The other night, I actually watched something on the local news that did my heart 
some good! A local man noticed that a beautiful old Seattle home was destined to be torn down. He contacted the owners, bought it and moved it to a vacant lot until the foundation can be poured. What a great alternative to demolishing a wonderful Seattle home. In my neighborhood of West Seattle, over 25% of the homes were built before 1930 and it seems as though every day I notice a nice Tudor being tagged to be torn down only to have a townhouse, multifamily or single family monstrosity replace it. Our property values have outgrown our historic values.
According to the article in the Seattle Times, this was inexpensive (as compared to buying a similar house without plans of moving).
- The demolishing of his existing home (okay…so one house was demolished…haven’t seen any photos to see what that property once looked like) and the pouring of the new foundation cost approx. $150,000.
- The typical cost of moving the home is est. at $35,000 – $50,000.
- The developer/seller agreed to sell the home for $1.
Nickel Bros. is who was hired to move the home from this story. I visited their website and they have "listings" of homes that need to be "adopted" or they will be demolished.
HGTV filmed the move of the Phinney home in Seattle…it must have been amazing to see the old beauty rolling down the street!
I live in an area with architecturally significant homes (Oak Park, IL home to Frank Lloyd Wright). Every now and then we get a tear down. I understand the economics of the tear downs, but what bothers me is that the new homes are so out of character with the older homes that they stick out like sore thumbs. Most of these places have no architecturally redeeming qualities. They are just large stucco McMansions. Most of the homes in our neighborhoood are bungalows or prairie style and were built in the 1920s and the new stuff barely looks like it will last to next week or if a strong storm comes through.