“Los Angeles has reinvented itself four or five times since 1939. This house sat out every one of them.”
- Claire O'Connor
3719
Somerset Dr
Los Angeles
Bedrooms
3
Bathrooms
2
Total Area
1,592 Sq. FT
Lot Size
6,242 Sq. FT
Price
$1,399,000
Kept, Not Flipped
The house went up in 1939 on a tree-lined street just off the West Adams corridor, and it has been standing there through every fashion Los Angeles has cycled through since. Eighty-seven years is long enough for a house this size to be gutted, corrected, and gutted again, and in this part of the city most of them have been. This one got updated instead. The kitchen and the bathrooms are new, the hardwood and the crown molding are not, and the distance between those two facts is the entire story of the place.
Listed by: Karlyn Nelson, Lacy Register, Compass
Inside
The fireplace still runs the living room, which is what fireplaces were built to do in 1939 and what they largely stopped doing afterward. The original hardwood carries through the house, and the crown molding survived every decade that would have cheerfully removed it. The kitchen and the bathrooms were redone with enough restraint that you have to look twice to date the work, which is the rarest thing a renovation can accomplish. Most of them announce themselves. This one waits to be noticed. The layout does the quieter work: two bedrooms and a bath sit up near the entry, close enough to the door to be handed over to guests without rearranging anyone’s life, while the primary suite is set at the back with its own bath, far enough off that a slow morning in one half of the house never reaches the other. Nothing in the plan is grand. All of it gets used.
Outside
The front porch looks out at the street and the trees, and it is the part of the property that puts you in conversation with neighbors whether or not that was the plan. Out back there is a deck, jasmine that announces itself before you find it, and a fire pit that explains why evenings here tend to run long. The lot runs to 6,242 square feet, which is most of the reason the back of the property feels unhurried rather than merely private. The garage has been converted into a work and studio space, which may be the most useful thing anyone has done to this property in decades. It has its own door, its own quiet, and no obligation to match the rest of the house. Whether that becomes a studio, an office, or the room where the loud hobby lives is left to whoever moves in.
The O' Factor
Every renovated house in Los Angeles insists it is not a flip. The difference is that a flip is renovated in the direction of a sale and a home is renovated in the direction of a Tuesday. A flip pulls the crown molding, since molding is slow and paint is fast. A flip does not plant jasmine, which takes seasons to earn its keep, and it does not build a fire pit, which only pays off if you are still here in the fall. What the owners built here was a life, and the neighborhood came included: Highly Likely in the morning, Earle’s and Vicky’s All Day for the rest of it, the K Line a few blocks off for the days you would rather not drive. This is a house for people who want a neighborhood more than they want square footage, and who know those two are usually priced against each other. The owners already made that trade. The house is the receipt.
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The Homes we Represent,
Represent Us.
Every home has a soul. Every human has a place they were meant to be. Our instinct is knowing when the two finally meet. We honor architecture, preserve great design and celebrate the match. Welcome to O’Connor Estates. We’ve been waiting for you.
Proof is in the Properties
SOLD
Closed $200K over asking
SOLD
Closed for $1,589/sq ft
SOLD
Closed $250k over asking
