The Beautiful Wreck: The twin apartment

David, my realtor who helped me find The Beautiful Wreck, texted this morning. A new apartment in my line two floors above me just went on the market. He's knows I'm always interested in the comings and going of the apartment sales in my building, so he always lets me know when he sees any activity. This one is especially intriguing because it's the exact layout of my place (or at least the exact original layout, the way the apartment looked when I first bought it and before the renovation was done). I was also interested to see the asking price. It's more than $100K than what I paid. Obviously this is a good thing, it's always nice to know your property is growing in value.
What's interesting about the online listing is that this apartment is in a little better condition than mine was. Mine was a complete disaster, hence the need for a total gut renovation. Looking at the photos of this place, it does need a lot of work. I love the selling tricks of realtors these days. They take existing pics of an apartment that needs work and do a lot of cosmetic computer illustration over the photo to show a prospective buyer what the place could look like all prettied up (I'm always surprised how limited people's ability to envision what a space could look like can be, I guess that's why I'm an art director!).
Here are the current photos of this 'twin' apartment, followed by the computer enhanced photos and then photos of what my place looked like when I bought it and then how it looks now. It's interesting to compare and contrast.
I'm going to try and see this other apartment as soon as I hear there's an open house, my inner Gladys Kravitz is getting the best of me. Stay tuned, I may have additional pictures and info in future posts.