The housing market is insane lately with offers being accepted well above asking and many people finding it harder and harder to find a home, let alone their dream one. But hidden amidst the overpriced fixer-uppers is a gem.
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A 111-year-old mansion situated in a luxe neighbourhood that has all the bells and whistles one might ever need. The well-known home not only has famed neighbours but also has a rich history of previous occupants. You can buy all that for the jaw-dropping price of $10! Yes, that isn’t a typo – but of course, with that comes a neat catch.
Montclair Mansion
Like the name clearly suggests, the 111-year-old is located in New Jersey’s prestigious Montclair area thus being called the Montclair Mansion. The house was built in 1906 and is surrounded by mature landscaping on Pleasant St.
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Renowned local Architect Dudley S. Van Antwerp designed the mansion as well as the Montclair Wachtung Avenue Congregational Church and the Bayside, Long Island Yacht Club.
Fit For A King
For $10 dollars, the same price as a Subway Footlong you can get your hands on the 3900 square feet colonial style home. The mansion sits on two and a half acres of land and has four bedrooms and two baths.
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Beyond the main building, the property comes with a gazebo, tennis court, and even boasts a carriage house and despite being over a hundred years old, it has been kept in tip-top condition with all its original details well-preserved.
Famous Inhabitants
The historic home itself would impress anyone but the mansion get’s even more desirable once you learn about its history. Aubrey Lewis, the first African American captain of a Notre Dame athletic team, once lived there.
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Lewis also set state records in the 100-yard dash, the 220, and the discus. Despite suffering from a heart murmur and sustaining several injuring, Lewis went on to receive over 200 scholarship offers based on his football skills.
A Record-Setting Athlete
Lewis wasn’t just great at footballer, he nearly made it to the Olympics based on his track skills. He won the NCAA’s Division I championship in the 400-meter intermediate hurdles in 1956.
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Unfortunately, due to the heat at the Olympic trials in Los Angeles Lewis stumbled on the last hurdle. Despite that, he went on to be elected as captain of the track team making him the first black athlete at the school to be chosen as a team captain.
Career Change
His football career was also cut short when despite being chosen by the Chicago Bears in the tenth round of the 1958 NFL Draft, he suffered a grave ankle injury and would never play any sports professionally again.
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All this happened while Lewis lived at the Montclair Mansion which saw the athlete start a new chapter in his life. In 1962, he was chosen to become a part of the United States Of America’s domestic intelligence and security service, FBI.
Real Value
This made him one of the first African American agents in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We wonder how many secrets the walls of the Montclair Mansion will be able to reveal if they could talk.
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At the time, the property was valued to be $1.35 million. So, what happened next? How did this mansion go from millions to dollars? Well, there is a catch. One which has ensured that no one wants to ever buy the property.
Median Income
With the median income of the neighbourhood being around $126,844, getting a 10 dollar mansion should be worth any catch for potential home buyers. The historic home has a rich history with a price tag that is worth jumping over a few hurdles.
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Until you read the fine print. The last owner of the home, Ann Lewis put the property up for sale in May of 2015 for $1,400,000. A sensible asking price and one which not many could afford.. except for a Real Estate Group.
Real Estate Group
Things got a bit complicated when a year later, BNE Real Estate Group purchased the land on which the house was situated. They had planned to divide the 2.7-acre property into eight lots.
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Containing a single-family home and of course, making a hefty profit with each sale. Their investment seemed straightforward until the Montclair City Planning Board heard of it. And to say, they were unhappy would be an understatement!
Intervention
The board put an immediate stop to the plans of demolishing the historic home and put in a strange condition. They allowed BNE to do whatever they wanted with the actual land the house sat on but the mansion itself had to be preserved.
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This meant that whoever was going to buy this $10 home would only be getting well, the shell of the mansion and no land attached to it. In fact, the allure of the expensive neighbourhood should mean nothing to potential buyers as the mansion isn’t allowed to sit on its original land.
