The last time Deck House home No. 100 traded hands was in 2021, and, back then, the residence was a fixer-upper.
Looking to relocate from a condo in East Boston, its then-buyers were searching for a specific strain of midcentury structure: a Deck House. Like California Eichlers and Washington Rummers, Deck homes have a following among design obsessives, explained Hammond Residential Real Estate broker Marika Feuerstein-Karas.
“There are people … who will look for these homes all over Massachusetts, and they will buy the home based on the home, not based on the location,” she said.
Today, however, work pulled those 2021 buyers across the country, and the home at 43 Willowdale Road is renovated and back on the market for $1.29 million.
Built in 1962 as the 100th Deck House home
When today’s sellers bought the home roughly four years ago for $900,000, they’d been hunting for Deck House homes.
“They were looking for the right home,” said Feuerstein-Karas, also their broker at the time. When this Deck home hit the market, they “jumped on it,” she recalled.
Even with its dated elements, those buyers walked into an open house for the Topsfield, Massachusetts, residence and “just absolutely fell in love with the bones of the house, knowing that it needed quite a lot of love,” one of the sellers, who wished to remain anonymous, told Homes.com. Charmed by its straightforward plan and generous windows, she said they “felt like it was a magical home and setting.”
The low-slung, four-bedroom house was constructed in 1962 and is tucked into a forested lot. Like most original Deck homes, it was prefabricated, its structure factory-built by either Acorn Homes or Deck Houses (the competitors merged in 1995, eventually becoming Acton’s Acorn Deck House Co.) and assembled on site. This particular home came from Deck Houses, its sellers discovered.
“It’s actually Deck House home No. 100,” the seller told Homes.com, “so that was a really amazing thing to find out about the house.”
As the home changed hands over the years, it got an extension in 1987 and a deck in 2013, but “no one had renovated the inside in a really long time,” she said. “Everything had been maintained well, but it was really outdated.”
So, the sellers embarked on a full renovation, reverting the home to its original intention while infusing it with their love of midcentury modern architecture and Scandinavian-inspired design. That meant taking out the light-blocking curved walls that someone added in the '90s and uncovering the original mahogany framing that had been plastered over near the entrance.
When they added, they did so carefully, selecting deep green tiles that echoed the surrounding greenery and simple fixtures that honored the home’s midcentury roots. They also replaced windows and restored the roof, cladding the ceiling in slender redwood panels. All told, today’s sellers loved their Deck House so much that they documented the renovation and afterlife on Instagram @Willowdaledeckhouse.
“For us, just the simplicity and the natural lighting and the intention of letting nature in from the outside really drew us in,” the seller said.
“Honestly, this is our sanctuary,” she added. “It’s very bittersweet for us to be selling this home. We did the entire renovation thinking this would be our forever home, and life sometimes throws you curveballs.”
'Unique properties still sell very quickly'
In this case, the curveball is work: The sellers have to move across the country. So, while melancholy, they want to see the home loved and appreciated.
“This home holds very beautiful memories for us,” she said. “It’s where we brought both of our children home.”
Even though the year-end market is sluggish, Feuerstein-Karas said the home might sell quickly based on current interest and showings. As the appetite for gray-and-white minimalism evaporates, she said, “I think in general, people are looking for character.”
Also, she noted, it’s a Deck House. They’re popular, and “I think unique properties still sell very quickly,” she said.
Feuerstein-Karas has sold a number of them over the years, she said, and there are a few other Deck Homes she’s seen on the market recently. There's one at 43 Belvedere Road in Boxford that's been on the market for 48 days; one at 80 Wildwood Road in Andover that was under agreement in three days; and one at 54 Nowell Farme Road in Carlisle that went under contract in less than a month, according to the Homes.com listings.
When it comes to this listing, Deck House No. 100 is so freshly renovated that Feuerstein-Karas struggles to nitpick the listing from a buyer’s point of view. Fenced-in yard? Check. Lots of natural light? Check. A social media presence and microbrand? Check.
Maybe the lack of a primary bedroom, she wondered. But the sellers turned a second-floor bedroom into an office-bath-bedroom suite, “almost like the upstairs in a primary suite.”
“So, it’s not even really a negative,” Feuerstein-Karas corrected. “I guess if you needed a fifth bedroom, this one doesn’t have it.”