Oregon Winter 2022

If you had a million dollars to spend on a house, what would you buy?

Talking to buyers locally, most would say land. Acreage. Distance from neighbors and traffic.

A second popular answer: A view – of the valley, city lights, the mountains, a river or a lake, a meadow.

And if they can’t either of those things, well, the house had better be ….Grand. Awe-inspiring.

A double-door entry to a spacious, vaulted foyer. A living room that could accommodate at least 12 couples doing a Viennese Walz. A fireplace with a substantial surround, mantle and hearth. Floor-to-ceiling windows. True hardwoods, no cheaping out with laminates or even engineered woods.

The staircase should sweep.

In fact, there should be some art in the house’s architecture: Molding, archways, wrought iron accents, ceiling medallions, a couple of diamond paned windows…

Maybe even a turret.

A kitchen for a million dollar house better be sized for a team of cooks. Quartz counters and stainless appliances at the minimum, a walk-in pantry to hunker down in for a few months of quarantine. A six or eight–burner gas range or if you must, induction stove. A pot filler. A double oven. A spacious food prep island and yards of counter space. A whisper quiet dishwasher and oversized refrigerator.

Onto the master suite. If you can’t execute at least three cartwheels in it without hitting a wall, it’s not grand enough. For $1.3 million, there should be sufficient space for a major tumbling run. A walk-in closet should be large enough to house a dressing area. The bath should include both the free-standing soak tub and the double-head, step in shower – a full height tile surround, No fiberglass, no old chrome, no four-inch ceramic tile. Under foot, a heated tile floor. The vanity should include double sinks and above it, a mirror that makes Everyone look slim and trim.

Rooms. Simply having a lot of rooms does not make a house worth a million dollars. The value of each space is a function of use and size. Once you have the requisite five or six bedrooms, and like-sized office, a hobby room, library, and a fitness room, what is left? In the U.S., additional rooms must be equipped: A pet boutique with puppy shower, a billiards room, and a theater room with built-in recliners, maybe. After that, what else is there? What does one do with a conservatory, other than plot the murder of Colonel Mustard with the wrench?

In this, we are unlike Europe, where having lots of rooms, whether particularly outfitted for a purpose or not, IS valuable. There, the rooms of grand houses have fancy names — salon, drawing room, sitting room, parlor, morning room. While richly furnished, they appear to have no special purpose beyond standing or, as mentioned, sitting.

Parking. Don’t skimp on parking. Nothing worse than spending a cool mil on a property only to have to park your fave car/golf cart/canoe/RV out in the rain. Ditto the driveway – It should be big enough and wide enough to avoid the 16-point turn.

Privacy: If you can’t have acreage, the least you should have is privacy. If you can’t gaze out your floor-to-ceiling windows at the countryside, at least you should be able to avoid people looking in as they wander past your front porch on the way to the bus stop.

Sadly, though, Oregon is going the way of California in its housing policies. The latest attempt at halting the stacking of human beings in tinier and tinier spaces has failed at the Legislature. Again. Prepare for the million dollar 2-bedroom bungalow!