Historic Home Blog

What questions should a historic home seller ask a prospective listing agent?

Gary Gestson — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 21:38:00 GMT

Many historic home owners contemplating selling their homes, do not know what questions to ask to determine the ability of an agent to be successful. There are certainly important questions that every prospective seller wants answered - “how much is my house worth and what do you charge for your fee”? I am a believer that those questions are best addressed after a seller is confident that he has a Realtor who knows his market and how to best express the virtues and benefits of his historic home to the largest pool of buyers. I recently had the experience of interviewing for the position of listing agent for a beautiful historic home, where one of the other agents being interviewed, advocated bulldozing the house and building a “nice house” in its place. Clearly this was not the agent for this family, but not all interviewing experiences will be so obvious. A seller may interview a selection of equally successful agents who all run the comparables on his historic property and come up with similar evaluations of value for the size, location and lot size. They will all put the property information in the MLS, put up a sign and run a few ads. I have put together a list of 10 questions that a home seller may want to ask a listing agent to further ascertain the agent’s qualifications to successful sell that historic home.

How long have you been in the real estate business?
How long have you been affiliated with your company?
Do you have a specific marketing plan for historic homes?
Do you have a profile of who may be likely to purchase my historic home?
How many historic homes have you personally sold & closed in the last 12 months?
How many active listings do you currently have?
What percentge of your listings expire unsold?
What is the average days on the market for your personal listings?
How many historic homes in this area have you personally shown in the past 30 days?
What samples can you show me of your personal marketing? (Brochures, Flyers, Ads, Internet, your website…)

Since up to 85% of buyers go to the internet first, a seller should expect a comprehensive internet based marketing plan from the agent that he is interviewing and since, only perhaps 6 out of 1,000 qualified buyers are going to be interested in a historic home, a seller needs assurance that the agent has a B-I-I-I-I-G net to cast in order to reach the largest pool of prospects.

If his marketing plan does not hold water, it does not matter what the agent’s opinion is on pricing or what his fee is, the house will not sell and the seller will have lost the cherished advantage that a new offering has in the marketplace. If the marketing plan is strong and the seller is satisfied with the answers to his interview questions, the house will have the best chance of selling in a reasonable period of time, at the highest price the market will allow & with least amount of hassles. In any market, that would be considered a successful sale.

Historic Home For Sale in Barnesville, MD c.1800

Gary Gestson — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 13:15:00 GMT

This gorgeous historic home was renovated and restored with its historic integrity and modern amenities as top priority. Originally, a small log house it evolved over the years into this beautiful home. Located in Montgomery County Maryland in the quaint community of Barnesville (town’s motto is “a caring community”), this lovely home is minutes from schools, shopping & transportation and convenient to downtown DC and suburban centers.

History

This property was originally listed in the Montgomery County tax rolls as “Jeremiah’s Park” in 1783, owned by Jeremiah Hays, and consisted of 184 acres, 3 small log house and a barn, with 70 arable acres and the rest worn & indifferent land. In 1812, the Maryland state assmbly approved a map of Barnesville and the community grew. The property changed hands numerous times and the house grew with the community. It now stands as a historic landmark in this quaint town, a tribute to a bygone era and a surviving record of Barnesville’s historic roots.

Virtues & Benefits:

Main Level

Entry Hall

ü Tandem doors with vintage side glass, historic wall covering, staircase, chair rail molding, hardwood floors, powder room with imported handmade Mexican tile floor, new sink & vanity

Living Room

ü Exposed hand-hewn beams & vintage wide plank pine floors, chair rail moldings & 18^th century Bulgarian hand-loomed curtains

Dining Room

ü Brass chandelier, brick fireplace, crown molding, hardwood floors

Kitchenü Jenn-Aire convection oven, Amana refrigerator w/bottom freezer, Asko dishwasher, gas stove w/microwave, tile counters, oversized sink, cherry cabinets

ü Hardwood and tile floors, exposed historic beams and 4 skylights, recessed lights

Breakfast Nook

ü Glazed quarry tile floor, historic oak pew

Enclosed Deck

ü Historic water tower w/Jacuzzi

ü Ceiling fans

Family Room

ü Hardwood floors, exposed log wall, built-in book shelves

Second Level

ü Historic wall covering, exposed log walls, custom built cabinets, vintage pine floors, recessed lighting

Bedrooms

ü (1) Master bedroom with exposed log wall, stenciled floor, sitting room with closet, view of

Sugarloaf

Mtn.

