgia is being replaced by new buildings to meet the needs of the evolving Key West economy.  

I walked the entire lot while taking photos for this blog. The width and depth of the space is much larger in person than it appears in these photos.  The 102' ft depth is equal to two large modular homes. The frontage is equal to nearly four modular homes. If you are a developer you'll appreciate the size of the lot. The existing building could be razed and a new structure built. With hotel rooms in the Key West core hitting $400 per night, this space might work well for a new small boutique hotel of maybe 20 rooms with yacht club views but priced at more moderate prices. Or maybe a new owner would build quality retail or office space down and create several long term residential units on the second floor.

CLICK HERE to view the Key West mls datasheet on this proerty. Then please call me, Gary Thomas, 305-766-2642, for more information. I am a buyers agent and a full time Realtor at Preferred Properties Key West. 

Key West First Six Months Sales Report 2016

I moved to Key West in 1993 because of the way all people are treated - as one Human Family. There are people here from all over the world and we all seem to get along just fine. Most of the people from third world countries are here on work permits. They work several jobs and many live in substandard housing. Many of these people work two or three jobs to save enough money to send back home to either help their families or to build a nest egg for their future.

A lot and I mean a lot of the workers in this town find it difficult to pay for a modest apartment let alone being able to buy a house here. I write about real estate properties for sale. In my Facebook page I say "I sell houses to rich people". That is really what I do because most people who read my blog know that only rich people can afford to pay the ridiculously high prices for homes here. I do work with locals, often hard working young folks who have saved as much money as they can stash away, hoping to find a place they can afford. I get no greater pleasure out of my life than being able to have that happen. And that is the truth. I know what it is like not to have money. I had to do without in school as a kid, college, and later law school.  I saved and did without so that one day I could do better. And I did.  I moved to Key West to get away from the world up north in America where for my entire life gay people were not accepted. I worked in a law firm where the senior partner found out I was gay and then demeaned me. In Later I found out about Key West in an magazine called After Dark. It was a town where gays were accepted. It had an openly gay mayor - the first in the nation. This was before Harvey Milk. What a great town this must be, I thought. And it is!

I wrote a blog in February discussing what I thought were too many over-priced homes, especially the number of homes priced over one million dollars. Most people in the United States will never earn a million dollars let alone buy a house that costs that much and even fewer will ever buy a second home that costs a million dollars or more. I decided to see how many houses sold in Key West during the first six months of 2016. I only looked at houses in Key West up to Shark Key even though our mls covers the islands up past Sugarloaf.  My readers want to buy a house in town and not ten minutes away even if it means they could save thousands and thousands of dollars.

There were 160 single family home sales in Key West during the first six months of 2016. The lowest priced home sold at just $168,000 while the highest sold at $5,500,000. The median homes sold at $942,543 at 94.99% of asking price. In previous years most homes sold at about 10% discount to asking price. The new ratio reflects the huge demand for homes in today's market.

There were 59 single family home sales in Old Town. The highest priced home was $5,550,000 (actually located in Truman Annex). The least expensive home sold at $315,000. The median home sold for $1,260,484. I am sure the big house and the cheap house skewed the numbers a bit.  These homes sold at 95.13% of asking price.

I then searched the number of sales of homes priced at $1,500,000 and higher in the Old Town area.
That $5.5 million house was still the most expensive. The least expensive sold at $1,820,00 with the median selling at $2,550,000 at an average price of $1,054.95 per square foot. These homes sold at 93.85% of asking price.

I was surprised to learn that the highest priced home in Casa Marina sold for only $2,000,000. The lowest priced home sold for $775,000. The median home sold at $1,483,222 or for $677 per sq ft. The demand for homes in the Casa Marina area is strong. There was a flurry of sales activity in May and June. There are several that are marked as contingent or pending in our mls. We shall see how well this area compares to Old Town at the end of 2016.

 In my February 8th blog I wrote:

"We have just begun the second month of our selling season. I wonder how many of the million dollar buyers we will see in Key West this year. I wonder how many sellers who have their homes listed for over one million dollars will sell and how many will not. And since we only sold 11 homes priced over $2 million 2015, I wonder how many such sales we will get this year. The stock market has not been our friend of late. I don't think we have been impacted by the ZIKA Mosquito Virus. But I am sure it will come into play sometime. Yes we do have a demand for quality homes in good areas. I just do not believe we have as many buyers as we have properties for sale."

