Tasteful friends: Make it after all in a 1929 Minneapolis apartment of 450sf, $115,000

Listing link

A 3 room unit is not a studio. It's just a small apartment. A studio is one room.

That's lovey (except for the washer & dryer part) and the price...oy! I have no desire to move to Minneapolis, but what I wouldn't give to live near that kind of beautiful affordable housing

It's why I put it in quotes, R2.

[quote] It's why I put it in quotes, [R2].

Please don't take offense OP as I didn't aim that comment toward you specifically, but toward the real estate listing that referred to it as a "studio".

Insanely cheap. What's wrong with it?

I think the rooms must be quite small.

Correction: I transposed the numbers and it's smaller than I noted: correctly 405 square feet per the listing

They are small but I've lived in smaller.

[quote]Insanely cheap. What's wrong with it?

It does seem, but I guess the question is what's so wrong with Minneapolis? There are similar units in other nearby buildings for sale for less.

Not far away and closer to the center, here's a similar unit in a much larger elevator (and what an elevator) building of the same period and similar original details, with an extra 150 square feet, but for $50,000 less. Some of the price difference is surely due to it being a co-op (rather than a condo), with higher monthly fees of $648 (which should include the owner's share of property tax)

Wow. Thanks r10.

I love those cute glass cabinets

It's adorable, but I would never buy it without in-unit W/D. Been there, done that - no thanks.

Also, early Rhoda would never have fit through those narrow doors.

If that's the price of a condo, how much for a house?

Even the Bramford doesn’t have in-unit W/Ds.

Shared laundry = hard pass

Wow, both OP's place and the one R10 posted are amazing value for money. Both are beautiful inside, OP's one has a slightly nicer interior but R10's has nicer common areas.

Pass for me as no garaging, but for someone with no desire to own a car these are great

Adorable.

One doesn’t have to live in this unit forever.

It’s a great starter property, & can easily become an investment property, if nothing else.

It’s a decent introduction into one’s real estate portfolio, yes?

R2: Small apartments often are marketed as Studios even if they have distinct rooms--usually the living room and kitchen are basically one room or you have a distinct kitchen/dining area and a living room with some sort of convertible bed space. I've lived in buildings that did that.

Nice that they kept the charm and didn't knock down the walls to make one big room. So many older buildings are gutted when they go through condo conversions. I had a similarly sized but older rental around 40 years ago in Montreal when I was in graduate school. The kitchen was even smaller - the refrigerator was in the hall closet, but there was a small bedroom. Gone now, divided between 2 larger units.

If any hot guys live in the building, then that shared laundry in the basement could turn out to be a plus.

Where does the bed go??

You get a convertible or spend some money to install a Murphy bed.

R19, it could be great as a starter apartment, but the unusual pairing of high quality and low price made me think of DL threads where some posters not starting out in life have described feeling stuck, priced out from buying, from moving cities, even from downsizing at retirement.

These are not for everybody. But for someone with a modest budget who wants some financial security and a nice apartment to suit their taste for vintage things, or someone who wants to downscale things, it's not so bad at all. And for someone who wants those things in a nice, central neighborhood in a liberal city in a liberal state, you could do much worse.

A single person, even a couple could have a pleasant and comfortable place with a fair bit of style for $1000/month ($115,000 with 20% downpayment and mortgage payments and HOA fee), or paying cash, the monthly cost would be the HOA fee of $285 and maybe water and electricity ("USI high-speed fiber internet, heat, gas, water, trash, and snow removal all included in the HOA dues.") It's an impossibility for a lot of places.

That's the big thing - $1000 a month. How much would a rental cost?

R23 You can see the Murphy bed closet with the large double doors in the corner of the main room.

You could also do a day bed with lots of cushions. Wealthy foreign buyers snap up places like this for their children enrolled in American universities. It's so charming, both are, I could live there if I was single and didn't have the big dog. Cats would be okay.

I lived in Mpls in the 80s. It's a great town.

Can't imagine living there now...I could cope with weeks of it being under 10 degrees back then but today, it would just kill me.

It's so insanely cold for such long periods that if you have a "warm snap" and it gets up into the 20s, it feels like a summer holiday! People will run around outside with very light coats on and everyone has a bounce in their step because it's so "warm".

Then, the temperture drops back to its normal of 6 degrees and you resume wearing your parkas until the end of April.

Oh....the other odd thing about Minnesota....many people don't trim their nose hair.

At least back then, circa 1986. We're talking intelligent, arty, nice people with REALLY long nose hair.

I was fascinated and appalled.

My theory was, they kept it long to keep warm in winter.

That is a standard "starter" apartment in Uptown Minneapolis. I lived in several just like it in the neighborhood back in the 90s. I think my average rent for those apartments was $600/mo plus utilities. Those apartments are great for young professionals. The neighborhood is great (was better back then, but still has lots going for it). It's near the urban lakes where you can cycle and run for miles. The winters are rough, but at that age when you're working and partying all the time it doesn't really matter.

