The owner of a four-bedroom house in Minnesota is willing to give it away – so long as its new owner pays to relocate it.
Barbara Kochlin inherited her house in Jordan, Minnesota, from her grandmother, who had relocated it in 2002 to an area zoned for commercial properties and never connected it to water and sewage service, the New York Post reported.
“I’m not giving away some hidden gem,” Kochlin told the Post. She estimates that moving the house will cost $50,000 and fixing it up another $150,000.
Kochlin, a property manager, told the Post her grandmother was in her mid-80s when she relocated the house and “wasn’t thinking 100 percent logically at the time.”
A new owner probably would want to gut the interior of the house, which has such features as orange counter tops and a cork back-splash. Kochlin told a local newspaper the house’s “godawful ugly” interior also includes “horrible wallpaper and fake brick from some era when nobody had any taste.”
According to Kochlin, her grandmother paid $15,000 to buy the house, $20,000 to relocate it, and $40,000 to repair it, “and now it’s worth nothing.”
But, despite Kochlin’s dislike for the home, it does have historical value: Kochlin’s grandmother, Gail Andersen, was the first mayor of Jordan, a small town southwest of Minneapolis. So, surprisingly, Kochlin hopes someone will pay to relocate it, rather than having it demolished. [NYP] – Mike Seemuth