It’s a great week for earthquake shack enthusiasts.
First, a rustic cottage with a Beauty & the Beast approach to interiors landed on the market for $1.38 million in Ashbury Heights, and now it has some competition in the form of its completely adorable, 750-square-foot Bernal Heights cousin.
164 Bocana Street lists for $779,000, undercutting that other quake shack by nearly half. (Although we should note that is still a more than 1.5 million percent increase from its original price of $50.) This cottage last sold in 2003 for $489,000, which comes to about $632,000 when adjusted for inflation.
The city dates it to 1909, although that may be just the year it was moved to its present location. Most earthquake shacks were built in the months immediately after the 1906 quake and migrated from their original locations in park refugee camps after tenants paid off their rent-to-own leases.
However it got here, this one-bedroom number a block from Bernal Heights park is about as cute as it gets, with its shingled facade, cathedral ceiling, stained glass windows, gas fireplace disguised as wood stove, and frosted glass on interior doors.
Note that this is the most condensed possible version of the open floor plan, in that there’s space for little more than just one broad, general use room, and there's scarcely a bathroom to speak of. The parcel is almost twice as large as the house itself, so there’s room to build out.
You might just want to leave well enough alone, though. After 107 years of not being broke, why fix it?
- Bocana Cottage [Zephyr]
- Quake Shack Asks $1.38 Million [Curbed SF]
- Remembering Earthquake Shacks [Curbed SF]
- Earthquake Relief Accommodations [National Parks]