About this sale

Learn all about the sale!

The four-season sunroom, huge living room, and dining room.

If you go to the home page of this site, you'll find the listing for this sale of 615 Sunset Lane, East Lansing. This page gives you a little background.

We've lived at 621 Sunset Lane, the house next door to 615 Sunset Lane, for 25 years. We've been very fortunate financially, so we could have afforded to move to a more expensive neighborhood a long time ago. We haven't moved because we love this neighborhood so much.

Oakwood is a neighborhood of the type you almost never find. The people here take care of each other. They take care of the trees and the birds. They share tools, recipes, childcare, rides, and compost bins. They like when the kids make noise on the trampolines. They play music together and get together for meals. They live like life matters. Even their dogs are friends.

When we moved to our home in 1998, the family who lived at 615 Sunset Lane (the house we are now selling) had inhabited that house for many years. They quickly became family to us, and we lived together as a happy family for over 20 years. When the kids of that house grew up and the parents eventually moved to be with the now-adult kids and their grandkids, we waited in trepidation to see who would be our new neighbors.

We found ourselves quite concerned that someone who moved in might not understand the value – monetary and environmental – of two big old trees that span our properties but belong to 615. These include a 150-year-old white oak we've named Bob at the front and a 100-year-old walnut we've named Ann at the back.

These two trees do tremendous work for our part of the neighborhood, providing a natural means to handling tens of thousands of gallons of rainwater each year (helping our basements stay dry) and providing shade that cool our houses. The data on big trees is incontrovertible; they add to real estate value and matter hugely environmentally.

Long story short, our friends had trouble selling their house. That was because, while 615 had phenomenal bones, as a 100-year-old gem, it was in need a lot of upgrades – electrical, plumbing, HVAC, and so on. The garden was a jungle that needed taming. The kitchen and some other rooms had drop-ceilings and paneling that needed to be taken out and replaced with modern drywall. There was one area that needed new, proper connection to the HVAC. It was a big project.

We finally decided that the right thing to do would be to take on this house, fix it up properly for the next family that would own it and love it, and put a legal protection on the two trees whose canopies we share. So, we did just that. We bought the house in January 2024.

We put a deed restriction on the property that lasts as long as we own our house. (After that, it expires.) The tree protection requires us (not the buyer of 615) to pay for all of the costs of maintaining the two trees, including professional trimming every two years. If the trees are dying according to an expert, they can be removed. But otherwise, these two healthy, beautiful, helpful will live on at only our expense so long as we own our own home.

After the purchase, we spent the next nine months meticulously reworking the house and yard. It's been a little crazy and a lot of fun.

New electrical service. New central air. New HVAC lines running to where they had been missing. New insulation where it was missing. A major refresh of the kitchen. A totally new (down to the studs) bathroom on the first floor, a near-gut renovation of the second-floor bathroom, new plumbing for both of those bathrooms, a new front walkway, a complete landscaping overhaul, a new garage door, new drywall where there was 1970s paneling and drop ceilings, new LED light fixtures and ceiling fans, and on and on.

When all was said and done, we put about $120,000 (and a ton of sweat equity) into the house to make it safe, quite modern in terms of infrastructure, restored in terms of the beautiful historic elements, comfortable, and homey.

Now, we're doing what we always intended: Looking for our next neighbors.

You may notice that we aren't going the usual route of hiring a Realtor and blasting the word out on Zillow and Redfin. While we recognize that that is the best way to maximize profit – which is absolutely fine, if that's what your goal is in a sale – our goal with this project has always been to maximize the odds we find someone who will love this house and this neighborhood and the trees and birds the way we do. We want people who get it, who treat our dear neighbors (human and non-human) well, and who stay. So, we're using an unconventional and careful networking method to share news of this home.

If you're interested in seeing the house, please sign up for this newsletter and keep an eye out for open houses. We'll be holding a few. If you're seriously interested in possibly buying this house, drop me a note at my personal website, and I'll be in touch if we're not already in contract.

Meanwhile, please enjoy the photos!