Shiny new townhouses in an emerging neighbor- hood - what's not to like? Come in, get a bargain, sell off in a few years for twice as much as you paid, use your windfall to buy a house in Bethesda, and for the next ten years of cocktail parties tell your story about "that one night in your old house you heard a gunshot, you're pretty sure it was a gunshot, though it might have been a firecracker or car backfire or maybe the tv downstairs, it's hard to say since you were sort of asleep at the time."
Seriously though, everyone knows it wasn't a gunshot. But enough about that. These two townhouses, collectively named Randolph Row, are total gems. Three levels, beautiful brick facade, all the modern finishes you could possibly ask for. Large rooms, large windows, tons of light, recessed lighting, hardwood floors. There's an open-style kitchen with Carrara marble countertops and stainless steel appliances, and a beautiful wooden deck. And the yard is massive; you could legitimately play a full 11-on-11 football game back there.
Brookland, of course, is home to Catholic University, and is going to see quite a bit of development in the near future. Before you know it, it'll be a second Columbia Heights, though hopefully much much less annoying. The metro is only a block away, and each townhouse also has a garage, so you can drive instead of taking the metro. I hate taking the metro. If I want to be in close physical proximity to unhappy people staring straight ahead, I'll just visit my family, thank you very much.
1222 Randolph Street NE
3 Bedrooms, 2.5 Baths
$599,990
1222 Randolph Street NE
3 Bedrooms, 2.5 Baths
$599,990
Washington D.C. real estate news
7 comments:
The moment of truth in this piece comes towards the end, with the comment about Metro. This is a suburban rowhouse, for people with suburban tastes and lifestyle (e.g. public transit sends a shiver down their spines). There is a modest upgrade in taste, perhaps, seen in the kitchen and slightly-less-inaccurate historicism of the front facades. But we're still talking vinyl siding, bland windows, builder-grade trim, Home Depot light fixrures, and a car culture neighborhood. Doubtless they will be flooded with buyers who want exactly that, but this is definitely not MY next home!
I mostly agree, but its not that far from the metro - half a mile.
While some of the area may be gentrified in coming years, it remains true that the D.C. Council isn't trying to close down Section 8 housing. That means that there will be pockets of crime and misery all over this place for decades to come.
I live in Brookland and love it. Definitely a borough of DC and certainly not downtown. That said, it takes me 15 minutes (with walk and metro) to get to work in Chinatown. With all the development (NOT gentrification) coming to Brookland, it's great to see Brookland growing into a sidewalk community with independent business/charm rivaling Cleveland Park (ever heard of Menomale? No? Go try it. Gives 2Amy's a run for it's money for 1/2 the price). I'm not saying the two neighborhoods compete, but they will eventually.
On a side note, the whole gunshot thing is completely erroneous. Who tries to sell a house and focuses on GUNSHOTS for the first two paragraphs?! Brookland definitely has it's spurts of crime, but gunshots? Nnooppee. The Editor of this should be fired.
As a sometimes editor of this blog, I just wanted to point out that we are not selling these houses. They are not our listings but rather houses that are on the market that Franklin scopes out and writes about in his own unique way. Usually his most disturbing images are reserved for describing his family and past girlfriends. Oh, and himself.
These homes should be priced at < $499,000. They simply don't have the quality to justify the price. This is made stunningly obvious when compared to Chancellor's Row.
I love Franklin's writing (seriously, it's one of the best things on this blog), but the gunshots thing was trite. Why not say something about people of color walking by on the street, or drug dealing! Go whole hog if you're going to play the ironic stereotype game.
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