Real Estate

Hannah Dodd • August 10, 2016

A fundraiser for Children’s National Health System, the premier provider of pediatric services in the metro area, the DC …

Hannah Dodd •

A fundraiser for Children’s National Health System, the premier provider of pediatric services in the metro area, the DC Design House has become an annual affair that has attracted more […]

Hannah Dodd •

A fundraiser for Children’s National Health System, the premier provider of pediatric services in the metro area, the DC …

Jody Kurash •

A fundraiser for Children’s National Health System, the premier provider of pediatric services in the metro area, the DC …

Hannah Dodd •

This luxurious penthouse condominium, part of the Ritz-Carlton complex, has a 3,000-square-foot expanse of terraces and roof gardens with …

Georgetowner • May 20, 2016

The odds of Leicester City Football Club winning the Premier League were 5,000 to one. If you had bet your entire retirement on Leicester, your retirement date just moved up by about 50 years.

The S&P 500 Index is now officially in the second-longest bull market run in history. That sounds great … until you remember that it was immediately preceded in 2008 by the second-worst financial catastrophe in history. In less than a year, the S&P 500 lost half its total market capitalization, roughly $7 trillion.

Over the past seven years, from the 2009 bottom to recent levels, the index roughly tripled. But if you had long-term investments eight years ago and rode the roller coaster down and back up again, your compound annual rate from 2007 until now drops to less than four percent.

Although the S&P looks like a sure first-place winner, the odds are that this horse may be running out of steam. When rebalancing your portfolio, it’s important to understand the difference between compound interest and average return. Ignore the past-performance charts that show a three-, five- and 10-year average return; they are meaningless in building wealth. Stocks and bonds go up and down; only fixed vehicles compound.

Here’s how Wall Street’s double or nothing game works: A stock worth $100,000 that gained 100 percent in year one would grow to $200,000. However, if it lost 50 percent the second year, it would be worth $100,000. Your statement would reflect a 25-percent average return while your actual compound return was zero.

Let’s look at it a different way. In 2011, the average annual appreciation for the Dow Jones Industrials from 1900 to 2010 was 7.1 percent (which is how the Dow reports). So if one took a simple calculator and calculated what $1,000 invested over 110 years at an average of 7.1 percent would be, the number turns out to be $1,891,654. However, the Dow rose from 66 in 1900 to 11,578 in 2010, which reflects an actual compounded return of only 4.8 percent. Applying the same math example, the actual return of $1,000 invested in the Dow was only $156,363.

That’s an error of $1,735,291. Now that’s a lot of retirement money. The problem is, calculators and financial programs project future values using compound math and the investing public believes the numbers. The house is winning and we are losing. If you make that mistake, the only way to make up for it is to bet on Leicester winning.

John E. Girouard, CFP, ChFC, CLU, CFS, author of “Take Back Your Money” and “The Ten Truths of Wealth Creation,” is a registered principal of Cambridge Investment Research and an Investment Advisor Representative of Capital Investment Advisors in Bethesda, Maryland.

Nico Dodd • May 13, 2016

Longtime Georgetown resident Isabel Ernst got her start in real estatein 1998. She now lives with her husband, Ricardo, a professor of Business at Georgetown University, and her four children in Georgetown.

How did you get your start in development?

I got into real estate development when I bought our house in 1998, the historic Hillandale Mansion. It was completely abandoned and was falling apart. It had no electricity or water, and the windows and doors were either missing or destroyed. It had great bones, though. I took it upon myself to bring this beautiful house back to life. I spent two-and-a-half years renovating the mansion. I did all the design myself and learned a lot about space and materials, two very important components for a successful project. After I finished my home in 2000, I realized that development was my passion and started my business.

What has been your most memorable project to date?

The Clyde building on 10th between M and L St.: It was a leap of faith when I bought it, because it was still a very “transitional neighborhood.” The building was condemned, but it also had great bones, so we completely gutted it and transformed it into 14 beautiful apartments.

When you’re not at work, what can you usually be found doing?

I am usually taking care of my family, my husband and my four kids, spending time with my friends, taking care of my house, going to board meetings for the different organizations I am involved in, planning trips or going to art fairs with my parents. Not a lot of down time!

What is the hottest neighborhood in Washington right now?

D.C. has a lot of great emerging neighborhoods that are blending into each other. We are slowly building a wonderful city with a very international flavor, where people can walk or bike to work, to the theater or to a hot yoga class. As Mayor Gray described it, “D.C. is a world within a city,” and I cannot imagine living in a better place anywhere in the world.

What is your favorite thing about being a developer?

My favorite thing about being a developer is the demolition face when you get down to the bones and then start to rebuild; the smell of fresh paint and a beautiful space surrounded by beautiful materials.

Michelle Galler • May 4, 2016

In the largely agrarian society of colonial America, what we think of as common garden tools were extremely valuable in planting and cultivating the beds and fields that fed whole families. As opposed to modern, mass-produced garden tools, the garden tools of old were custom made and held dear by the families who owned them. People’s livelihoods directly depended on their garden tools.

Until the 16th century, those tools were simple, basic and heavy, having evolved from agricultural implements used for hundreds of years. Colonists built raised, rectangular gardens right outside their homes. These cottage gardens were intensely cultivated and narrow enough to be tended from either side. The beds were filled with plants focused on function — herbs, vegetables, and flowers for dyes and fragrance.

Early New England settlers believed that gardens should be austere and utilitarian, and that flowers with no use were frivolous and extravagant, so each plant was valued for its usefulness, not its beauty. Although a few gardens were larger and better furnished than the others, the typical version was that of a small garden plot planted with leeks, onions, garlic, melons, English gourds, radishes, carrots, and cabbages, next to the humble colonial dwelling.