ü (2)Wood floors, 1860’s English wall covering, large closet

ü (3)cedar closet, crown molding, picture rail, pine floors

ü (4) Small nursery or potential bathroom

Bathroom

ü Tile surround tub w/nickel fixtures, handmade Mexican tile, restoration hardware, new sink, washer/dryer

Third Level (walk up attic)

ü Expansive space, partially finished with dormer and Palladium window

Exterior & Grounds

ü Early 19^th century log cabin with loft and custom windows, electricity

ü Gunite inground pool (16’x40’) with equipment and privacy fence

ü Storage shed

ü Asian pear, cherry & crab apple trees

ü Stone & slate patio

Offered at $799,000

For a virtual tour and more information HistoricHomeTeam.com

A Norman manse with theatrical élan

Gary Gestson — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 03:42:00 GMT

An Extraordinary buying opportunity in France! A significant historic home for a modest US$3,000,000...

A Norman manse with theatrical élan

Wednesday, March 21, 2007, 1:12:40 AM

If the architecture was exceptional from the start, subsequent owners endowed the three- level, 800-square-meter, or 8,600-square-foot, country manse with an extra dose of drama. Among the owners of the half-timbered house was Sacha Guitry, a French stage legend famed for his sophisticated Parisian comedies, who was immensely popular as author, actor and director of more than 120 plays.

A Portuguese estate with Italian roots

Gary Gestson — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 03:37:00 GMT

Historic Home for sale in Portugal!

A Portuguese estate with Italian roots

Thursday, March 22, 2007, 12:10:31 PM

Tucked on the western slopes of the Serra de Sintra range and looking out to the sea, the Quinta do Rio de Milho appears deceptively small amid the steep hills, narrow valleys and lush vegetation surrounding it. Antonio Simas, the quinta's current owner, says "milho," the Portuguese word for corn, used to grow along a sinuous strip of land that wound its way through the property like a stream, giving the estate its name.

Turning A Historic Home Into Hot Property

Gary Gestson — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 03:30:00 GMT

I will be including interesting international artlicles in this blog. The world is a much smaller place because of the ease of travel and the internet. I just sold a historic home to a person residing in France and I know people who have invested in real estate in foreign countries. There was an article recently (I can not remember where I read it) on Americans investing in second homes in Uruguay where the opportunities are currently greater than in the downward adjusting US market. At any rate, this article discusses the renovation and restoration of historic homes around the world. We should feel very fortunate in the USA to have a huge inventory of historic homes just waiting for their renewal, while overseas there is a shortage.

Turning historic homes into hot property

Thursday, March 29, 2007, 1:13:09 PM

Around the world, from Panama to Shanghai, high-end buyers are paying top dollar for historic houses, spurring owners to spend both time and money on sensitive renovations that include modern improvements. But finding properties worthy of such effort can be a challenge.

This Historic Home Buyer Didn't Stand a Ghost of a Chance of Getting Financing

Gary Gestson — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 17:09:00 GMT

I stumbled across this article and had to share it. Most historic home owners that I know have not experienced any paranormal activity in a historic home ... much to their dismay. As it turns out, at least with certain lenders and appriasers, that is a very good thing.

(Historic Home) Buyer Faced Ghost of a Chance on House
A buyer from Massachusetts hoped to purchase the vacant Perea Casa, a historic home in Corrales, N.M., before it fell into foreclosure. Then the ghost problem started.

However, his plans were hampered due to a 2004 appraisal indicating that the property's original owner haunts the place and throws orange peels at guests. A string of lenders refused to finance the transaction because of the purported haunting.

According to a spokesperson for one of those lenders, California-based WMC Mortgage Corp., "It's just something that's so out of the ordinary, that if you had to foreclose on it, there would be a limited buyer pool."

There are several articles on the Web site of the National Association of REALTORS® about stigmatized properties, meaning those that have been the scene of hauntings, suicides, and violent crimes. NAR's Walter Molony notes that data has not been collected to determine whether the presence of ghosts hurts or enhances property value. The buyer of the haunted Corrales home, meanwhile, obtained financing immediately after a new appraisal was performed.

Source: Albuquerque Journal (03/17/05); Gray, Autumn

Is it the time to buy a historic home?

