House and land for sale in Los Angeles, Mount Washington (Zone 11a)

[barath]

A couple years ago I spent a long time house hunting in LA to find a place with the perfect combination of microclimate for tropical growing, enough land to plant my hundreds of trees, walkability to the metro, easy access to the freeway, good schools, quiet neighborhood, and the rest.  And I found it, in the Mount Washington neighborhood.  It was a classic 100 year old house that needed some work with two south-facing downslope parcels of land just a 10 minute walk from the metro gold line (and 9 minutes by train to downtown) and just a couple miles on the 110 from the heart of the city.  Plus it's just a few minutes walk from the excellent local elementary school.  But when we started doing work on the house, it turned out we needed to carefully rebuild the entire house from scratch, which is what we spent the last two years doing, piece by piece, from the bones on up.

The house is great now, but we're exhausted in every way.  So we're selling it.  I'm posting about it here in the hopes that some rare fruit grower will want it (either you all or someone you know), because I hate to see such prime land going to someone who won't value the land and microclimate.  It's solidly Zone 11a -- one of the few SoCal neighborhoods that is -- plus it gets the right amount of warmth to get great growth on tropicals.  (I studied years of weather station data from every station in the area to figure this out...)  The land is officially 1/4 acre but functionally 1/2 acre given the unused land around it.  And we rebuilt the house to be what we wanted rather than what a house flipper would do, so we spared no expense (everything from solid oak floors to a 5.28 kW solar array to new copper plumbing, electrical, windows, doors, kitchen, bathrooms, appliances, foundation bolting and footings and huge beams -- really everything...).  House is 1729 sq ft, 3 bedroom / 2 bath plus a den.

I'm not a pro photographer and the listing -- which will go up soon -- will have proper pictures, so here's just two, one from downstairs and one upstairs.

If you're interested please message me.  Thanks.

[Itay Gazit]

Sorry to hear that, hope you will continue to grow where ever you go.

[barath]

Thanks -- definitely will.  I planted some things at the house we're selling (including a few rare banana varieties like Kandrian), but many many more are in containers filling my tiny rental backyard.

[nattyfroootz]

Hey Barath,

I'm kind of in a similar situation looking for that perfect microclimate and chunk of land. What resources did you find to be most helpful in determining the climate?  I've been using plantmaps and weather underground to try and get data, although, due to the high density of variable microclimates its hard to truly get a good depiction of what I might be dealing with.  Plant communities seem to be some of the most telling factors for me now.

Also, thanks for the rad plants you gave me at the DVC sale a few years ago!

[barath]

Hey Barath,

I'm kind of in a similar situation looking for that perfect microclimate and chunk of land. What resources did you find to be most helpful in determining the climate?  I've been using plantmaps and weather underground to try and get data, although, due to the high density of variable microclimates its hard to truly get a good depiction of what I might be dealing with.  Plant communities seem to be some of the most telling factors for me now.

Also, thanks for the rad plants you gave me at the DVC sale a few years ago!

Sure thing -- I miss getting to propagate plants at DVC...

I used similar resources -- lots of weather underground stations plus some of the Western Regional Climate Center data.  Back when wundermap existed in a usable form, I went through the historical data over a decade and then looked at the coldest and hottest days of each year and stepped through the hourly temperatures across all of SoCal for those days to see where extremes were.  From what I found, Mount Washington and the Hollywood Hills were consistently the warmest on the coldest nights.  (There are a few other similar pockets, but less consistent, such as in Fallbrook.)  Coastal Santa Monica and a few other coastal locations are also relatively warm on cold nights, but especially on still-air nights the Hollywood Hills and Mount Washington benefit from their elevation and the inversion layer brings their temperatures up to the 50s or even 60s while other areas are in the 30s.  The other nice thing is that Mount Washington is in the wind shadow of the San Gabriels so it doesn't get the extreme Santa Ana wind speeds that other areas get...

[K-Rimes]

Great work on the interior - lets see the outside! Looks like a daunting project, but the results are stunning. Wish I were ready for that step to buy, and in that area.

[barath]

Great work on the interior - lets see the outside! Looks like a daunting project, but the results are stunning. Wish I were ready for that step to buy, and in that area.

I don't have any particularly good outdoor shots but here's one panoramic with the house and patio.  The property goes both down an up from there about 75 feet in both directions, and I've really only planted a couple dozen trees on the property at the moment.

[Miamiboy]

Spammer

[spencerde]

Spammer


...some of these threads are continual spam magnets because of the keywords in their thread titles.

[ScottR]

Nice looking place and in a great area Barath, I wish best of luck selling your place any idea where to next??

[johnb51]

Nice looking place and in a great area Barath, I wish best of luck selling your place any idea where to next??

Last active: 7/1/22.

[ScottR]

Oops didn't even notice! John

[johnb51]

Oops didn't even notice! John

However, Mt.Washington IS one of the coolest neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

[JumuB]

Spam-a-Lama-Ding-Dong

[Inpruvp]

A house with the perfect microclimate for low growing, enough land to plant hundreds of trees, walkability to the metro, easy access to the freeway, good schools, and a quiet neighborhood? And it's in the Mount Washington neighborhood of LA?

[johnb51]

A house with the perfect microclimate for low growing, enough land to plant hundreds of trees, walkability to the metro, easy access to the freeway, good schools, and a quiet neighborhood? And it's in the Mount Washington neighborhood of LA?

Why not make it "thousands of trees--a whole fucking food forest."  And a 5000 sq ft home, too!  With a helicopter pad.

[JakeFruit]

Locking this, only spammers are keeping it alive