Steel fabricator's 4-level Phoenix dream home listed for $4.44M

The price of a four-level house built into the Piestewa Peak is $4.44m.

Cindy Davis, who listed this luxury home in Launch Real Estate last week, noted that the Phoenix property has four bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms and hand-crafted designs of steel throughout its interior and exterior.

She described the building of the house as a labor-of-love, even though the original builder was never able to finish it or live in it.

Tax records show that in 2000, a steel fabricator named William W. Smith III paid $148,000 to purchase a vacant lot located at 7201 N. 23rd Place, Phoenix.

Davis told me that this was right after the divorce. He had envisioned this house perched at the edge of rocky terrain.

In 2010, he began excavating the rock to create a 5,645 square foot home with steel, glass and concrete.

The walls of corten steel flank the driveway as it climbs up steeply. They are lit indirectly. The motor court has space for four cars. The home is carved out of schist granite and accessed by a steel elevator or staircase lined with a quilt-like pattern made from hand-woven steel. The fence around the property is also made from an intricate pattern in steel

The craftsmanship of Smith is evident throughout the house, from the countertops to the hand-carved edges.

You can see his work in the following gallery:

Smith had run out of money by 2015. As every homebuilder is aware, building on a mountainside is more expensive than on flat land. Davis says that Smith had to buy all the materials before he could start building the house.

Davis stated that he secured a hard money lender but couldn't pay the fees. The lender then foreclosed. The lender was unable to sell the unfinished home in 2018.

She said, "He never lived in his own house." "He never finished."

The house as it was finished

Davis stated that the lender completed construction on the home by 2020. The home received its certificate of occupancy in the same year. Davis said that the lender re-listed the home, but there were some mechanical issues, including the metal gate, elevator, and automatic windows.

According to records from the Maricopa County, Robert Knox of Phoenix has sold his home in July 2021 for $2.7M in cash to 1212AZ LLC based in Delafield (Wisconsin).

Public records show that the 1212AZ Limited Liability Company is owned by John Barker.

Engineer by profession, Barker fixed all the bugs so that all of the technical systems were on an app he can track from Wisconsin. Davis says that Barker had hoped to be able travel to Wisconsin and spend more time at his second home, but has not been able do so.

She said, "He has only lived there for a few weeks out of the 1.5 years that he had owned it."

Davis added that now is the time to sell, as metro Phoenix has returned to a market with low inventories.

She said, "There are not many luxury properties and this is one of a kind."

Davis stated that she could be receiving an offer for the house soon based on a recent conversation with a possible buyer.