Editor’s Note: Join Candy Evans as she navigates the highs and lows of buying and selling, she’ll share her experiences, insights, and the occasional real estate rant in The Downsizing Diaries.
We toured this one last year during our “let’s move to far North Dallas” move phase, which we have not entirely outgrown. It emerged because (a) my granddaughter is in far North Dallas, and (b) we had written about and hosted a CandysDirt.com event in this beautiful home north of Arapaho re-imagined and remodeled by a delightful investor from Connecticut. When a home near that Sandydale stone farmhouse extraordinaire hit the market, I jumped on looking at it.
But in this market, even jumping is too slow.
Unless you are under the gun to move, house hunting is a process.
I am fortunate that we have never been under the gun to trade homes — unless I count the time the builder, a guy named Jim Odom, tried to evict us from our rent house while we were building our current (soon-to-be former) dream home. It was 4,000 square feet of a rent house with rats under the wood deck that the builder wanted to flip rapido. It was loaded: furniture, an entire room stacked with boxes, four dogs, and two teenagers. I was stressed to the max when a dear attorney friend said, “Relax, I’ve got this.” And most certainly, he handled it.
And so our moves have always taken months, even years, to complete. We look, we drive, I research, we chat with the neighbors. My husband likes to “listen to the neighborhood.”
Then (and this is such a pain) we argue about what we will do to any house we become vaguely interested in. My husband is a Yankee (even though he was born in Atlanta) and believes if it ain’t broke, don’t remodel it. However, he has stopped saying this about orange granite after my head spun like The Exorcist, post one home tour.
I always want to rip everything out and remodel from the ground up.
So we go through the process, me pouting and saying “Fine, I will just stay where I am if I cannot gut the house.” Then he comes around, and then the house is sold from under us. Isn’t it nice when you understand your marriage real estate cycles so well?
So the interesting thing about the Step Aerobic house was my husband actually, for once, probably the only time ever, didn’t say, “Oh this house will be fine just as it is.” And he actually named it.
He recognized that the abundance of steps in 16007 Ranchita, frittered throughout and in the most curious places, would not be the best universal housing for an aging couple to grow old and more crotchety in.
“Let’s just tear it down,” I said. “Wait, where are you?”
He was busy doing leg stretches on the steps in the primary bedroom fireplace pit.
By the way, it’s a great lease for someone to park in while building: 5,319 square feet. Every bedroom has access to a bathroom, says the graphic. Well yes, but in some of those you have to step up to get to the potty, which is not so delightful for those middle of the night potty visits.
(I’m so picky.)
In the back, there are multiple steps (and a wood deck, which I hate) to the Texas-shaped pool. Really liked that pool and spa. (Why the agents photographed it so filthy I’ll never know. Filthy pools are nothing — they can be cleaned.) The garage was down a set of stairs and the rear-entry driveway had a steep incline, so you could both sled on it and break your neck. He liked the bookshelves, plenty of those. I wasn’t keen on hauling groceries, etc. up those stairs. I mean, I want elevators. There are ample condominiums to choose from in Dallas, all armed wth doormen.
The home at 16007 Ranchita was last sold in 2018 for $945,000. Last February, it was marketed at $1.37 million, which was about the time we toured it. Then it was reduced to $1.1 million after 344 days on market.
We took a hard pass, though I love the neighborhood.
So did a lot of others, it seems: the listing was at $6,000 for a monthly rental, now expired.
