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| Door to Nowhere, Winchester Mystery House |
By Bruce Ueno
From the Latin for "above, over or beyond", at first blush a "superadequacy" sounds like it could be a good thing. After all, who wouldn't want a home that is far more than adequate. Home appraisers and real estate professionals however, have a much different definition for the term. In real estate parlance, superadequacies can be defined as improvements to a property that exceed market requirements and that add little or nothing to the property's value. To the contrary, many of these over- improvements can actually decrease a home's equity and its desirability to future buyers.
As a Realtor, I typically see several mini-Winchester houses during the course of a year, those ambitious but ill-conceived renovation projects that cause potential buyers to scratch their heads and ask "what on earth were they thinking?" Here are a few tip-offs that your home may make the list:
Home Is a Hodgepodge
Home design is a complex art, and residential architects are well-versed in achieving the ideal balance of form and function. In a properly designed home, every room, every window, and every door has a place and a reason to be there. Do-it-yourself renovations often ignore the home's original design objectives with disastrous results. I recently viewed a 1300 square foot house with a rambling 1300 square foot addition that included such lovely amenities as an 8' outdoor Jacuzzi in the bonus room, a windowless, dungeon-like game room hidden behind an obviously fake false bookcase, and a trophy wall adorned with the owner's prized collection of of empty beer cans (included in the sale, and valued at $4,000). A series of agents had attempted to sell this home over the years, all of them without success.
Options are Gone
Presumably, owners renovate in order to get some added benefit from the home, but to get a sense of the impact the improvement will have upon a home's attractiveness to a future buyer, it's also necessary to think in terms of the attributes that are sacrificed in order to receive the benefit. For example, a room addition will add interior space, but if it takes up a large portion of the back yard potential buyers may come to see the negatives as outweighing the positives. They'll see that there's no room for a mom's vegetable garden, no play area for the kids and room for an outdoor entertainment area; all bad news for a seller.
Property Boundaries and Easements are Ignored
This is a topic in and of itself, but I've included a mention here because encroachments and superadequacies often go hand in hand. One hapless property owner I know built a large room addition that opened onto a local power company's easement, with the mistaken notion that the company would never actually exercise it's right to the use of the property. When the utility announced plans to run new lines through the easement, the homeowner fought the company and lost. The back door of his home now faces a high wall just inches away, rendering a sale virtually impossible.
It's the Biggest House on the Block
When it comes to houses, you really can have too much of a good thing. The old saw holds true here- from a resale standpoint it's best to be have the smallest home in a neighborhood of larger homes than the largest home in neighborhood of smaller ones. Appraisers and real estate professionals know this as the principle of regression. If your home is a 3000 square-foot behemoth in an area where others houses average 1600 square feet, the value of your home will be drawn down by the value of the smaller homes in the area. Potential buyers who want a 3000 square-foot house will look for it in a neighborhood of similar properties, not in yours.
It's Out of Character for the Area
Even if you home's square footage is in line with the neighborhood, other improvements that are not in keeping with local norms can impair the value of your home. The addition of an ornate stone facade to a home in a tract of plain-Jane, cookie-cutter houses, for example, is not likely to make the property appraise for any more than other homes in the area, and may actually cause the value of the adjacent properties to decline.
It's Quirky
When we want to describe something as being unimaginative or ordinary, we often refer to it as being "plain vanilla", like that same 'ol drippy ice cream cone you may have enjoyed as a kid. The fact is that vanilla has been the top selling ice cream flavor for years, and it's likely to stay that way for some time to come. People like vanilla, and vanilla has the special quality of being compatible with just about everything. What is true for ice cream also holds true for houses. No matter how much you may have spent customizing your castle, the sad fact of the matter is that buyers want to project their own vision onto the blank canvas of their future home. Your home should be a special place with its own charm and character, but houses that suffer from too much character are a tough sell even in the best of neighborhoods. The late Dick Clark's Malibu abode, infamously fashioned in the style of cartoon caveman Fred Flinstone, has been on and off the market for over a year and has failed to find a buyer despite it's spectacular location and a half-million dollar price reduction- the more "special" your home is, the fewer potential buyers it's likely to find.
If your home suffers from one or more of the symptoms of superadequacy, all hope is not lost. Your home can still attract the right buyer if you are prepared to make a few changes and compromises on the way to a sale. An effective real estate agent can guide you through the process of minimizing the problem areas and positioning your home for maximum return on your investment.
Need guidance in the sale of your home? Contact me today for a no-obligation consultation! (951) 310-0397
