The shape of Ross
Discretion is part of the job in a town this size. Most properties are screened from the road by hedges and gates, and a good number of owners are elsewhere when we come. Crews get briefed on entry, alarms and which rooms are off limits before the first visit, and the same team returns each time so you are never explaining the house twice. Consistency counts for more here than almost anywhere we work.
Physically, this is easier ground than the hill towns around it. The valley floor along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard is level, driveways are long but flat, and there is room to leave a vehicle on the property. What consumes the hours is scale and finish: wide-plank floors, formal dining and living rooms, more than one staircase, and kitchens holding more cabinetry than three ordinary houses put together.
The building stock here
There are fewer than a thousand homes in town and very few of them are small. Estate-scale houses from the 1900s through the 1930s stand alongside substantial postwar builds and modern rebuilds, typically four to seven bedrooms on parcels of a third of an acre and up. Interiors run to hardwood, wool rugs, formal rooms kept in reserve and four or more bathrooms. Lots are level and densely planted, so pollen and leaf drop are year-round facts.