Plumb Place: A Positive Update?
This is my tenth post trying to save Plumb Place
About a week ago something significant happened.
The listing agent for Plumb Place suddenly became response. She stopped telling people offers were not being considered. She began returning calls. She even showed the property!
Gadzooks!
And by all accounts the receiver, Kevin Flott, has been responsive.
Today, for reasons which escape me, all the MLS listings were yanked and re-listed. Many images were added! But the description is still but a single sentence.
Curiously, the 28 images (formerly 7) include:
- A not great image of the library.
- A broom as the focus.
- A long hall with a dropped acoustical ceiling (the carriage house).
- Sad drapes hanging over a radiator and another dropped acoustical ceiling (the carriage house).
- A depressing kitchen with yet another dropped acoustical ceiling (the carriage house).
- A ghastly 1980s kitchen with a stained dropped acoustical ceiling (the carriage house).
- A plastic shower (the carriage house).
- A sad-looking tub room.
So, of the 21 newly added images, 8 images are depressing.
And while there ARE depressing aspects of the property (almost all involving the carriage house) there are so so so many fabulous aspects which could have been highlighted.
This all, again, begs the question: Why is so much effort being expended to STILL not attract interest?
Sigh. While things are seemingly MUCH better than they were a week ago, something still seems…wrong.
The Plumb mansion is the most important house in the city, and is for sale for the first time in its 150-year history.
It deserves better.
Emporia deserves better.
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It’s a significant improvement it would make me want to go look at it.
Travis, I agree that the listing is a significant improvement.
But it should have twice the images, and WAY more description.
Congratulations, I may have missed it, but it doesn’t appear to be listed as under contract any more either. What were the results of Tuesday’s zoning hearing?
The zoning appeal will be heard on the 18th.
Still no kitchen but I see a few clawfoot tubs.
To me this smacks of a done deal but they are putting on a show so that if there is any blowback or question they can say, see, we did all this and no takers. Or something to that effect. It’s window dressing. A sham. Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.
Covering their tracks.
I’m thinking the zoning issue is moot. That Ely is going to buy it no matter the price or zone and then flip it for a profit. With the interest I’m sure he thinks all he has to do is take better photos and market it better and he can probably get $150,000 above whatever he pays. If he still has right of first refusal, all he has to do is beat the highest bidder. I’m betting he is prepared to do that. Give up the long term apartments because he can’t get the variance to flip it for a quicker profit. Then move on.
Stavis LLC does own a property just up the street, on the other side. They can use the money from the sale of Plumb Place to fix up that property and sell it for a profit too.
Mary, there are two kitchen images.
Please note: We don’t know what Eli intends. It’s my understand that he has dropped the zoning contingency from his offer. This contingency has dragged out the process by six months. His zoning appeal is, last time I talked with City Hall, still in play.
I’m just saying he may not care one way or the other whether he gets the variance or not. He stills sees a way to profit from buying the house.
The new listing is interesting though. It no longer says under contract.
I couldn’t really identify any photos of the kitchen aside from the one that showed the cupboards. I’ve found a few off google. One shows a fabulous vintage sink with double drain boards, just like yours, only with a backsplash. But it looked more like it was in the converted upstairs than the main kitchen. I couldn’t really tell from the photo. There were quite a few that were not on your blog or in the listing. They show cupboards with dishes in them. I think they are from the auction as it looks like there are cards taped in front of them. The sink might be in a basement as there are windows up high. They may be from the time the shelter was operating as there is also furniture.
