My parents both retired a few months ago in December and have recently put their house up for sale, so that they can retire to Arizona. A few of my Austin friends (decibel45, dopplertx, snaxxx) got to see it in person when we went to New Zealand last year.

Part of the reason that my parents don't feel that the real estate market slump in California will have too much of an impact on their sale is the relatively unique nature of their house. It is a Japanese-inspired haiku house, which is a modern-day interpretation of a Japanese country house. It is supported entirely by long wooden poles that extend deep into the ground, and is made almost entirely out of redwood trees. My parents liked the design so much that they hired an architect to build it for them in 1981 on a carefully selected hillside in Pasadena, California. It would be impossible to build a house like it today in California due to recent construction regulations to reduce fire risk, plus the difficulty/expense of obtaining that much old-growth redwood.

Their realtors set up a little website with its own domain [1893kaweah.com] to host a description and some photos of it. My mom sent me some good details about the media coverage and open house interest:

"Our home was featured in the local Pasadena magazine as well as in the LA Times. The first open house had a lot of neighborhood people ... We had a couple serious parties. Our realtors (2 partners) were very surprised at the numbers showing up. The 1st [open house] had 175 coming through; our 2nd has about 100. It must have been a huge traffic jam since we got a phone call 1½ hr into the open house and the realtor sounded overwhelmed at the tremendous # of people going through the house!"

The house keeps itself very cool in the summer because of louvered windows that can open up along the entire bottom floor, and skylights and roof vents that open up on the second floor. All the hot air escapes at top vents and draws in cool air through the lower windows.

You can also see their house on Google Maps StreetView, though it appears that Google has mixed up some of the images if you move too far along the street. The realtor also has a bunch of photos on their website. I also have some of my own photos in my personal gallery. It's a little sad to think that the house I grew up in will soon belong to someone else though.