Nothing odd going on here. Just a totally real family in front of their totally real home.
With totally real cars parked in back.
And totally real transparent trees in the front yard.
Good thing home builders would never ever make misleading renderings with more spacious lots and bigger foliage than reality.
There’s more (or less) going on here than meets the (illustrator’s) eye. The available lot – in a well established older residential area – does not look nearly big enough for the 4 proposed units. The plans for this unit (“D”) are included at the listing. Adding up the room widths, it looks to be about 26’+/- wide it total. A mirror image unit next to it, plus a walkway between, adds up to appx 60′. Street view suggests it might all fit, but only by building up to the property line on both sides, something typically not allowed for free-standing structures.
But there’s even more crowding involved. Units C and D are at the rear of the property (backing onto a seedy looking 3 story apartment block), with Units A and B fronting the street. Take a look at Pic 8 at the listing. It shows a driveway running between A and B, meaning they’re each even narrower than 26′. The driveway leads to a motor court centered between the 4 units. That’s the parking area for all of them, which makes it Unit D’s front “yard,” not the back as Marty thought. His “totally transparent trees” are actually out back, if indeed there would be room to ever plant a thing. The “lean-to” in the second pic above (Pic 4 at the listing) is labeled on the floor plan as appx 9’x5′ (ext dims). The rendering shows a similarly sized space (perhaps 9’x7′) between it and the back fence, with the only bit of grass available. Most of the back “yard” is filled with a paved patio and most if not all of the front is the parking court. And the nice looking green space to the side of Unit D? Yeah, not there. That’s where Unit C sits. As for any trees, they’d likely be in the neighbor’s yard.
Speaking of the neighbors, most of the surrounding homes are single story ranches and 1.5 story bungalows. I can’t imagine they’ll be too thrilled about four new homes going onto one lot, although there’s enough varied land use nearby that it may not come as a surprise. There are oodles of hotels on the beach 3 blocks to the east and a good sized convention center 2 blocks to the west. Even so, this neighborhood has very narrow streets and there are no curbs, let alone sidewalks, as shown in the renderings.
Questions:
– How did they get a building permit? Are there next to no zoning regs here?
– What fool is going to pay almost $400K for a single unit shoehorned in among 3 others in this setting?