I don't understand how it can be 450sq ft with those pics.

Looks workable and love the old details. I'm sure there are some downsides with the heating/AC or other things.

Not for me - I wouldn't 'buy' something like that. Rent it for a year in a pinch - sure.

I love it of course. I have a thing for built-ins and half round doors.

It is quite small but it's cheerful feeling. One would have to scale way down in possessions, and the size of furnishings, but it really could feel like a dignified home.

Much nicer version of my first apartment in Chicago--one of the many brick garden apartments on the mid-North Side.

It would be fine as a first apartment for a young person or for an older person who spent part of the year in Minneapolis.

The kitchen is a disaster. Also, way too tiny for extravagant cooking.

But the rest looks decent.

And area carpet/rugs for those hardwood floors.

My first apartment was a vintage 1930s apartment with 895 sq ft in Indianapolis before 2010. 695 a month. My parent’s first apartment circa 1968 in Hammond, Indiana had a Murphy bed. They paid nominal rent as my dad would unload the coal delivery down the chute to the basement twice a week either before or after his mill shift. Dad’s uncle owned the building.

[quote] If any hot guys live in the building, then that shared laundry in the basement could turn out to be a plus.

Sure. All the hot guys are going to flock to you pre-treating the food stains on your muumuu.

No thanks! My place is 628 sq ft and much more economical. My apartment complex is only 11 years old as well.

That said, my place doesn't have much style and charm.

That area is no longer a thing. North Loop and Northeast are now more walkable, closer to the best restaurants and activities, and don't require a car.

If husband died I wouldn't want much more.

Is it a Minnesota thing or a Scandinavian thing to have those little mini glass cupboard pantries in FRONT of the kitchen and facing the living room? I would have accepted one as odd, but that fact that both units shown in this thread have them makes me think that they are a standard item .

From a friend: “Yeah, Minneapolis is a terrific place to live - you spend nine months of the year talking about how great the other three months are”. So yes it’s terrific in the spring and summer, and brutal in the winter.

However, we're now well into global warming. In my state, (farthest north you can get except for Alaska), we are predicted to be in the upper 90s and even 100 for the next week - in SEPTEMBER!!!

Maybe Minneapolis in 10 years will have the climate of Kansas City. Then we'll all be rushing to live there.

R43 I had a kitchen/diner with that in Montreal. Built 1930s (not the one I mentioned earlier). Maybe a period thing art deco?

Where do I hang my etc. sign?

Minnesota is hot and humid in summer.

TBH, they have about 8 nice weeks of weather a year. Mid May to Mid June. Mid September to Mid October.

That's about it. The rest of the time is ridiculously cold or hot/muggy with mosquitoes the size of your head.

It’s charming but Minnesota is not.

Minnesota, like most places, is a mixed bag. Some good stuff and some pretty awful stuff.

[quote]Is it a Minnesota thing or a Scandinavian thing to have those little mini glass cupboard pantries in FRONT of the kitchen and facing the living room? I would have accepted one as odd, but that fact that both units shown in this thread have them makes me think that they are a standard item .

Neither Minnesotan nor Scandinavian. It's an American Arts & Crafts style design detail to have certain rooms flow into one another, yet retain some visual separation. It's seen all the time in California houses with Craftsman style interiors, and all over the U.S. as well, dating anywhere from Frank Lloyd Wright did similar separations in more sophisticated ways. They can date anywhere from 1900 to the the first years of the 1930s.

It was a reaction against the Victorian tendency to never miss an opportunity to divide spaced with doors and walls.

And not just to divide the kitchens in small apartments from the adjoining living spaces, but to mark the transition between living rooms and entry halls and dining rooms, etc.

The influence of Scandinavia on architecture in Minnesota and regionally is practically nill.

The kitchen divider id the same tradition as this photo, which could be a space in a great many U.S. states.

I'm very familiar with arts and crafts and built-in cabinets (my town is considered to have one of the largest intact districts of arts and crafts in the country) but I have never seen this particular kitchen to living room design. But granted, the arts and crafts I've seen are stand alone houses, not apartment buildings.

That is MY apartment!

You had walls/doors to separate rooms pre-1900 to keep the room warm.

[quote]R43 those little mini glass cupboard pantries in FRONT of the kitchen and facing the living room?

They are facing a dining area within a living room, I would think. It’s not uncommon to have china, silverware, table linens etc. stored or on display in a dining area, via cabinets, buffets, credenzas, sideboards, plate racks, etc., is it? So that helps justify them being there.

R51 R55 You can find the cabinets as kitchen divider in many small pre-WWII apartments in DC. I’m sure many other places have apartments like these.

They face out onto the dining area for display, but also functionality -- directly behind them on the kitchen side is the sink and what looks like a low refrigerator topped with a microwave. The cabinets would be unable open into the kitchen - the only other option with this layout is a pony wall - which wouldn't offer storage.