The lighting in the living room and dining room needs to be removed immediately! Other than that, the house is beautiful.

Is it wrong to say that I think this place has been ruined by renovation? For $2M, I would expect my house NOT to have the look and feel of a cookie-cutter new construction condo building. Very little about this place seems unique to me, save the location. If I had the money, this house wouldn’t make my short list.

My favorite part? The outside. So yeah, I agree with the negative comments above.

I believe the previous owner was an art professor. Which is why in the streetview the house was painted a cool color and there was sculpture in the yard. The lighting was set up gallery style to display works. Im sure the house was decorated a lot better inside as well but it is currently the victim of a bland paint overhaul to get that mass market appeal. In the end its a good deal regardless. a rowhome in woodley in this shape would go for 1.2. This is a stand alone house. with what looks like a 3 car garage in the back? And the walk from your front door to the metro escalator would be about 48 seconds.

The owner is fat-cat lobbyist powerhouse couple Tony Podesta and Heather Podesta. They are HUGE art collectors (they used to have a giant (like size of the wall) picture of a naked man, by some uber-mod artist. The house is way impressive and while the lighting looks out of place in an empty house, it actually fit with their decor. I’ve been inside when it was decorated and it was impressive. There is nothing cookie cutter about this house. Mr. Podesta likes to live LARGE and there is nothing in this house that came from Home Depot… that’s just not how he rolls. I actually am not a huge fan of him as a person, however, this house will sell quickly. They actually for some reason have a 5 car garage… also, I shared an alley with them for about 4 years (I lived on garfield)… and also from knowing him well enough, I’m sure he has some sort of wine cellar/temperature controlled basement because he was a huge wino (he’s super Italian).

The lighting looks like gallery lighting but the gallery is gone. That’s a big staging error. The spaces seem odd (and made odder by the lens on the camera) – Is there a fireplace in the foyer? – but it’s a neat house.

It’s a dilettante house. Good for small gatherings, distinctive and can be impressive. Someone in a mid-level lobbying or fundraising job, or some middle level diplomat, will hand out $2 mil for it. But they would think of it as a business expense not a real home. Which is another reason I don’t aspire to some DC neighborhoods where the folks there are always one foot out the door to their next career in the next city/country.

That’s what this house says to me, anyhow. Cute but I would not spend my $2 mil there.

Well I’ll be the dissenter and say I like the house. It isn’t my favorite of all time but I like it.

The lighting is clearly intended for illuminating artwork and I didn’t need the names of the owners to figure that out. The great thing about monorail and duorail lighting is that the heads can be changed with almost no effort and little expense, so a buyer can change the aesthetic very easily. There are a huge variety of styles of heads from modern to traditional.

The paint color I see as merely a step above priming it and prepping it for a buyer. I think in this price range, any buyer is going to be repainting every room to suit their decor anyway, so the color for listing photos and viewings is just meant to show the house as a blank canvas.

But I still think of GDoN as a discussion of listing values, not an voyeuristic opportunity to judge other people’s lifestyles.

Honestly, it looks like a group of high-end flippers got hold of a beautiful old victorian and butchered it up.

Does the following sound familar?

“luxury condo with granite countertop, and open floor plan”.