This graceful experience has 3156sf of wandering indoor spaces and 1454sf of outdoor entertaining area, 330sf of cavernous underhouse storage, and a spa frolic. A stunningly renovated "Blizzard White" quartz, stainless, bamboo and Italian kitchen - great room, adjoins formal dining and living spaces, where liqht, quality and privacy collide in a lush whispering branch canyon. Stepped into privacy, you enter over a waterfall to this meticulously rebuilt contemporary masterpiece. A master suite with private bath, canyon views and deck, and personal study shares the main floor with an expanse of public spaces and an office. The living room flows past the formal entry to an expandable dining area, kitchen/great room, where casual and cuisine revel in the finest appointments and copious tidy storage. Upstairs, 3 additional bedrooms each with their own private access, bath, and deck service room with sink+refrigerator, all attend a 1454sf treetop deck. Bring your 100 best friends or quietly watch the sunsets in silent splendor. The sprawling canyon bottom land offers pomegranites, dog run space, green thumb and nature husbanding. In the heart of San Diego, yet serving to dispel the public world and invite a personal imaginarium, this home is designed to be the palette for your personal showcase of success and artfulness.

Thank Kanga and Baby Roo and a fabulous job offer “down under” for this spectacular opportunity. Gorgeous 2-story home in coveted Presidio Hills area of Misison Hills. Gated “morning garden” welcome, gracious double door entry, immediate view from foyer through living room to Presidio Park canyon and USD beyond. Born when Ronald Reagan was touting the new building achievement, “All Electric Homes”, Altamirano has been upgraded to contemporary preferences, excellent function and condition.

Meticulously style and upgraded, with choice of master suite downstairs (existing 4th BR + 1.5ba + study) or master suite upstairs near 2 auxiliary bedrooms. From the charming curb appeal to the entire interior and exterior finish, this 4 (could be 5) bedroom 3.5 bath 2927sf home on an 11,400sf lot, offers move-in ready style, convenience and pride. Guests are welcomed through an arbor into the obviously carefully-landscaped, and visually-protected morning garden. This sheltered garden is also a place to enjoy when the canyon and ocean breezes become cool on the NE side of the house. From the double-door step-in entry the guest is invited to look all the way through, across a formal living room, to the broad veranda, wild canyon and vistas beyond. Rich, sleek maple floors, discretely toned walls with rich completely refurbished wood windows, trims and doors, shiny new hardware, and smartly designed/decorated rooms run throughout. A master suite on both the main level and upstairs offers desirable flexibility. The upstairs is the typical large room with generous closets and attached full bath. The downstairs has a canyon-view bedroom, full bath, and study. An additional guest half-bath sits smartly adjacent to the entry and study. The kitchen is beautifully and functionally equipped, with woven stainless steel backsplash, fine oak cabinets, and a special "wow" recycle chute on the sink wall. The home is all electric, true to its birthright in the 1960's when Ronald Reagan was pitching the amazing new all electric homes on television. Gas is certainly available to the property, should a buyer wish to accommodate any particular uses. The upstairs is lightened by an open landing study/reading/computer area. It includes two bedrooms with a fresh jack-n-jill bath between, and a large master suite at the end. The owners have added a large canyon-view balcony across the back of the home, inviting closer spectating of the squirrel and raccoons who enjoy the glorious full pine on the northeast corner of the property, and relaxing panorama over the canyon, USD and on toward Mission Bay. An attached double garage includes a crisp laundry area with storage. Most plumbing redone, original all copper. Roof is newer concrete tile offering decades of life to owner. Canyon is sprinklered.