Gary Gestson — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 04:11:00 GMT

The answer is YES! If you are committed to "living in the past"...now is the time to move forward! Without a doubt!
Interest rates are at historic lows and inventory is at historic highs. A few years ago, the competition to purchase was extraordinary. It was very unlkely that one could find their dream home. Now with the inventory of historic homes so large, not only can a qualified buyer find a dream home, they can also afford it.

Many sellers are offering closing cost assistance and most lenders will allow up to 3% to 6%, depending on the nature of a buyer's loan. This makes it possible to purchase a historic home with less money out-of-pocket. The graph below shows that sales are down and that means inventory is up.

As you can see, the DC area is far above the national average in real estate appreciation. Real estate in the DC area continues to be a great long term investment opportunity.

Let's say you found your dream home today. How will you benefit simply from an investment perspective? First of all, only in America can a person use a small amount of money, invest it in something much more valuable and receive the benefit of the appreciation in that larger value. Let's use an example to see how this all works...
Let's say your dream home has been lowered to $400,000 by its motivated seller. It has been my experience that a historic home owner is likely to live in his home for at least 10 years and often quite a lot longer, however, for this example let's use 5 years.

Purchase price: $400,000
Deposit: $40,000 (investment)
Appreciated value in 5 years (historically 6.9% average annually, but let's be conservative @ 4%) $488,000.
That is 37.7% return on the original $40,000 investment
Now, you will also benefit from the mortgage interest tax deduction @ 28% that is $7,000 in the first year and $33,600 over 5 years
You will also be paying down your loan over the five years by $24,000, so you will owe $336,000.

If we bring all these factors together, mindful that you have invested only $40,000:

Appreciation	$88,000
Tax Deduction	$33,600
Equity	$64,000
Net Benefit	$185,600

Subtract your original investment of $40,000 and you have a net gain of $145,600.

Here, you have purchased a $400,000 house and enhanced your quality of life and security, while at the same time increasing your net worth by $145,600, all on your $40,000 original investment. If you had left that $40,000 in the stock market the value may have increase, but the increase would have been based on your $40,000, not on your leveraged $400,000.

Finally, your mortgage payment (principal & interest) on $360,000 would be $2247.00. If you factor back into that monthly payment your appreciation, tax deduction and increased equity your monthly payments are effectively "$0.00".
If you were paying $2247.00 in rent every month, you would payout $134,820 over 5 years. That is alot of money and it is gone.

Historic Homeowners Insurance

Gary Gestson — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 19:05:00 GMT

I came across this article and felt it was worth passing on. Replacement value of a rare historic home can far surpass its appraised value, when you consider the materials and craftsmanship required to recreate it. We sold a house recently built in 1780 and an extraordinary historic home. The sales price was a little over $600,000 while the insurance replacement value was well over $2,0000,000.
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Protecting a Historic Home
Historic Homeowners Insurance

Most homeowners have serious gaps in their insurance coverage, especially if they are owners of an older or even historic property. Standard policies often do not cover the features that make older and historic homes special -- raised panel wainscoting, hand-hewn true dimensional lumber, double-hung or fanlight windows, and stepped wood crown moldings.
To meet the needs of owners of older homes, the National Trust has created a unique relationship with experts in insurance. The firm of Maury, Donnelly and Parr (MDP), which has been protecting their clients' assets since 1875, now can help National Trust members evaluate their insurance needs and obtain the coverage necessary for their home, whether it's a farm house from the 1700s, a turn-of-the-century Victorian, or a Cape built in the fifties. MDP can also work with owners of newer structures.
Comprehensive policies will consider a number of factors, including proper valuation of a historic home, coverage that pays for restoration, and replacement cost coverage for furnishings such as antiques, oriental rugs or fine arts. This coverage will also allow choice of contractor, assistance in locating specialty materials during a claim, and restoration of a home to its original splendor.
For more information on specific services available to you, visit http://www.nationaltrust-insurance.org/. To contact an insurance professional directly, call MDP toll free at 866.269.0944 or email mailto:www.historichome@mdpins.com. Help ensure that older homes are protected for generations to come.

