May 16, 2008

“Work Of Art” Home Sells Low (Or How A Cactus Can Cost $700,000)

The owners of the Kaufmann House in Palm Springs, a 1946 landmark in glass, steel and stone designed by the architect Richard Neutra might be be feeling a little sellers’ disappointment (a widespread condition in the current housing crunch). This week the modernist gem, which they put up for auction at Christie’s recently, sold for $15m after the estimate had been set at $15m-$25m.

The anonymous buyer also bought an orchard adjacent to the property for an additional $2.1 million. It includes three cacti that were a gift from Frank Lloyd Wright to Kaufmann on his first visit to the home (so you could argue the buyer snagged three cacti at $700,000 a piece).

But the homeowners — Brent Harris, an investment manager and Beth Edwards Harris, an architectural historian, both architecture enthusiasts who are divorcing — are probably not too deflated as it turns out they paid just $1.5m for the house when they bought it from the estate of Barry Manilow in 1992.

A tenfold increase in value in 16 years isn’t bad, although it’s clear they invested a lot in restoring the house to its former glory. (It certainly grabbed the limelight in J. Crew’s spring catalog from which these photos are taken.) To Financial Times architecture critic Edwin Heathcote the Kauffman house:

“…exemplifies the cool intensity of mid-century modernism every bit as much as a Miles Davis trumpet solo or a Rothko painting”.

On a less elevated plain, here are the recent home sales 425 miles north of Palm Springs, in Berkeley, Ca, none of which exceeded the price paid for those three cacti but the owners of at least one of which — 110 Brookside Drive — will be feeling sore. That house went on the market for $1,095,000 but closed $225,500 down at $869,500.