Published October 2026 by Courtney Poulos
There are renovations.
And there are renovations where everything feels considered.
6150 Burwood was the second kind.
This 1921 Highland Park Craftsman sat on an unusually large lot—more than 11,000 square feet—and had the raw ingredients to become something special.
Our in-house design team worked on the design pro forma and exterior guidance.
The goal wasn't to make it look "flipped."
It was to make the property make sense.
Design Is Part of the Real Estate Strategy
I've always been a little confused by the idea that design happens in one room and real estate happens in another.
The design determines how a buyer experiences the house.
The buyer determines how we should position the house.
The positioning determines the marketing.
These things are obviously connected.
At Burwood, we thought about the entire experience.
The kitchen.
The tile.
The lighting.
The exterior.
The landscaping.
The enormous backyard.
The way the property would photograph and, more importantly, the way somebody would feel when they walked through it.
The Result
We listed 6150 Burwood at $1,299,000.
The property received multiple offers.
It sold for $1,775,000.
That's $476,000 over the asking price.
I'm always careful with "over asking" as a metric because an asking price is a marketing decision, not an appraisal.
You can list something artificially low and brag about the percentage over asking later. That doesn't impress me.
What matters is whether the strategy created competition and ultimately maximized the outcome for the seller.
At Burwood, it did.
Buyers Can Tell When a Renovation Has a Point of View
Highland Park is particularly interesting because buyers here tend to be visually literate.
They notice materials.
They notice landscaping.
They notice whether the architecture and renovation are fighting each other.
A beautifully restored Craftsman shouldn't suddenly feel like somebody dropped a generic luxury condo kitchen into the middle of it.
That doesn't mean everything needs to be historically precious.
It means the choices should feel intentional.
Exterior Design Is Not an Afterthought
One of the things we worked on at Burwood was exterior guidance.
This matters enormously in Los Angeles.
We live outside.
A backyard isn't the leftover land behind the house.
It's part of the living experience.
Burwood had the advantage of an enormous usable lot, mature landscaping and room to create multiple outdoor moments.
If the interior is fantastic and the exterior feels forgotten, you've left part of the property's value unfinished.
What 6150 Burwood Taught Us
Burwood was one of the properties where we really cut our teeth on bringing design services directly into the renovation-resale process.
It reinforced what became a much larger part of ACME's philosophy:
Don't wait until the renovation is finished to think about the buyer.
Think about the buyer while you're designing the renovation.
And don't wait until photography day to decide what story you're telling.
The story starts much earlier.
That's the difference between putting a renovated house on the MLS and actually launching a property.
Highland Park Neighborhood Link
If you're renovating a property in Highland Park or Northeast Los Angeles and want to think through the design, positioning and eventual resale strategy before construction is complete, that's exactly the conversation I like having. Contact me today.
