Homes For Sale Leesburg Va

F.C. House with Civil War Ties for Sale

For the past 34 years, Jim Kestell has been adding the latest chapter to the long history of the Almond Birch House, one of Falls Church City's historic homes. He lives there with his wife, where they raised their two children and where he has headquartered his law practice, more than 150 years after Almond Birch, known as "Yankee Birch," came from Saratoga County, New York and settled in Falls Church on what was then a 20-acre farm. But now that his two children have grown and left the home, and age has made the task of keeping up the property more demanding, Kestell and his wife are hoping to sell the house to someone who can care for it.

When Kestell started his house hunt in the late 70s, he was looking for a home with some character, which led him to consider the historic site at 209 Midvale St. "I loved it the second I walked in," Kestell said. "It was very special."

Kestell almost immediately began putting his own touches on the property, adding a two-car garage and a swimming pool.

"Each owner makes it their own, while keeping in the style of the house," said Real Estate Agent Sue Jin Song, who is charged with selling the four-bedroom, 2 ½ bathroom home, which has been on the market at $1.3 million since mid May.

Kestell undertook a larger renovation in 2002, installing heating appliances and adding an addition to the back and side of the house that allowed him to expand the bedrooms upstairs and make a new granite and stainless steel kitchen downstairs.

The renovations mean striking a delicate balance between maintaining the home's historic characteristics and giving way to the need for modern conveniences. With the guidance of the City's zoning board and historic commission, Kestell has been able to make those changes - like putting in radiant heat beneath new flooring, but keeping the original flooring intact beneath the new wood floors, and expanding the footprint of the house, but leaving architectural elements to show the where the house used to stand.

Still Kestell has gone without to preserve the home, opting not to insulate some of the rooms so as not to "scar the place," and not to replace the house's windows with a more energy- and cost-saving alternatives.

But Kestell hasn't only concerned himself with maintaining the historic qualities of the house. He is also mindful of the property, caring for the decades-old trees that adorn the lawn, and restoring its dilapidated pond into a lily pond. He is also fond of the original hand-dug, stone-lined well at the front of his home, the water from which he uses to tend his plants and yard in the summer.

Leesburg VA Homes For Sale « Leesburg VA Homes For Sale

Leesburg VA Homes For Sale

A new Market Advantage Real Estate site, Leesburg VA Homes For Sale, is scheduled to launch this week. This is the second of several sites set to usher in a new approach to web-bases service and information for the micro brokerage.

The sites will put the top talent of real estate front and center of  buyers looking for help to navigate buying and/or selling real estate in constantly changing markets.

Market Advantage Real Estate expects to role out many more highly localized, geo-specific real estate web sites over the coming months. This will be a an important part of the Market Advantage Real Estate strategy to dominate the hyper-local marketplaces surrounding the Metro-DC marketplace  with its on-line presence.

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