4BR 3.5ba 2598sf, 6800sf lot, This California home offers clean open flow and function, and checks off all your needs! Walk through a walled front garden courtyard to the sky-lit foyer. Distinct main rooms including step-down living room with fireplace, dining and family rooms, also flow for large group indoor-outdoor entertaining. The smartly upgraded cook's kitchen is central to keep the cook in the activity, and boasts granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, new pullout and carousel cabinetry, pantry-style cabinet, and a built-in six-sided granite breakfast bar great for casual dining or buffet serving. The family room has vaulted beams, classic shelved niches, and skylights, and opens to the large pergola'd patio and yard. A bedroom-full bath suite on the main floor adjacent to family room offers many uses. There is also a separate powder room. Upstairs the spacious master suite features 2 built-in desks and shelving for private business, a very large walk-in closet, a full-length balcony, and adjoining 3/4 bath. Upstairs are two more bedrooms, note the clever built-in toy chest-storage porthole in the front bedroom, plus a full hall bath, and a complete laundry room with excellent storage. The house is fully upgraded and sparkling for immediate move-in and easy-living. You may enjoy the new water-saving recirculating hot water system, air filter to avert allergy issues, central vacuum system, and a comfort-giving up and down zoned central heat and air conditioning. Also note new fresh exterior painting on the stucco, generous pergola'd back patio and roomy completely gated yard with automatically watered landscaping, spotless modern 3 car garage off alley and extra storage space. If your neighborhood is as important as your home, Mission Hills offers the convenience of a San Diego hub location, a heritage lifestyle, and embracing community sensibilities! Climate and canyons, people and proximity, energy and excellence are some of our principal assets, but the most obvious is Distinctiveness. Whether you are scanning a mental Who's Who in the area, touring the exceptional shops and restaurants or enjoying the unique gardens and homes, you will find Mission Hills is a home you'll be proud of.

1BR, 2BR, 1BR, 1BR, 3 garages, 70x100 lot to alley on side.  When I sold these units to seller 8 years ago, we received no written listing information, no management data, very little access and lots of suspected problems. The seller went in with investigations, construction crew, and voila! Gorgeous little cottages! Half block west of Park Boulevard and all the fun shops and eateries, this 4 building property includes 3 garages, common laundry, and 70x100 lot with convenient 20 ft. alley access on east side. Rental income is $64980 actual, 13.77x gross, 7% cap. 2 garages rented, one used by owner, on-site common laundry. Great numbers, location and charm!
 

Sitting above the street, this curb-appealing Spanish casa in South Mission Hills has a bonus 16’x14’ room behind the garage for art studio, office, playroom (not included in square footage). Although the living and dining rooms of the home are reflective of the original scale of the home, they feature a charming decorative fireplace, original inlaid hardwood floors, and graceful coved ceilings. The kitchen, part of a permitted expansion, is large, bright, features a big multi-use center island and skylight, and is ideally situated adjacent to the big completely fenced play yard. A deck, which ventures off both master and kitchen, offers cool summertime dining under the avocado tree. Laundry and semi bath between garage and room suggest reconstructing into modern service for possible guest house use. Seller reports all new electrical and plumbing. Tenant who occupied for last 4+ years said that what she liked most was that every square inch of the home was usable, no wasted space, so it lives bigger than it measures. A second story would offer a water view.
 

Serene Mid-century 1-story in the middle of Point Loma, convenient to everything but on quiet cul de sac. Totally fenced patio, yard, garden. Extra 15x10 "studio" building in the back, finished, with electric but no plumbing, great for artist or... Sliding glass doors bring outside in and vice versa. Every room has a door to the outside except baths. BR2 leads into BR3, great master suite or use as 2nd BR if walking through is not an issue.

Point Loma

Point Loma is a peninsula off the west coast of San Diego and includes the southwestern most point of the United States . The tip of the Point is U.S. Navy facilities and Cabrillo Lighthouse, a national monument. The rest of the Point comprises several residential neighborhoods, most of which benefit from spectacular views of the ocean and/or San Diego Harbor and skyline.

Historically, Point Loma was the original port of San Diego . Her shipping and fishing industries were the heart of San Diego ’s commerce until Horton and friends convinced San Diego our current Downtown would be more satisfactory, and dredged and built piers and stomped around proving “build it and they will come”. Point Loma has always been an important part of our city’s history, such as renowned baseball player and sporting goods manufacturer, A.G. Spalding, who was a Point resident and owned the first automobile in San Diego . Which suggests one reason Spalding donated a lot of money for San Diego ’s early paved roads. The “Point” is a group of traditional neighborhoods, probably influenced by the early Italian/Portugese fishing families, the influx of Navy families, and the choice of homesites by many of San Diego ’s prominent old families who built our banks, skyscrapers and commerce.
 

Premium unit in 28-U courtyard complex, upper 2BR 1ba 902sf, vaulted ceilings, fpl, A/C, huge wireless plasma system, private laundry, private garage, low $210 HOF includes usual + all water (a nice savings!), 10-person spa, rec room, bike storage room, 6 unassigned parking spaces, walk to Uptown District and Hillcrest and University Height hot spots.