Abandoned
The strange and bizarre rule all but left the historic home abandoned. With no one willing to move the house, not even for $10. BNE now had a money pit on their hands that wouldn’t sell.
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To lure in potential buyers, they decided to pitch in $10,000 to help move the mansion and get it off their land and while to a layman’s ear this might sound like the deal of a lifetime, in fact, it was the exact opposite.
A Big Job
The new buyers tempted in by the cheap price tag would have to dig up the foundation of the mansion, wedge steel beams just beneath the home’s frame and just hydraulic jacks at each corner lift the structure about 4 feet.
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Sounds simple? Well, it’s definitely not. Once the home has been lifted it can be placed on the bed of a trailer so it can be driven to its new site and placed on a new foundation. And how much would that cost?
Costly
“Assuming we have a clear move route, the cost to move this house would be between $75,000 and $100,000,” says Ben Brovont, an estimator with Wolfe House & Building Movers.
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“There is also a general contractor involved who would oversee preparing the new foundation,” he says. He added that potential buyers might have to trim trees and also move power lines to clear the route for the home’s final destination.
Months Long
And should take three to four weeks just to move the house a quarter of a mile with the whole project taking a couple of months! Factoring in the distance of how far you would like to move, the total cost would be around 200,000.
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And with the mansion, excluding the land costing around $435,000 whoever buys the home isn’t getting a good deal, in fact, a headache-inducing construction project with many hidden costs and twists.
Neighbours
And what do the neighbours think? Everyone agrees that the home should stay where it is preserved as a historic property but of course, this opinion was driven mostly because no one wants the quiet and prestigious neighbourhood to be swept up with construction.
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One neighbour, Ken Chase however had a different reason. He was a fan of Aubrey Lewis and wanted his legacy to stay in their neighbour. “It’s not so many material possessions, but it was the man’s character; the man’s humility,” he said.
A New Agreement
Despite the neighbours wanting the home to stay intact, BNE Group needed to get rid of the historic mansion as soon as possible, so the work on their extensive housing project could start.
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And after much back and forth, they came to an agreement with the historic preservation committee. If the home couldn’t attract a buyer who would move the property to a new location, the company could demolish the mansion.
Other Problems
The community was eager to find a new buyer to take care of the home more than ever but considering the mansion is 111-years-old, everyone knew that potential owners would have to deal with asbestos and lead paint.
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All of these costs would have to be dealt with and of course, as anyone who has ever dealt with builders, knows that the initial quote is never guaranteed and costs always end up rising and exceeding.
Money Pit
So, the new buyers would have to be those who could afford such an extensive project which surely would be a money pit. The initial $10 price tag is very misleading and ended up attracting all the wrong buyers.
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People from all around the U.S.A flocked the small town in hopes of getting their hands on such a good deal but of course, these were cash strapped professionals just starting out and not the experienced renovators which the mansion needed.
Professional Opinion
Real estate agent Laurena White pointed out yet another potentially costly factor. “In addition to moving [the house], the cost of any kind of repairs and renovation required that it be done to historic guidelines. That tends to be really expensive,” she noted.
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With so many layers of red tape attached to the home, the pool of potential buyers all but dwindled and why wouldn’t they. This wasn’t some dream come true mansion but a project which would end up costing millions!
One Last Question
And one question which was asked over and over again was ” “Where are they going to put it?”. A neighbour of the house, Carmen Warren said, “Why would I want to buy such a big monstrosity of a house and don’t know where to put it?”
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She unlike the rest of the neighbourhood wanted the house to be demolished and felt that whoever was going to be lured into buying the property was going to “conned” into the process. The right thing to do was demolish the home.
Decisive End
Sadly, despite all the desperate tries from the historic committee and even BNE to find someone who would take on this responsibility of such a beautiful historic home, in the end, it was demolished.
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Nowadays, eight ” exquisite” homes sit on the land each selling for $800,000 with most of the new homeowners having no idea that they are sitting on land which was once owned by the famed Aubrey Lewis.