Natural Links in a Long Chain of Being

Gary Gestson — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 18:48:00 GMT

Following is the feature on today's NPR "This I believe" series that I think will be of interest to historic home owners.
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Natural Links in a Long Chain of Being
by Victor Hanson

Courtesy Hoover Institution
Classics and military history scholar Victor Hanson is a professor emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. His family farm includes 40 acres of seedless grapes grown for raisins. Hanson hopes his son, William, will succeed him in tending the farm.

“I believe there is an old answer for every new problem, that wise whispers of the past are with us to assure us that… we are not alone.”

Morning Edition, December 19, 2005 · I believe we are not alone.
Even if I am on the other side of the world from the farmhouse I live in, I still dream of the ancient vines out the window, and the shed out back that my grandfather's father built in 1870 with eucalyptus trunks. As long as I can recreate these images, I never quite leave home.
I don't think farming in the same place for six generations is a dead weight that keeps you shackled, doing the identical thing year in and year out. Instead, it is a rare link to others before me, who pruned the same vines and painted the same barn that I have. If those in this house survived the Panic of 1893 or the Great Depression, or bathed with cold water and used an outhouse, then surely I know I can weather high gas prices.
I believe that all of us need some grounding in our modern world of constant moving, buying, selling, meeting and leaving. Some find constancy in religion. Others lean on friends or community for permanence. But we need some daily signposts that we are not novel, not better, not worse from those who came before us.
For me, this house, this farm, these ancient vines are those roots. Although I came into this world alone and will leave alone, I am not alone.
There are ghosts of dozens of conversations in the hallways, stories I remember about buying new plows that now rust in the barnyard and ruined crops from the same vines that we are now harvesting.
I believe all of us are natural links in a long chain of being, and that I need to know what time of day it is, what season is coming, whether the wind is blowing north or from the east, and if the moon is still full tomorrow night, just as the farmers who came before me did.
The physical world around us constantly changes, but human nature does not. We must struggle in our brief existence to find some transcendent meaning during reoccurring heartbreak and disappointment and so find solace in the knowledge that our ancestors have all gone through this before.
You may find all that all too intrusive, living with the past as present. I find it exhilarating. I believe there is an old answer for every new problem, that wise whispers of the past are with us to assure us that if we just listen and remember, we are not alone; we have been here before.

Recording History

Gary Gestson — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 18:42:00 GMT

Recording History

StoryCorps is a national project to instruct and inspire people to record each others' stories in sound.
StoryCorps website

"We would go to the window and listen for my mom out in the field."
Barb Fuller-Curry tells her son Craig about growing up on a farm.

Uncle Tom's Cabin - lost, found, preserved

Gary Gestson — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 04:31:00 GMT

Following is an excerpt from a very interesting article published in the Washington Post, December 13, 2005, written by Marc Fisher. Many local historic home enthusiasts were not aware that Uncle Tom's Cabin exists and is located in Rockville, MD. Since the article was published, Montgomery County has been successful in funding the property's purchase.

"Uncle Tom's Cabin" summons visions of racial brutality in another place and time. But Uncle Tom's Cabin stands today in Rockville, shaded by a row of trees from the speedway that is Old Georgetown Road.
And the property is for sale.
Its owner, Hildegarde Mallet-Prevost, died in September at 100, and her family is selling the three-bedroom colonial (literally) with the attached log cabin that was once home to Josiah Henson -- the slave whose 1849 autobiography was the model for Harriet Beecher Stowe's classic novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
A century and a half later, an Uncle Tom has come to mean a black man who obsequiously seeks white approval or betrays his race. But the cabin in North Bethesda, just south of the city of Rockville, is also a symbol of the strength and savvy that enabled Henson to rise from slavery to build a pioneering life of learning and achievement.
The cabin, where Henson lived during the time in which Stowe's novel takes place, served for many years as the home office for Marcel Mallet-Prevost, Hildegarde's husband and a lawyer for the National Labor Relations Board who died in 2000. Their son Greg showed me around, pointing out the oak beams below, still covered in bark; the broad floorboards, probably original to the plantation house; the bedroom where he slept when he was home from college.
"My parents were history people," Greg said. "They accommodated anyone who wanted to take pictures of the outside, and people came by constantly, but my parents wanted to be left alone on the inside."
As a result, few historians have been inside the cabin. Those I spoke with could hardly contain their excitement. "This house basically fell between the cracks," said Judy Christensen, a historian who is preservation planner for the city of Rockville. "It's a site of national importance."
The complete article...
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/12/AR2005121201387.html