The house is so close to the highway it could be mistaken for an RV about to merge into traffic.
Drivers stranded in the daily cattle drive on Highway 520 outside Seattle have wondered at the Hunts Point house, with its cheese-wedge shape and creamy stucco walls.
Mostly, though, they wonder at its location: just a hubcap’s roll from some of the busiest asphalt in the state.
The unlikely house, and the story behind it, belong to Bahram “Bobby” Dadvar, who is asking $674,000 for these rooms with a vroom.
Dadvar, a mortgage banker turned neophyte developer, bought an adjoining house in 1997. As he tells it, officials in this Gold Coast town of 473 residents doubted he could split the property and squeeze a house onto a postage-stamp-size lot he created — a move that’s increasingly seen around the Seattle area as land grows scarce and house prices soar.
“Everybody said, `You can’t build anything but a shack there,’ ” Dadvar recalls. He proved them wrong, though the angular site forced an unusual creation.
The two-story, 2,800-square-foot home tapers dramatically at one end. Two of its three garage doors facing the cul-de-sac are fake because the garage becomes too narrow to shelter even a Yugo.
Then there is the matter of what a real estate agent might call the territorial views beyond the fence: four lanes of traffic and an exit ramp about 50 feet from the house.
The master bedroom boasts a commanding survey of the more than half a million vehicles that pass by every week.
“It has a little bit of water view, to my surprise,” says Dadvar, mentioning the second-floor glimpse of Lake Washington’s Cozy Cove, beyond a green exit sign.
It is a finely crafted house, and it is quieter than one might suppose. The house has triple-paned windows, thick beams, dense insulation in floors and walls.
Stand in the house at midday and the highway sounds like a spring freshet.
OK, maybe a spring freshet next to a highway. But at least a distant highway.
Outside is another story. But who sits in their yard around here, anyway, asks Dadvar.
Neighbor Kathryn Akita, who has lived two doors down for 20 years, says you get accustomed to the noise. The road even grows quiet enough at night to hear crickets and neighbors yelling at their kids, Akita says.
And the noise during the busier times?
“It’s been described as a waterfall.”
It has?
“Well,” she says, “by real estate agents.”
The house will not be finished for another month, says Dadvar, who was reached in Laguna Beach, Calif., where, at age 36, he is already building his retirement house.
He is confident he can get a good price for it.
“It’s a hard call, because of the closeness” to Highway 520, says realty agent Joseph Brazen. “The noise is affecting a lot of properties.”
But just look at how many people have stopped to admire it, says Dadvar.
“They just keep driving by and looking and staring and staring.”
Then Dadvar ticks off the home’s finer points: a prestigious address, its solid construction. It is, he says, an ideal suburban getaway. “This would be a very good home for someone who wants to work in Seattle but wants to get away from the noise and hustle and bustle,” he says.
And he adds, without a trace of humor, “It’s very close to the freeway.”
