PARIS — Built in 1789 by an original settler, “The Old House” on Paris Hill had been passed down through the same family for more than 200 years when it came on the market in 2013 for about $199,000.
At which point it faced a reckoning.
Situated on four green acres in a historic district, where plaques remind visitors of an era when vice presidents and presidents played golf, the house is a moment’s walk from views of Mount Washington. On the surface the house — which shares a birth-date with the year the Constitution came into effect — had everything: Spacious living. An updated kitchen with wooden beams. Wide pinewood floors. Period fireplaces.
But when it hit the market for the first time ever history played against it. After being used as a summer residence it needed serious maintenance, including a new roof and foundation work.
It was in such a state that when James Deshon — a mason who lives nearby on Ryerson Hill Road — recently bought the home for around $100,000, he toyed with the idea of tearing it down or sinking $100,000 into it and flipping it for a profit.
On Friday, with the sound of drills and saws buzzing in the background, Deshon, who said he was a fifth generation descendant of the home’s original builder, Lemuel Jackson, Jr., is not only completely renovating the house but trying to figure out how serious his wife was when she said she wanted to move in.
Many other historic homes would be as lucky to find such owners, but real estate agents say the Paris Hill market is flooded as it hasn’t been for a generation. Of the 10 homes currently for sale around the historic village, seven were built before 1900, according to Zillow, an online real estate database. Of those, four are being sold below 2014’s assessed value.
Built in 1812, “The Owl House,” a six-bedroom, three-and-a-half bath home, is offered at $179,000 on Zillow’s website, $66,000 less than it was assessed in 2014. It’s been on the market for about 22 months. An online message to prospective buyers states, “All offers considered!”
While new, modern, energy-efficient homes can turn over in a selling season, Realtor Helga Thurston said the size and maintenance costs to heat and maintain a large historic home put off prospective buyers, forcing prices down.
Zillow indicates most have been listed for only a few months, though real estate agents say they’ve been on the market for much longer. As the homes sit, a paradox takes hold: the more outdated they become, the more it costs to fix them and the longer they sit.
“Inventories are high in general, and Paris Hill is competing with other towns which offer historic homes (like) Waterford Village,” Thurston said.
Brenda Birney, who’s been selling homes on Paris Hill for 29 years, said there’s never been as big a market on the hill because traditional homes were either passed down by families or sold in private sales.
Birney pointed to a variety of circumstances: some passed away, some moved, while others couldn’t afford the upkeep.
Those that surface sell slowly. Buyers looking to save on utilities are put off by the prospects of heating a large home in the dead of winter, even where new roofs, furnaces and windows have been installed.
“You can’t insulate those houses enough to make them like a new construction,” Birney said.
For Birney, the problem is not just the market for historic homes. Upgrades or not, people just aren’t spending more than $150,000.
“They could stick $500,000 in and never get it back,” she said.
According to data compiled from all brokerages over the past decade, she found just 12 of 662 properties sold in town went for over $300,000, and just two for more than $400,000. One of those was sold this past spring, the first time in 12 years.
Still, Bethel-area real estate agent and Paris Hill resident Holly Bancroft said the charm of living in a one-of-a-kind house in a community with its own post office, village green and library isn’t something that can be imitated.
“It’s old-fashioned. If someone’s sick, before too long there’ll be a casserole on their doorstep,” Bancroft said.
A historic home isn’t for everyone. Aside from maintenance and high taxes, winter drafts mean sweaters and slippers. Still, Bancroft said the village is going through a generational blip it’ll rebound from.
“I think people are falling in love with the romanticism again,” she said. “They say walking into an old house is like walking into your grandmother’s arms.”
ccrosby@sunmediagroup.net
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