Isn't the collapsed roof next door a code violation? If reported to the town, wouldn't she be made to fix it? The would solve that problem.

Is her property for sale? Could someone else buy it on your behalf and then sell it to you for $1? The problem would then be you own two properties you may not be able to sell.

Parts of your property are super appealing, parts are not (the chain link certainly is not). But, at your price point putting any money into the property is probably foolish. Dropping the price would be more effective.

You can sell just about anything at the right price.

xamsx - We are in an unincorporated area of the county - so no codes. The chain link fence is not the best looking I admit, but it came with the property & it's come in very handy for us since you don't have to bring in items at night + you can see the stock from the road. Both us & the people we rented the house to sold lots of outdoor items - they were happy to have it. If I was going to live there, I would definitely do something different with the fence - but it's really perfect for retail.

No, her property is not for sale. Again, long story, but it involves a lawsuit that we won. If we do get the property, with minimal clean-up, I'm pretty sure we'll be able to sell the whole thing. At that point, you would have the Bank, the small house & garage, her roofless building that would be a KILLER courtyard if you took the antique brick walls down to about 8 feet and put in a cool arched doorway from the bank & a total of 7 lots.

terriks - True. However, it's costing so little to carry it & we've really priced it to reflect the piece of crap next door. The area is fast growing & we'll probably do better later, but we wanted to take a shot at selling it sort of "as-is" at a fair price. Since that's not panning out, I guess we might be better off hanging on to it at least until we get next door worked out.

That said - we'd love to sell it. Does the website look OK? Too much information? Too little? Can I make it better?

By my standards, you are in a commercial piece of property for peanuts. You say the area is "fast Growing" and that it isn't costing you much, so......... why not just hang on to it?

You get a small building boom in the area and the property(especially commercial) could triple it's value quickly. If you don't need the money, it looks like a good investment and savings account. Furthermore, the issue with the other owner might be resolved.

Well - yes, minibim, you are correct on all points! It's just that I had my eye on something a little different & this would pay for that...haha! So, don't NEED the money - but WANT the money.

We've thought about auctioning off the contents & renting out the 2 buildings, but does anyone on the planet have good luck with tenants?

Even counties have codes regarding property needing clean up--or it could be a health issue-- talk to your local building officials, or health inspectors--because rats and mice, snake could live there.

I would think that going to the municipal building, talking to code enforcement, might get satisfaction. I don't see how they can have a CO if the roof is caving in. OTOH, I know where you are coming from because in a close town, there is a house that appears mostly unusable due to the roof caving in. So far, nothing has been done.

A few years ago, we went to town meetings, they say it will cost too much to enforce. There's a new mayor now, so things may be different. Now that life is slowing down, I may look into this after seeing your post. We drove by this eye sore yesterday, it's a lot worst then it used to be, so maybe now is the time for us to look into it again.

I think you should hang in there. You are looking for a specific buyer, it may take a while. The property & items seems too cheap to me, the store looks like it's fully stocked. If the area gets built up, you have a nice piece of property for someone to do something with.

Regarding the County & codes. We've been avoiding getting them involved. We've been told that if we press it, they would take action, however, maybe not the action we want them to take. There is no CO on it - it collapsed several years ago & is unusable. Our fear is that if we get the County involved, they will tear it down & that would be a shame. If we do get it & pass it along to the buyer of ours, it could be fantastic. Right now it's just 4 walls with lots of rubble inside - but if you took those walls down to about 8' you'd have a beautiful, antique brick walled courtyard - something that would cost a fortune to build from scratch. The County would destroy all of that.

As to health issues, two stray cats took up residence after this happened & we haven't seen any other critters over there in years. They are nice caretakers! We keep the front of the property up - weeded & swept - to help make it look a bit better from the front.

roselvr - Yes the store is fully stocked & it IS cheap! We've priced it keeping in mind the eyesore next door. It's a great property that would sell for more if next door was still a working antique shop like it was for years.

What about some kind of mediation with the property owner?

Is her property for sale? Could someone else buy it on your behalf and then sell it to you for $1? The problem would then be you own two properties you may not be able to sell.

This can or could not work... The buyer would have to be qualified, and in my state, you can't put a bid in as anon, was going to do that on my dad's house. The seller / owner would know who was buying.

Well, there's always the auction route? You could advertise the heck out of it. There's certainly risk going no-reserve auction but it can also work the other way & you end up with more than if you'd followed the conventional sale path. Another auction option is to put a reserve on the sale.

Wishing you the best of luck...I love antiques.

Tricia

roselvr - We tried dealing with the owner about 2 years ago & her terms were unacceptable to us. The property is not for sale - super long story & too many details to air here.

