It’s hard to put your finger on, but there’s something downright cute about 860 46th Street in Oakland. It’s not a micro home by any stretch—it’s four bed, three baths, and over 2,200 square feet, with a floor plan so open you could fall into it—but the facade suggests a kind of petite sensibility that’s belied by the actual dimensions but charms us anyway.
Two years ago, this lot held a weathered 1923 bungalow that sold for $430,000. The old home was a bit of a hot mess, noticeably beat up on the outside but still sporting some Craftsman-like interiors that honestly weren’t half bad. Until you got to the kitchen, with its Escher-light tiles and sheet metal center island. Yikes.
That old two bed, 900 foot bungalow has now fallen by the wayside in favor of this much larger, more modern home asking more than twice the price at $899,000. But at least you can see where the money went, from the polished concrete floors up to the "vertical grain fir" in the ceilings and kitchen.
(That vertical grain supposedly offers more consistent coloring. It could just be flattering lighting in the photos, but it looks like it’s performing as advertised this time.)
The living room opens up onto an itty-bitty drought-resistant lawn via a 15-foot sliding glass door, which skirts the outer limits of what counts as a door and approaches the vector of what we might simply call a giant glass wall.
Note that the seller is openly courting those pressed out by San Francisco prices, pointing out that you simply can’t find a spec house like this for less than a million in the city. While we’re swiftly approaching a time when Oakland can no longer reasonably be termed a haven of affordability, it will always be true that affordability remains relative.
- 860 46th Street [Pac Union]
- Floor plan
- $525,000 860 46th Street [YouTube]
- Uses For Vertical Grain [Doug Fir Flooring]
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