This 2,048-square-foot Danish modern home, located only two hours from Washington, DC, would be a perfect retreat for those seeking a quick getaway from the hustle and bustle of the nation's capital, says agent Jesse Halpern.
The Lost River area of West Virginia has long been a place to escape urban congestion. In fact, the region's reputation as a getaway dates to when Revolutionary War hero Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee built a vacation cabin in the area, Halpern notes.
But this three-bedroom, two-bathroom home, listed for $399,000, is light years beyond anything Lee could have imagined a couple of centuries ago.
"It's gotten a tremendous amount of acclaim in the architectural world," Halpern says of this prefabricated home built by Resolution: 4 Architecture of New York. Dwell magazine has featured the home, known as Lost River Modern, not once but twice, and coverage of it has been extensive in other publications as well.
"We were really interested in prefab design for pragmatic and aesthetic reasons," owner Chris Brown told WV Living magazine in 2013. "We were drawn to the clean lines that modern design affords."
The house features more than 30 windows and eight sets of sliding glass doors, making it "just filled with light and nature," Halpern says. An open floor plan unites the kitchen, dining, and living space with a deck just beyond the wall of glass doors.
Furniture was chosen to complement the home's sleek modernism and will be sold with the house. "It's modern elegant," Halpern notes. Two bedrooms occupy the home's lower level while the third bedroom is on the upper level, where the other living spaces and outdoor deck are.
Outside, the home is wrapped in 7,000 linear feet of hand-stained cedar siding while the deck features cedar-and-steel cable railings. The home sits on a slope on 30 unrestricted acres of land, meaning a new owner could build additional structures. The property is divided into three 10-acre lots, so two more homes could be built without requiring zoning changes.
The homeowners built the structure in 2008 and have been renting it out as a vacation property for $200 to $250 a night. It's booked for all but one day of July this year, Halpern adds.
A new owner could continue renting it out and use it as a vacation getaway, Halpern says. It could also be a retirement home, which is a growing trend in the Lost River area. "We see a lot of people transitioning here," converting their former vacation homes into primary retirement residences, he says.
With its mountain views and back-to-nature aesthetic, this house would make for quite an idyllic retirement hideaway.