Barn for Sale

continued

Still, Parker’s twelve-acre property may sell before the one-acre site across the street. When Doug Gale, a vice-president of Destiny 98, bought woodworker Peter Beal’s distressed property in 2007, he paid $5,987 for the deed—but estimated he could sell it for $200,000 (see “The Taxing Tragedy of Peter Beal,” October 2007). Since then, Gale says, Scio has changed its septic rules—and lowered the value of the land. “Now you can’t transfer the property unless you clean it up and put in a new septic system,” he says, “so we’ve sold our interest in the property to somebody else.”

Gale estimates that the land, barn workshop and home, which has no central heat and no finished kitchen or bathroom, are now worth $125,000—exactly the same per acre as the Parkers’   

[Originally published in October, 2008.]