Urged by a higher spiritual need to remind themselves of all they left behind, 17th-century gardeners began to transplant wildflowers into their gardens. As the colonies became more prosperous in the 18th century, they separated flowers out of the vegetable gardens and into flower beds.

By the 18th century, Williamsburg was the capital of the wealthiest and most populous of the colonies, and the center of cultural life in Virginia. Gentry and artisans alike designed the grounds surrounding their homes as their personal stages on which to present themselves to passersby. Gardens evolved from necessity to expressions of beauty through art and nature, and sometimes as a display of private status. Most houses had a large front garden composed purely of flowers and/or lawn running down a path to their front gate, with the vegetables tucked away out of sight. The garden layout began to resemble the American landscape seen today.

In colonial capitals like Williamsburg and Annapolis, garden plot demarcations were actually required by colonial law to be built around each lot. Gardeners used line reels to demarcate a space within a garden or to set the dimensions of the garden itself. The end of the reel was inserted in the ground, the string on the top portion was pulled until the gardener had unwound sufficient string to mark his or her line on the land.

By the 1850s, more efficient production and transportation made tools more widely available to the masses. With their earthy patinas, organic materials and sculptural shapes, many of the garden tools of yore are popular with today’s collectors. An old, wooden pitchfork leaning in a corner, or a rake repurposed for holding clothes or wine glasses make interesting conversation pieces.

In America, rakes were very expensive and became an important possession of many 18th century families. Early wooden rakes with their warm patina can cost upwards of $150, and those pitchforks with animal antler tines can be priced in the hundreds. Those wooden line reels used to set old fence lines are difficult to find and are priced accordingly, at upward of $400, though more wrought iron models survived and are less expensive. The handy shield-shaped digging spade with a hand hewn wooden handle is a sought-after collector’s item and can be priced in the $150 range.

Dibbers, pencil-shaped tools for making planting holes, were usually made by the gardener himself out of branches of various diameters, depending on the sizes of the holes he needed. Some dibbers were made from old pipes or the salvageable parts of other tools.

Gathering baskets are one of most ubiquitous old implements. Historically, basket makers crafted their products from a variety of dried reeds and with a specific use in mind. There were wide-open baskets for gathering and carrying flowers and vegetables and large sturdy bins for storing root vegetables. Today, old baskets, especially those with original painted surfaces, can carry a price tag that may run into the thousands of dollars. They are especially popular because they can be easily recycled to fill many modern uses and can add a warm decorative touch to a room.

Garden tools have co-evolved with human society and have served mankind well. When you look into the history of some of the most common garden tools we use today — their images and descriptions in advertisements and old catalogs — you find that not much has changed in hundreds of years. What has changed, though, is the value placed on those implements.

Michelle Galler is an antiques dealer, design consultant and realtor based in Georgetown. Her shop is in Rare Finds, in Washington, Virginia. Contact her at antiques.and.whimsies@gmail.com.

Georgetowner •

Doyle New York
George II Stripped Pine Pier Mirror, c. 1740
Auction Date: May 18
Estimate: $6,000 – $8,000

Part of Doyle New York’s auction of English & Continental Furniture & Decorative Arts/Old Master Paintings, this gorgeous mirror with its classical features exhibits the influences of Daniel Marot, the Huguenot architect to William III, and — in the mask of Riana within a scallop shell — William Kent, architect to Lord Burlington.

Sotheby’s
“Road Block,” 1949
Norman Rockwell (1894–1978)
Auction Date: May 18
Estimate: $4 million – $6 million

“Road Block” is among the most ambitious of the more than 300 paintings Rockwell executed for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post. Rockwell received particular praise for his ability to encapsulate the components of a complex narrative — plot, character, mood and setting — into a single image.

Christie’s
“Exoke,” 2013
El Anatsui (b. 1944)
Auction Date: May 11
Estimate: $600,000 – $800,000

At more than five square feet of shimmering, undulating, sculptural material blocked into textural swaths of vivid color, El Anatsui’s “Exoke,” part of the Post-War and Contemporary Art Afternoon Session at Christies, is mesmerizing. The visually and conceptually rich work is one of the Ghana-born, Nigeria-based artist’s celebrated “hangings,” which examine the remnants of globalization, consumerism, colonialism and post-colonialism in West Africa.

Bonhams
“Tête de faune”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Auction Date: May 11
Estimate: $50,000 – $80,000

Part of Bonham’s Impressionist and Modern Art Sale, this is a prime example of Picasso’s late-career whimsy, when he began combining bold, sun-kissed colors with an almost childlike simplicity. It is reminiscent of his woodcuts, ceramic work and poster designs for his own exhibitions, which themselves have become collector’s items.

Alex Cooper
Important Sapphire and Diamond Ring
Auction Date: May 12–14
Estimate: $15,000 – $20,000

Dated June 17, 1985, from the American Gemological Laboratory, this dazzling platinum ring is centered with a natural sapphire, with diamond surround and shank, custom designed and marked.

BRINGING THE HAMMER DOWN

Sloans & Kenyon
“Scouting with Daniel Boone,” 1914
Norman Rockwell (1894–1978)
Auction Date: May 1
Final Selling Price: $119,500

This early Rockwell painting was originally a wedding present given to the owner’s grandfather, a great outdoorsman, from his five ushers in July 1925. It had previously been published as an illustration for “Scouting with Daniel Boone” in 1914. Little did those ushers know that a small painting by a then-unknown young artist would one day sell at auction for more than $100,000.

Georgetowner •

Sometimes shopping for mom is a tough task. Here are some ideas for every type of mom in your life. From beautiful decorative accents to cute keepsake boxes, these gorgeous home gifts for moms are a great way to say, “I love you.” [gallery ids="102224,130469,130505,130489,130477,130494,130499,130484" nav="thumbs"]