Twelve houses priced over $2 million sold in the first six months of 2016. So we have already beat the 2015 record. The least expensive house sold at just two million in Truman Annex and the highest was the $5.5 million home in Truman Annex home. The median house sold at $3.006,250. The group of houses sold at 93.98% of asking. I was dumbfounded to learn that I sold the second highest priced home in Key West during this time period. And my office represented the buyer or seller or both in five of the twelve big sales.(And to top it off my broker, Laurie McChesney, represented the buyer who purchased the most expensive home in the Lower Florida Keys this year. That buyer paid $6 million for a waterfront home on Sugarloaf Key. )

Maybe my whining about prices was premature. We have a big election coming up. The stock market hasn't decided what will happen with Brexit, and I don't think it looks forward to a Trump presidency.
Uncertainty can rock the world. There may be a down market in our future. The thing is this is America where we always rebound. I started this blog ten years ago when the Key West market was headed downward. That created a lot of buying opportunities for people who had waited as the 2001 to 2006 market rose and many got sold out of a future. The downward spiral worked for many because our market really rebounded bigger and stronger than the rest of America as a whole.  There are buyers now. There just are not that many that can afford or who are presently willing to pay the high prices asked for most of our homes in Key West.

1108 Grinnell Street, Key West - A Fixer-Upper with an Upper!

I recently showed 1108 Grinnell Street which is listed by Preferred Properties Key West - that is where I work but this is not my listing. I was intrigued by this house because some of the architectural elements are incongruous with the CBS front fence and front porch. The CBS porch and fence have a stucco overlay. However, the main part of the house has asbestos siding which I think was probably applied over the original wood siding. The front porch sits upon a concrete slab foundation whereas the main part of the house rests upon what looks to be original coral rock piers. And that got me to thinking this house was not built in 1948 as the Monroe County Property Records indicate. Besides the jalousie windows, wrought iron trim, and asbestos siding were fads of the 1950s when homeowners across America used these materials to renovate their old homes.

I dug down into my old shoe box and found photos of 1008 and 1110 Grinnell Street which show the front porch addition at 1008 Grinnell and the front CBS fence still in the process of being completed. These photos were taken in 1965. The lower photo shows the original one story house located behind the new addition. I then searched the Historic Sanborn Fire Maps and learned that what is now 1108 Catherine Street was shown on the 1889 Map when it was then identified as 128 Grinnell Street. The street numerator was changed to 908 Grinnell on the 1892 map and changed to 1108 Grinnell on the 1899 map. Most of the houses in this neighborhood were cigar maker cottages (shotguns) with a long narrow hall on one side with all rooms located to the opposite side. Case closed. But not quite all the way.

The Property Appraiser records show the main and second floor as being a total of 1269 square feet. Access to the second floor is via the outdoor stairs. There is and probably never was an internal stair case. If I bought this house, I would seek permission from HARC to take down the CBS fence and front "porch" and rebuild a new open wood front porch consistent with other cigar maker cottages. I would remove the asbestos siding and replace with wood siding. I would gut all interiors and hope to find Dade County Pine walls and maybe ceilings in most places. That wood is as hard as stone now. I really doubt the renovation of fifty or sixty years ago included removal of that wood. And I'd let go of the vintage range. I would add an interior staircase and rearrange interior spaces so that I would end up with a nice main floor bedroom and bath at the front of the first floor followed by an open great room at the rear with French doors opening out to the new pool.

There appears to be plenty of room for a pool at the rear of this 2462 sq ft lot  (26.33' X 93.5').  If the wood stairway was removed, it would be really easy to put in a pool. Otherwise, it would have to be hand dug, but it could be done. The little CBS building could be re-clad with wood siding and it could be uses as laundry or maybe as a little pool bar or cabana.

CLICK HERE to view the Key West mls datasheet and to view more listing photos of 1108 Grinnell Street in Key West Florida. Then please call me, Gary Thomas, 305-766-2642, to schedule a private showing of this fixer-upper. I am a buyers agent and a full time Realtor at Preferred Properties Key West.