3BR (could be 4) 3ba, 3200+ soaring square feet.  BABY BUSCH GARDENS – ARCHITECT’S OWN. Nestled in hillside gardens of easy-management native flora, this 3200+ soaring square feet of home is where life becomes art. Physically and visually, Bear Drive is a bridge between home and nature on its totally private 12,000+sf sequestered site.

Accessed either from above in a lighted meandering collection of garden stairs and pauses, or below from driveway-garage, this home floats from a whimsical custom door at each entry into a surprising delight of “this makes perfect sense!” Alone upstairs, a double-sized master bedroom combo-sitting-office-lounging-dreaming space includes private bath and deck. Artistic open stairs run down to the main floor, where a flowing assemblage of spaces, windows and trusses and beautiful woods show off the design…from the dream kitchen with premium surfaces, copious storage and room for all to gather, to the dining area with panoramic treetop views, compact or expandable, to family/great space and a wall of doors to the large out door deck/nature’s living room, past a main floor bath, to the living room plus study-library area and left to the office or potential BR4. Downstairs are a room currently used for lounging-gym, two auxiliary bedrooms and a hall bath, access to the generous 2-car garage. You can tell the architect is savvy when his look matches his function, and you see not only the full storage room-workshop room off the garage, but also the extra room built in to house those bulky trash receptacles or anything else big you want stowed. The home is smartly insulated with dual pane windows and set on enormously deep secure foundations. The word for this home is ENVIRONMENT. Its flexibility allows many interpretations. The owner, a very successful architectural designer and community planner, who completed local projects like the very successful Treo in Little Italy, the ballpark’s Diamond Tower, Downtown’s Hardrock Hotel, the mixed use project Seventh and Market, and the redesign of Horton Plaza (among many others), has instilled this home, as he did in San Diego, with quality, and a sense of whimsy and retreat.

Time walk into this 3BR 2.5ba 3000sf canyon and harbor view home where modern day conveniences have been added to yesteryear's craftsmanship. Mission Hills and Craftsman homes are a perfect synergy. When you step into this entry hall, pause. The staircase, light well, intricate craftsman detailing all foretell the quality and artistry of this home. Surrounded by major properties, Arista marries the humble hands of the artisans who built our great early homes with the generations of skill and dreams of pride. Everything surrounding this home is wonderful, and you could bask in that excellence.

About 20 years ago the modest bungalow that sat on this canyon-bay view 7500sf lot was scrupulously remodeled and expanded into a 2-story Arts and Crafts home. Conveniently, the master bedroom suite preserved its position on the main floor, and an addition of 2 bedrooms, bath and large family room with deck were constructed over the original home with its own U-shaped steel foundation that rides separately above to exacting and generous seismic codes. But what you see first is the strict recreation of quality craftsmanship – gleaming oak floors, clean fir trims and moldings, bull-nose corners, glorious light filtering through trees and beautifully maintained double-hung windows from the east in the morning and the west in the afternoon.

In spite of its glorious design heritage, Arista is a comfortable house. Past the gathering living room with warming fireplace, there are choices for dining arrangements. The kitchen invites guests to hang over the counter or sit near by in canyon view chairs and kibbitz with the cook. it is also equipped with two Vermont soapstone “farm” sinks, sleek granite countertops, natural looking cabinets (some with glass showcase fronts), a large pantry, counter range top with retractable down-draft venting, stainless Kitchen Aid appliances, and canyon views.

The main level master suite limits the number of stairclimbs an owner may have to do. A sitting area-study with large closet is accessed through double doors Beyond and to the left is a tile-floored bath with glass-block-surround shower, (salvaged from the renowned Hillcrest Phuong Nam restaurant), private commode, two large sinks with lateral shelf running behind and large medicine cabinets above each. Two large pullout laundry hampers are included in the extensive closeting in the suite. The bedroom is to the right of the sitting area and projects along the north side of the deck capturing views and breezes. A deck accessed from the dining, breakfast and master areas of the main floor surveys the canyon and lovely homes way across and offers a view of San Diego Bay .

On your way upstairs, note that Behind the staircase is a well-located powder room. That access in the floor is how contractors accessed the under house during the convention of the two steel U-frames.

