An older house that was duplexed. I've thought of returning it to a single home, but I was out of town so it wasn't been very feasible. The place would be best for a student or first-time home buyer wanting to live in one half and rent out the other or else for someone living in Iowa City who can do occasional maintenance instead of having to have a property manager. Each apartment currently is about 600 square feet. When I lived in the house with my son, who was 7 or 8 at the time, we had two bedrooms in the upstairs, which added about 800 square feet to the east-side unit. But when I started renting the place out, the city insisted that the upstairs could not be used as a living area because the ceiling height was less than seven feet. (Even in the middle of the upstairs the ceiling isn't quite that high.) Finally a year or two ago my property manager removed the permanent stairs that I had put in and installed a pull-down staircase instead, so that the city would be satisfied with its being used only as a storage area. I haven't seen the interior since that time. In the west-side apartment there are two small bedrooms and a living room and a small kitchen and bathroom. The east-side apartment, without the upstairs, is the same size as the west-side one, but the property manager is renting it out now as a studio apartment: no bedrooms, but a fair-sized kitchen, a dining room, and a living room. (Probably the tenant uses the "dining room" as a bedroom, but it is between the kitchen and the living room.) I used to rent the places out with utilities extra, but ten years ago or so I started renting them with utilities included, which may not have been a good idea. The tenants do pay their water bill (which is expensive in Iowa City, usually coming to about $80-$100 a month). The tenants have access to a washer (and dryer, I think) in the basement, and that in itself should be a draw. The main draw, of course, is location. I'd love to be back there again myself, within walking distance to everything! As I said, I've thought of converting it back to a single-family house and upgrading it substantially inside, but I haven't done that yet and don't know whether I'll ever get around to it. If I were living in the house myself (whether as a single-family house or as a duplex with just the west-side unit rented out and inspected by the city), I would rebuild the staircase that used to go up to the attic from the east-side living room. That would be the sensible thing to do if you want to live in the house. The best person to contact is the real estate agent, Bob Crane, whose phone number is 319-354-4100. If you have any questions about the house, you can email me or give me a call, but Bob has been inside it more recently than I, so he can probably give you a better idea of its condition.
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