I talked to our realtor last night about yet another person showing interest but holding back because of next door. I told her to get them to make an offer for both properties w/ a contingency that we have "x" amount of time to secure the property next door. I don't want to go through the hassle if it's a low-ball offer. If it's worth our while, my attorney can start making calls. We'll see what they do.

My dad has a part of his property that really isn't usable to him, as does the neighbor.. There was a developer that wanted both parts of land, but the neighbor didn't cooperate.. don't remember the details. I know what it's like to say enough and move on, there's only so much you can do, especially without a serious offer. Why waste the time?

good luck...

Wow! My brother would LOVE this property. He lives in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. He just got engaged and the house would be too small for his new family, however. Plus, he and his fiance work in Ft. Worth, so this would be a bit of a commute for them.

I think your descriptions are wonderful! Like my brother, I LOVE old things, esp. buildings. America is not good about preserving our old buildings. We tear down grand structures because they're "old" and replace them buildings severely lacking in character. Bless you for maintaining this building!

Good luck! Let us know what happens!

terrig2007 - Yes, the house would be too small for a family. Really, we were going to tear it down and build a rustic looking shop for DH and his metal creations but then we had people approach us to turn it into another little shop & that worked out well. The Bank is 100 years old - still pretty cool! We love old buildings too - this one had been sitting & used as storage for several years before we bought it. It's been lots of fun - we just need to get our weekends back. If we were closer to retirement, we'd keep it.

I think this property would be perfect for an artist. I would advertise "2 Bedroom House and separate Artist Studio/Storefront on 1/3 acre lot." List all the amenities like you do, and get this out on craigslist, post in art stores, run ads in the local Penny Saver or Gazette. There has to be a buyer out there who is renting an apartment and looking for studio space who would find this property heavenly.

One thing I don't get at all is the rusted house. I kept looking for the house as I thought the house was a garage of sorts. Could you paint this some weather-worn light blue or something? Or am I just not getting the effect you are aiming for.

time2sell - I agree it would be perfect for an artist. We listed it on Craigslist before we listed with a realtor. Got lots of response but all of them were those freaky infomercial real estate buying types. All wanted owner finance or some wacky deal like they give 110% & we give cash back, etc. Too wierd for us.

We went on ebay too & got lots of lookers. No money-ers though. That's when we decided that we'd let a realtor try it.

The rusted house was an experiment that worked like a charm. It was covered in white vinyl siding. No one would go into the little shop in there - no matter how many OPEN signs & credit card things they stuck on the door & in the yard. Everyone assumed someone lived there. We decided to "rustic" it up by covering it with vintage barn tin and cedar post porch & BAM - their traffic picked up about 3 fold. Suddenly it looked like a store - not a house. It's a very western theme - perfect for small town Texas.

I don't really have anything constructive to add but I just had to tell you that your little shop is wonderful. It's probably a very good thing that it's on the other end of the continent from me because I would have a very hard time not spending a LOT of money (that I couldn't really afford to spend) in there. :-) I want the kitchen stove, the carved sideboard, the stained glass windows, the enormous pentacle (you call 'em Texas Stars) on the exterior wall, two or three of the armoires... LOL I do think the tin-covered house is cute, it does make it look funkier and more "shoppish". I agree that if you can afford to hang onto it, it might be better to take it off the market (formally, but if someone came along...) for a while. Maybe you could open one weekend a month instead of every weekend? There's an antiques shop where I live that does that, a long weekend once a month, and they do a ROARING business that weekend.

Oh, wait! I do have something constructive to add, although it is a minor detail. On the website, it was a little annoying to have to keep flipping back to the photo index page to get to the various photos - "previous" and "next" links would be a Good Thing(tm) just for convenience.

johnmari - Thanks for the kind words about the store! That is a great idea about opening once a month. If we still have in in the Fall, we might consider doing that - we always do pretty well around the holidays. Our realtor has decided not to go down without a fight & has placed an ad in the Dallas paper. Last time she did this there were several showings because the price is a bargain compared to Dallas property (which is a bargain compared with just about any big city in the country). We would love to sell, but aren't gonna give it away.

I see what you mean about the photo index page. Initially we set it up like that - with the numbers & arrows pointing direction of view) so people could keep their bearings & know where they were looking. I'll have to do some research to figure out how to change the page - my DH made the site by reading an html book - neither one of us is super website literate....

Thanks for the suggestion!

Hmmm...the only thing I have to add is to ask if it is listed on "loopnet.com"? What little (believe me, I mean VERY little, lol) I know about commercial real estate is that loopnet is almost like commercial real estate's version of realtor.com.

It's such a great building! The roof next door is such an obstacle however, I'm not sure how many folks would feel comfortable investing right next door to that situation.

Best of luck,

Nat

Nat - Never heard of loopnet.com - I'll check that out. Yes, next door is the problem. Actually it's unfortunately kind of common to have collapsed buildings in old rural Texas towns. People just let them go.