https://www.google.com/maps/uv?pb=!1s0x87b94e9e3506803b%3A0x5e4d71a8040aa19e!3m1!7e115!4shttps%3A%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOJfniAMp00Ss2ZiheIMtn20XGHHLWoen5XXro3%3Dw426-h320-k-no!5splumb%20place%20-%20Google%20Search!15sCgIgAQ&imagekey=!1e10!2sAF1QipPpcmZLxnpHjcd3uX8J7_LHz7tIf8pje-nv9Nzt&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjDwMKBi7T3AhVwJTQIHZK_DKMQoip6BAhZEAM
Thanks for the update, Ross! I have to say, though that while you see a few (8) images as depressing, I don’t share the same view. I see a home that has been around for more than 120 years and is showing her age. Even with that, it looks beautiful! It’s what I don’t see that is encouraging. I don’t see walls falling down, plaster ceilings on the floor and the countless other things that plague old houses. I see a beautiful home that needs some better direction on some of the poor decisions that have been forced upon her. Hopefully she will get a new owner that will save her and not inflict more damage like chopping it into apartments! Yea, I’m an old house junkie, in case it doesn’t show!
Hi, Michael.
My point is: Why is the listing agent working so hard to show the house badly?
This is a valid question.
If the agent had shown 50 images (a not unusual occurrence for a great house), with most of these images revealing the beauty of the house, and with 8 of these images showing distressing issues, well, OK.
But it seems, IMO, that the agent is going out of her way to downplay the beauty of the house.
This is a pattern.
Maybe she’s just bad at taking photos. They weren’t professionally done so likely taken quickly with her phone. Maybe it wasn’t even her. Maybe she just sent someone over an said “take more photos” and whoever it was wasn’t very good at both taking them and deciding what to photograph.
Keep pushing Ross — the more publicity the better. I think that your efforts are working. That house deserves to be appreciated and I truly hope that someone gets it that will preserve it and love it.
Keep up the good work!
It’s making a tremendous difference!
Your efforts have triggered this extraordinary reversal!
I agree, I think she’s “doing what she was told to do” and not what she should do. Amazing. :/
Ross, I so commend your work on this. It is utterly interesting and horrifying all at the same time. Are the agent’s other home listings of the same “quality”?
I had a long chat with Mr. Williams from EK Real Estate, Mr. Flott had given him my information to talk about Plumb Place. The entire fiasco of the situation can be squarely laid at the city’s feet. The property was never listed with an agent, it was just made available to all agents in Emporia. The sale is for two properties, Plumb Place and the empty lot behind it. That’s a pretty good deal in my opinion. The city has several requirements of the new owner that they don’t even know what they are even at this point in time. Those requirements are updating the home to meet current building standards, which for an older home is not entirely possible. Mr. Williams pretty much let me know it would be at least another $200k just to bring the house up to any kind of standard. Plumb Place was vacant for a time, evidently about a year before the current contract holder tested the plumbing systems and they checked ok. It was re-winterized by professionals. He also mentioned the city has set a 9 bedroom maximum for the property, regardless of use as residential or B&B. Mr. Flott is discussing the original offer with an attorney and seeing how the property can be released from that contract. He hopes to have this issue ironed out by Monday May 9. There are also several offers on Plump Place from a multitude of realtors around Emporia, several higher than asking. Contingencies will evidently be an autorejection on offers. The issues I have with putting in a contract are as follows:
1. the city has no condition report on Plumb Place (which in my opinion is absurd considering it was a city owned shelter for 100 years)
2. the city has vague and as of yet undefined upgrade requiremtents the new owner will be held to.
3. lack of contingency flexibility
I used to be a licenced broker in the state of Colorado, and have never seen a property without some sort of condition disclosure, even if it’s all maked ‘don’t know’. Even federal repos have some condition report on intake. Good luck to anyone who wants to pursue this property. Ross if you want the pdfs that show the county info for both the house and lot, drop me a note.
Dear Patrick,
It seems as though somebody is working hard to scare you away from the property!
1) The city does not own the Plumb mansion. It never has.
2) The city does NOT require people buying property to immediately bring everything up to code.
3) Because the mansion is on the National Register, the city actually exempts it from some codes (as they have with my house).
4) The city does not keep Condition Reports on properties.
5) The $200K figure you were quoted is meaningless. One could buy the mansion and move in the next day. It is move-in condition. The city will not require your spending a penny before moving in.
6) If you buy the property and decide to extensively renovate it, only then would doing the work to code come into play. This would not apply to areas you are not renovating.