When a home on Brevoort Road sold in November, tongues in the Clintonville neighborhood started
wagging. It’s easy to understand why: The home sold for $720,000 – about three times what houses in
that neighborhood typically fetch.
This was not a typical home, and it illustrates the challenges of selling a property that has
been improved beyond its neighbors.
The house was substantially updated and expanded a few years ago, turning a conventional
two-story 1920s home into a 3,700-square-foot extravaganza with a new master bedroom, kitchen and
family room. (A finished basement adds another 500 square feet.)
If the home, surrounded by 1920s Colonials and Tudors of less than 2,000 square feet, isn’t
typical, neither was the sale. The house was never actively listed. Instead, the owners had
mentioned to Clintonville RE/MAX agent Pat Kearns-Davis that if she could get what they wanted for
the home, they would sell.
A RE/MAX colleague of Kearns-Davis’, Katie Lybarger Shepard, was working with a young couple who
was renting in German Village. He was from Columbus, but the couple had recently lived in
California before returning to Ohio. Shepard showed them the home.
“We looked all over and they loved Clintonville, but there wasn’t the style of home they were
looking for in Clintonville,” Shepard recalled. “Pat came to me and mentioned this house, and they
walked through and they were willing to buy it. It was the area that sold them.”
In late November, they paid $720,000 for the home, which last sold for $185,000 in 2001, before
the renovation.
No other home sales on Brevoort come close to that price. The most expensive recent sale I could
find was $380,000 for a 2,512-square-foot home down the street. A few other nearby homes have
fetched more than $300,000, but most fall in the mid-$200,000s, some in the high $100,000s.
As longtime Clintonville real-estate agent Joe Jackson put it: “You could buy three houses in
that area for that price.” Jackson was quick to add that he hasn’t seen the inside of the home and
doesn’t know whether it was priced appropriately.
As Kearns-Davis notes, just because the home is unusual doesn’t mean the price is out of
line.
“There aren’t going to be 100 buyers for it, but there will definitely be a buyer wanting that
kind of living space,” she said.
Many neighborhoods have such homes – renovated far beyond their surroundings or perhaps built at
a different time than others – that present a big challenge to buyers and sellers: How to find
comparable homes to establish a price?
In the Brevoort Road case, Kearns-Davis and Shepard said they used a recent sale on North
Broadway and a newly built home on Starret Road as comps, even though the Starret Road home hasn’t
changed hands and the Broadway home sold for about $600,000. Other comps were so hard to find that
they looked even in the Short North.
John DeFourny, a Clintonville real-estate agent since 1977, said some Clintonville-area homes
have sold in the $700,000s, but they’re rare.
He cited a home on Olentangy Road in the Old Beechwold neighborhood that sold for $755,000.
Another Old Beechwold home, a remarkable 1897 estate on the river, is now on the market for
$895,000.
DeFourny and Jackson agree that there are homes in Clintonville that probably would fetch as
much as the Brevoort Road home if they were to sell – at least when the market recovers.
Kearns-Davis’ own Clintonville home, which was expanded a few years ago to 11,000 square feet,
would certainly be among them.
Shepard declined to say what the home appraised at, although in this case the buyers put enough
down on the home to cover the difference between the appraisal and the sale price.
“We got the deal done,” Shepard said.
Kearns-Davis sees the investment in the home – both by the former owners and the buyers – as a
commitment to Clintonville.
As for buying a Cadillac surrounded by Chevys, she notes, “Somebody’s always going to buy the
most expensive house on the street.”
Jim Weiker is Dispatch home and garden writer. Reach him at 614-461-5513 or by e-mail.
jweiker@dispatch.com