Real Estate porn! What is your present fave house/apartment/residence?

Personallz I think one million is rather expensive, but Italy is popular. The problems show up later, when people do not speak Italian and of course get no native friends and feel isolated at times. See the brigth side of life - there are many sunnay days when life is wonderful and family and friends come visiting..

In Sweden house prices wary a lot depending on if the house in inland - cheap - at a lake little more expensive or at the west coast very very expensive.

This one is on a island not so far from Stockholm and is also around one million Euro, This is just for the fun, that I looked up anoher Swedish house.

http://w4.objektdata.se/pregen/116/OBJ11887_1266382116/hemnetbildlista.htm

I enjoyed that, especially that they showed plans in the blurb.

The San Francisco Bay area is quite expensive, generally speaking. Here's a house I like in Berkeley, with a few minor quibbles - but I always have those.
There's a 21 picture slide show with the article. Here are a couple of the photos -





Article: http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/walkthrough/article/Berkeley-hills-Contemporary-has-Tilden-Park-views-4772172.php#photo-5107556


edit - that first photo I showed, the one with the Julia Morgan designed house, is more "me", but I like a lot of different types of housing.

I enjoy looking at real estate promos just for fun. I like design, and issues about design. Your description of pricing rings true here too.

On living in another country, I've always thought if I moved to Mexico or Italy I would avoid being caught up in expatriate community life, though I suppose some of that is inevitable.

When you live abroad it is sometimes fun to see your countrymen. There are certain things you somehow only can share with them because you have a certain feeling.
Thanksgiving is one of those days.
Midsummer for us Swedes as we celebrate differently to Danes and Norwegians.
Lucia - Dec 13th -
Sometimes to speak your own language, eat certain things, talk about books.

I like the house you choose.
Living in a colder climate I prefer many windows to glass walls.I also need walls to putfurniture along. Where to put a bookcase with glass walls???
Where do you hang paintings?
Had fun to look for another house. Some were really very nice, but the interior so awful I certainly would not like to show them here.

True, what you said. I'm sure I'd enjoy seeing some other expats for your reasons. I worded my sentence on that wrong - it's more that I wouldn't want to be always hanging around with expats. Some cities are known for that, not that I'm so sure they have actual 'colonies'. Cortona, Italy comes to mind... and a place in Mexico near Guadalajara, Ajijic.. but I haven't been to Cortona and was only in Ajijic for a few minutes, so I don't know, really.

On hanging paintings, yeah... and where to put books and other stuff of my daily life. I used to subscribe to the magazine Architectural Digest for work. My business partner and I would eat lunch and go through the magazine seeing what we liked and why we liked it, or what either of us might have disliked and why, or what ideas seemed good, but not the execution.

Anyway, years of looking at very sleek photos of residences with no apparent life going on in them can get oddly boring after a while, so it was fun to at least try out opinions with someone.

Thee kind of sofas have become modern. For me they look like made for two watching TV and no guests are welcome.


Not that I like black sofas,butI like the design of the Danish designer Hans Wegner´s sofa. Comfortable, not so lowyou sink into it and one can clean underneath without having to move the sofa.

The angle of the seat and the back are 'just right' to me, on that Wegner sofa.

I was hiking in the San Jacinto mountains once and ran across a "chair" made from an old fallen tree trunk. That chair had similar angles.

http://www.lauritz.com/Item/ItemImage/ItemImagePage.aspx?LanguageId=4&ItemId=2416782&ImageNo=1&ImageCount=7

This Börge Mogensen sofa I have but in blue. It is from the 60ies and just as good as new. And it really is in useevery day. Blue is not even faded.
What I liked about the design was
1. easy to clean underneath
2 easy to send the cushions to the cleaners
3 easy to get new covers if needed
4 also older people can get in and out of it easyly. Afterall guests come in alll sizes and shapes - they are not all athlets who can sit on a cushion on the floor or on organic furniture like these below

Your sofa has a craftsman look I tend to like. Plus useful angles.

Skandinavia has some good furniture designers - often architects.
Two Swedish Bruno Mathsson and Carl Malmsten.
By the way I do not know any Norwegian.

It is so that the furnitures are designed and standing in a showroom. They are bought and used in homes.

We Swedes feel we have been inspired in interior decorating from Carl Larson´s paintings. Somewhere I read that his wife was inspired by English interior decorating.

https://www.google.de/search?q=carl+larsson&client=firefox-a&hs=RL8&rls=org.mozilla:de:official&channel=np&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=qDMjUryZHIPpswaHh4HQCw&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1600&bih=682

Today I wandered off looking at real estate porn again. I'm quite a picky person and there are a lot of mansions I think are horribly designed. Once in a while I like one and today it was this one on the Sotheby's real estate site.
I even enlarged the pictures for the 13 photo slide show (there's a button to enlarge them).

I rather like the location too.. well, I would. It's in St.Helena.

http://www.sothebyshomes.com/Sonoma-Real-Estate/sales/0243414

Tsar, we should start a relatively small house/apartment thread. I did one before, very very small, as in tiny, years ago here, but this time I'm thinking under 2000 square feet and probably way less.

A more modern house I like -

slide show here: http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/walkthrough/article/3-bedroom-Palo-Alto-home-has-brick-courtyard-4860362.php#photo-5248337

I have beenlooking for houses too - while waiting for a man to repair something,
As I have to show off in a foreign country I wanted to find both a house and the interior which I liked and where it is situated. That was a difficult task.
Here is one.
Open up and either press + to your right or alla bilder to your left.
http://www.svenskfast.se/Templates/ObjectView.aspx?objectid=460ISGB89E3D8T5C

I'm stuck - I don't have adobe flash as my computer is too old to take the new versions of it, and I don't want to use google plus. But ... I can see the house picture, and like those kind of houses.

HGTV Urban Oasis 2013: Master Bedroom Tour
http://www.hgtv.com/urban-oasis/hgtv-urban-oasis-2013-master-bedroom-tour/index.html

These periodical contests by HGTV usually get me everytime.

A snip at £500k......

St Honorine de Ducy, Normandy.

www.rightmove.co.uk/overseas-property/property-28259715.html

Nice!

A beautiful view over the city
a nasty view to the bathroom - there should be a place where I can be unwatched

Lovely