A Good Investment

The Cheshires' Baker Street home sold for more than $1.5 million in 2011

A 2011 photograph of the Cheshires’ Baker Street home

While researching Ursula and her family via the Library of Congress’s “All Digitized Newspapers 1836-1922” website, I discovered a bit more about their Baker Street home in San Francisco, where Ursula lived as a little girl. My previous post included a link to the deed for the lot on Baker Street that Clara’s father, Alfred, bought in 1903. When I initially read the deed, I had been puzzled that Alfred bought the lot for just $10. It didn’t make sense that it would be so cheap, unless perhaps the house hadn’t been built yet. Maybe the real estate records stating the house was constructed in 1902 were wrong, and the Cheshires had the house built in 1903. But that didn’t make sense either—$10 still would have been a ridiculous price for the lot.

And now I know why. The $10 must have been just a legal formality to purchase the lot, because Alfred actually paid $9,250 in August 2003 for the new 2,400 square-foot, 2-flat house, as I learned from the Real Estate section in The San Francisco Call. According to the article, residential properties were in strong demand at the time.

Ursula's father buys their 2-family Baker Street home in San Francisco for $9,250

Ursula’s father buys their 2-family Baker Street home in San Francisco for $9,250

$9,250 was no small potatoes back then. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s inflation calculator, if he had paid that amount 10 years later in 1913 (the earliest date for which statistics are available) it would be worth about $219,000 in today’s dollars. Since he paid the amount in 1903, it presumably would be worth even more today.

The Cheshires lived at 715-717 Baker Street for the first several years of Ursula's life. The home sold for more than $1.5 million in 2011,

The Cheshires lived at 715-717 Baker Street for the first several years of Ursula’s life. The home sold for more than $1.5 million in 2011.

Compared with present-day real estate prices, however, Alfred paid peanuts for 715-717 Baker St. He would be laughed out of the real estate office if he bid $219,000 for the house today—almost exactly two years ago, this hot property sold for $1,635,000!

The real estate listing from 2011 describes the building as consisting of two large, remodeled, full-floor Victorian flats with period details, beautiful wood floors, high ceilings, bay windows and fireplaces. I wonder if the new owner would be interested in learning about the first family to walk across his home’s wood floors, play piano in the parlor, peer out the bay windows and warm themselves by the fire.