“Yes, my understanding is that a front loader door needs to be ajar a bit to dry out interior to minimize stinky buildup. Probably wouldn’t be fun in a busy kitchen.”
Just make the cabinet slightly deeper to allow for this with the cabinet door closed. 
I ran into this house in the Wall Street Journal Mansion section today - caught my eye because it’s in my old neck of the woods (next town south). With my vague knowledge of my old market, I really don’t know why it isn’t higher priced with all of its features. Clearly a house for those long midwest winters. http://www.berkshirehathawayhs.com/Starck-Real-Estate-IL303/homes-for-sale/6500-HILLCREST-Drive-Burr-Ridge-IL-60527-189239619
And please note there are both first and second floor laundry rooms!
OMG, just saw the property taxes! 
Holy… A $4M house here will have less than half if that tax bill!!!
From the listing history on Zillow, it looks like they’ve been trying to sell it for almost 10 years, off and on, with the price steadily dropping. Wish I knew someone like cb in that area to get to back story on the property!
I do know the back story on this nearby house because it was in the local papers - massive flooding and bankruptcy and much more: http://www.berkshirehathawayhs.com/Starck-Real-Estate-IL303/homes-for-sale/6501-S-COUNTY-LINE-Road-Burr-Ridge-IL-60527-195250797 When it was first built, from the road we thought it was a hotel (or fraternity house, except no nearby college).
That first house is a bit odd. It has a kitchen that’s about the size of the entire first floor of my house. And I’ve always wanted my own indoor basketball court. But it’s right in the middle of a neighborhood! I don’t want to see my neighbors if I have a house like that.
It’s also less than 300 yards from I294, the traffic noise must be pretty bad.
The room with the lap pool looks like a cathedral. I wonder what they paid to build it?
cb-sounds like you should forget the frat house and keep looking. no use throwing good money into a money pit that will never be desireable- for all of the reasons you stated.
Yes, I leave my washer door open. But it is in a laundry room.
@Marilyn, what a dreadful house. It looks like a clubhouse for a country club.
The second one is if anything worse. looks like a boutique hotel. Complete with reception desk! At least it has a Wolfe range.
Marilyn brought to my attention
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Del M. A. R
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Looks perfect for me…needs a lot of love
But it’s priced high and Seller is adding value because, of course, it comes with a set of plans!! Haven’t looked at plans so I have no idea if they remotely resemble what I would want to do with the property
Flip #7
Yesterday afternoon an automatically generated email alert arrived from the MLS that Frat House went Pending into contract. Well, obviously I didn’t get the house since I didn’t sign any paperwork:)
Still no word from agent representing me. This is understandable because selling agents usually wrap up all negotiations and go into escrow before notifying the other agents. At the end of the day I emailed the non communicating agent “Any word on my offer?” Pretending I didn’t know. All I got back from him was “no word, I’ll call”
He didn’t even acknowledge that Seller went into escrow with another buyer, which he had to know if he was paying attention to anything. No word back from him.
WHOA!
It sold 6 MONTHS ago for 1050000 and now they want 200000 more???
do you really want to fall in love with a house that has unrealistic sellers??
maybe they ran into development problems that prevented them from flipping it themselves?
I am out of town right now but I need to research to get to the bottom of the situation
I see this happen in my area. A real knock down or major fixer upper sells and a few months later comes back on the market. What I’ve observed is that after they get plans drawn or begin to talk with a architect they realize how expensive the job will be and they get cold feet.
Quite a number of years ago a family member bought a house in an upscale area that this happened. Someone bought it, started the demo and got cold feet and ended up buying a house that was already done. My relative didn’t care about the plans and eventually got the property for a good price and hired my H to just basically put the house back to where it had been with updated bathrooms.
In my area I don’t see already having plans as a selling point. Most buyers if they are building want to personalize it. If it had plans approved in a difficult area to get plans it might be a selling point.
I agree. Why pay xtra for someone else’s dream house? Plans are not that difficult to get through the City…as long as you keep over 50% of exterior walls and don’t go over 30 ft high or bigger than allowed sq ft for the lot size
Many people, when looking at a house, can’t see past the color of the paint on the walls or grandma’s 100 year old couch.
Maybe having some plans that show what potentially could be done are helpful to those people with no imagination.
Hey, I have a 100+ year old couch. It’s gorgeous.
I agree that most people have no imagination. But those people also cannot read plans.
Agreed, but plans these days can come with 3d visualisations that are almost photorealistic.
I suspect @mom60 has it right though, these plans are available because the owners decided not to do the work themselves for whatever reason.
When we bought our lot…it came with approved plans…for a style hose we HATED. It was a CA ranch…we live in CT.
But it also came with approved septic and well plans from our health district…that the owner didn’t even know existed. THAT saved us a ton of time…and money.
Here, septic and other permits are attached to the approved plans. If you decide to go with a new plan, you will still have to reapply for those, so not too much saved. Having an approved septic or sewer design is a big deal for a different reason: feasibility. Houses and lots that get sold as teardowns go pending as “pending feasibility.” It is a kids of death if the property goes pending feasibility and then gets relisted, even in our hot market.