Unique features
Indeed, sellers of mansion homes often find that their best features – their uniqueness – can also make them the white elephants of real estate.
Many times, 20th-century mansions in Fort Wayne, including 4700 Old Mill, have remained in the same family since they were built, Thrasher says. That means original features often are intact, and many are quite specific to the era of the house or the taste of previous owners.
That can be a good thing in the case of Old Mills grand foyer floor, with its decoration made with inlaid exotic woods, he says. The homes decorative plaster ceilings in the dining and living rooms, hand-painted wall and ceiling murals and stunning curved staircase are also major selling points.
But he concedes that some buyers might be turned off by dated built-in – but still operating – Hollywood-style mirrors sided by flickering vertical lights in some bathrooms.
And what to make of a child-sized tub in one bath – and the stained-glass window featuring pointy-hatted gnomes in various poses that decorates a bar area in the finished basement?
Dave McDaniel, a RE/MAX Results Realtor, recently listed the historic Vermilyea House in Aboite Township. He says that house has a great history – but an unusual 7,600-square-foot interior floor plan that might seem foreign to some today.
Among the features of Vermilyea House, built in 1839 on the bank of the Wabash Erie Canal by an original director of the Fort Wayne Branch Bank: a parlor and, just off it, a keeping room.
Whats a keeping room, anyway? he asks with a laugh. I dont think I know what that was used for.
But the house also features a gourmet kitchen, a state-of-the-art media room and an addition built in 2001 by its most recent owner – along with the cachet of having been built with bricks created onsite and abundant walnut cabinetry and woodwork.
The more information you can tell somebody about a house like this, the better it will be, says McDaniel, who became certified as a luxury home specialist through RE/MAX to prepare himself to market the $850,000 property, which includes 12 acres and a barn for horses.
You market to the individual instead of to the masses, and then it is sort of a waiting game. They (the eventual buyers) will be someone who believes in the history and wants something unique.
Theyll be like the (current owners), really, who see it as that theyre more caretakers of history. They dont see it the way most people see houses, as shelter or a home or as an investment.