Michigan midcentury modern home gets an eco-overhaul, sells in just days at sluggish time

When John and Renate Mirsky started shopping for a home in 2013, they made a list of priorities.

The couple wanted an open floor plan, large windows, lots of natural light, and something that reflected their shared passion for the outdoors. The home they found at 505 Burson Place in Ann Arbor, Michigan, checked all the boxes — plus, it was in fair condition.

The previous owners carefully preserved the midcentury modern home’s original cabinetry and detailing, more or less as architect James Livingston completed them in 1956. The Mirskys weren’t midcentury obsessives, but the couple instinctively appreciated the home for its simplicity of design and the way it prioritized outdoor living, just as the architects who popularized the movement intended.

But like many midcentury residences, the home was decades behind in terms of efficiency.

For all their design sensitivity, midcentury homes “were not well-insulated,” said John Mirsky, now 70. The engineer spent his career at German conglomerate Bosch, later specializing in its corporate real estate, environmental health, and safety initiatives. The experience cast the home’s out-of-date features in sharp relief when it came time to close. It “had a gas furnace, and it had an air conditioning unit, and both of those were very old,” he said.

Also old: those original, large windows.

So, Mirsky said, when the couple settled on the house for $730,000, they knew that “there were a lot of things relative to the envelope that we wanted to improve.”

First and foremost, the couple wanted to make their new home more comfortable. Then, in their late 50s and early 60s, the couple planned to retire to the property (it was about 20 minutes away from their home in Plymouth), so they played the long game.

On another level, they wanted to give back to their community and saw a project like this — one that asked little of its environment — as a good place to start.

In terms of the envelope, Mirsky said, the project was a major undertaking.

Local contractor Meadowlark Builders removed the ceilings and sprayed foam insulation, addressing the fact that much of the heat is lost through this area. In the basement, the builders also improved efficiency by insulating the underground space from the inside. All told, the envelope upgrades cost nearly $180,000 at the time, but it tightened things up.

Building envelope aside, Mirsky called the overall project a “refresh.” Still, that refresh included asbestos abatement; a period-appropriate cork flooring overhaul; and a $17,000 endeavor to refinish the 70-year-old walnut shelving and paneling that was cracking with age. The couple also spent nearly the next decade reducing their natural gas usage in the home, with the exception of a fireplace, which they estimated they used about 10 times a year.

In 2015, the Mirskys installed a geothermal heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning system for more than $25,000, making a long-term investment in the home’s future, Mirsky explained. Geothermal-tied water heaters ($5,100) followed in 2018, 14 kilowatts of roof-bound solar panels were installed in 2022 ($32,550), and an additional 1.6 kilowatts of panels were added in 2023 ($2,900). Because the panels don’t produce uniformly throughout the year — Ann Arbor gets cloudy — the couple sourced green power from the local utility, which runs a program in which you pay a “slight premium for procuring green power.” That brought the house to net-zero.

Over the years, they’ve also refinished bathrooms and added tailored storage and shelving. It reminded Mirsky of a home the couple lived near on Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina: “The Never Done.”

But it felt like good work. “There was an element of paying forward our good fortune,” Mirsky explained, but funding a “long-term investment in our home that others then will be able to enjoy.”

Later on, it became clear that the home also offered teachable moments, like when 900 people toured the property as part of the annual garden tour. Mirsky printed out 2-by-3-foot posters filled with details about not only the couple’s garden, but also the mechanical systems of their home.

The couple made the pricing readily apparent to visitors, underscoring the investment’s cost: Since 2014, the Mirskys estimate that they have put between $459,000 and $465,000 into the home, both inside and out.

The Mirskys had planned to stay in the Burson Place house longer, but this year they decided to move to Seattle, relocating to be near their daughter and grandchild. Life happens.

In September, the couple listed their home in Ann Arbor's Angell neighborhood with Howard Hanna Real Estate agent JoAnn Barrett for nearly $1.28 million. Within a week, the home was under contract. It sold for about $1.42 million on Oct. 3.

After a slower summer-selling season in the neighborhood, it was a lightning-fast trade, Barrett said. “The neighborhood supports $1 million and above, but this August, not one house sold over $1 million in the entire month.”

Part of that softening is cyclical, the agent explained, driven by the University of Michigan academic calendar and by summer vacation schedules. Still, “it’s not normal for there to be zero sales in August in that neighborhood.”

With that sluggishness setting the stage, the Mirskys’ listing, which attracted multiple offers, “blew any prediction right out of the water,” Barrett said.

The home’s architecture certainly attracted buyers, but Ann Arbor is studded with compelling midcentury homes thanks to its close ties with the university's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. “I think nationally, midcentury modern has been embraced,” Barrett reflected, “but our community embraced it also because of all these architects.”

From Barrett’s perspective, the home's backstory and sustainable features played a weighty role in attracting buyers. The Mirskys are “so committed to net zero” that their enthusiasm is infectious — at least it infected Barrett.

The agent hosted a zero-waste open house in keeping with the lifestyle.

“I went out to find food that didn’t have packaging,” she recalled, “and to do wine and cheese without any packaging isn’t easy.” But it worked: She found the food, used the home’s cutlery and glasses, brought in cloth napkins, and chucked food scraps into the home’s composting bin.

“I essentially walked away with no garbage,” she said.

The interest the home garnered also marked a shift for Barrett, who’s worked the market for about two decades. About 15 years ago, she helped environmentalist clients purchase a solar-powered home in the area.

“Because it had solar panels, nobody bought it,” she recalled. “They didn’t know what to do with it … so my clients got a really good price on that. I don’t see any of that hesitation now.”