At the top of the stairs a grand parlor, great room. Today’s words say “family room”. It is the showcase of the home with appropriately tiled fireplace, walls of bookcase and lit display cabinets, oak flooring, exacting Craftsman detailing, 3 walls of windows, and views to the canyon and Bay from both the room and the veranda beyond. Tucked in a discrete closet under the pull-down access to a lit, floored stand-up attic is the laundry room, easy to run to between books or games or work in the great room. The back bedroom is large with more built-ins and a large semi-divider, serviceable for 2 children to share if so desires. A full bath adjoins this room to a front bedroom overlooking the front garden and nearby homes and off to the Sea World tower.

The lighting throughout is thoroughly planned for wherever necessary and appropriate to the style and use of the home, such as the dining area lighting, copied from the Gamble House in Pasadena. Windows throughout the house are new or excellent condition original wood. An attached garage is a two car tandem with very high ceiling, 3 circuits of power and benches for the handy-or-hobbyist, a utility sink, and more storage. If someone wants to add a kitchenette to the upstairs Great Room, there is plumbing and a drain in the wall toward the hall, because of placement of the laundry!

The home is gloriously private. The neighbors to the south have no real look into the home, on the north they are separated by the garage, and on the east and west are separated by a canyon. It is unnecessary to have any window coverings on the master suite because of this setting. The owners rave happily about their neighbors to the north (the house to the south has just been sold and new owners are not yet own) and have advised that there are a number of youngsters on the street. The property lines to either side are fairly obvious. In the canyon the property goes way down to just past two small torrey pines on the left side. The lot is 50x150 overall. Everything is sprinklered. Plans for the remodeling/expansion work are available for a new owner to review and to receive permanently at closing.

The utility lines along this part of Arista are expected to be undergrounded in the foreseeable future. The owners have signed their contract with the City and there will be no charge to the homeowners for this work, only a very temporary disruption in their street service.

Mission Hills’ prime location. Original 1928 Craftsman-Traditional is deliberately welcomed to the new millennium with addition of capacious family room, 2 offices, 12x10-foot wine cellar, 2 car attached garage, more. Total square footage approaches 4,000sf. + space to park RV discreetly out of way.

Predominantly one-story, this home offers the spatial values of grand living and entertaining, privacy, and full, flexible livability. It stunned the owner to see her kitchen, self designed under the guidance of an architect, duplicated at a showcase home. Enter gracious double gates to a walled courtyard with mothering podacarpus managed for health and safety by a leading arborist. The broad craftsman porch and front door welcome you to gracious and functional. The public rooms are comfortable for large groups. The personal rooms are all of good size, and offer excellent storage. The 3rd BR is currently used as a gym, and the finished 20x13 downstairs room beyond the wine cellar can alternate as a gym, studio of any kind, workshop, etc. The two offices, one with fabulous built-in file drawers and cabinets, answer modern family needs, and the upper could serve as guest or 4th bedroom. The deck off this room was designed to support the addition of a spa, electrical and plumbing available. Hardwood flooring, moldings, built-in’s, 2 fireplaces, a wide center hall, higher ceilings and carefully chosen details bespeak quality. The whole house sound system and surround sound in the 26’ family room, make enjoying big screen entertainment a joy. The bar and deck off the family room offer great entertaining. There are 2 zones of newer heating pre-equipped for adding air conditioning. Cooling is currently provided by coastal climate and ceiling fans. Whatever the owners have done, they have responsibly involved leading experts, such as Architects Tim Golba and Lew Domini. Professionally landscaped, the garden was requested to be in the prestigious annual Garden Club Tour this year. Do not miss the dog run, fruit trees and 7-section storage building. Pine street , a traditional location for prestige and old San Diego names, is unbothered by freeway/airport and other nuisances. The community of Mission Hills is smartly located just up the hill from the coast-corner Downtown, preserving its ocean breeze benefits and riven with lush natural canyons that cause its streets to twist. San Diego ’s botanical mother Kate Sessions had a nursery in Mission Hills, reflected in the community, and the May Garden Club tour is the most prominent in the City! Traditional Town Halls, 3 elementary schools and 3 churches, 2 parks and electric shops and eateries, Little Leagues and soccer teams,
and youngsters tuning their IPods while on the cell, Mission Hills is five minutes to our business and legal core, and 1 mile to two of San Diego ’s finest hospitals. It takes 5-7 minutes to get to the Airport, 10 to Sea World or the beach, Balboa Park is a 2-mile walk, and our architecture is as stunning and diverse as our people. Best of all, we hardly ever have to get on the freeway to go to most of the places we might wish! Some people even cab to Petco Park to cheer on the Padres, since it is often less than parking.