Seems like a pretty normal house… until you hit photo #13 (above).
From the listing description:
Your friends will say, WHOA!, you hit the lottery with this one!
See, it doesn’t count if your “friends” are all inanimate.
From the submitter, Sarah K.:
Must say that’s the finest whiskey-barrel dining set I’ve ever seen, and check out that bronze cherub in the top corner of the final photo.
It’s certainly the strangest staging I’ve seen in a while.
I dunno… everything else here seems frozen in time (or plastic slip covers). Maybe these are just the original owners, mummified by neglect, like the rest of the decor.
But with only a $150K price tag, you could still afford to do the (desperately) needed redecorating. I’m not sure I can see 5 bedrooms, as advertised, considering there’s only 1900sqft on the main level. Notably, none are pictured… Perhaps because they’re uncomfortably minute? But since you’d probably want to beef up the amount of bathroom availability anyway, trading off a bedroom or two for that seems like a reasonable conversion of space.
Considering the state of the economy in Michigan, interior design services are also likely to be very affordable. As long as you have secure job prospects and are willing to deal with the redo, this sounds like a potential winner. Unless of course there are termites, structural or plumbing problems, or, last but not least, the coroner’s office determines the mummified former residents did not die natural deaths… I can only imagine the paperwork involved in that would put a huge damper on finding such a bargain.
“Your friends will say ‘Whoa! You hit the lottery with this one!’,” eh? Would that be because that’s what the previous owner did, to wit, hit the lottery, using the proceeds to (ahem) doll the place up like this? I’m thinking we’re seeing quite a few nice hobbies – excellent for long winters, but perhaps more than the owner can be taking with them, which is sad.
What we aren’t seeing are any pictures of the full, “daylight” basement. Note that the house and its soggy pond are significantly lower than the road… and consider that this road is named “Grand River Drive” because both road and property lie beside the Grand River… not far upstream from Grand Rapids, the city and the phenomenon.
All of which apparently flood regularly. Pumping may be a fact of life, here, not just a pretty pond fountain…
I’m with Emerald on it being a nice place in sore need of redecorating. I could live there.
Anodean, nice catch on the basement. I wonder if the pond isn’t a result of what they continually pump out of it. I would check for mold on this one. My current basement is of the leaky sort (previous owners planted maples way too close to the house) and we have been able to engineer it to stay dry and make finished living space out of it.
Oh, boy, I’m so geeked to see this here! I too was curious about the lack of bedroom/bath/basement photos. FWIW, I’ve noticed a number of hobby farms around here have the little pond and fountain combo. Anyway, I’m planning a drive-by.
@Frodo: Congrats on the basement, Frodo! Some folks I know have also triumphed, with finished living space in the basement, too – after discovering they had become the unwilling hosts of a doggoned hillside stream. The remedy (and likely cost) made me want to lie down with an icepack… so, I admit, my reaction to that pond fountain was about the same as yours; “Where is that pump, exactly? Under the house?”
Of course to be fair, they could be running a fish hatchery down there with perfectly good humidity regulation and using that aquarium in the living room as a sample display. I don’t judge.
@Sarah K.: Woot! Let us know what you see. :D
@Anodean: The house and property seemed in good repair, and the country setting was quite pretty. From the road, I couldn’t see any evidence of the walkout basement, but I didn’t want to trespass.
However, at the top of what seemed to be the house’s driveway, there was a big sign for a ranch for kids. I thought that explained the weirdness of the house–it wasn’t really a residence, but a day camp. (I still wasn’t sure what mannequins were for, though.)
I Googled the ranch’s name when I got home and found it’s some kind of faith-based non-profit for at-risk kids. The guy who runs the ranch is/was a national sales manager for an MLM company that was recently shut down by the FTC. There are allegations floating around the internet that the ranch is a front for this guy’s fraudulence and scamming.
Then I realized the ranch’s address was actually one number different than the mannequin house’s. The ranch is BEHIND this mannequin house. It wasn’t visible from the road, but I can see it on Google Maps. I searched the county assessor’s website but couldn’t find anything associated with the ranch’s street address.
So…nothing, much less the mannequins, is explained after all.
@Sarah K.: My goodness, there is nothing so mysterious as real estate. I think we are all learning to be future novelists thanks to Marty’s efforts. :D