Back again with another beautiful property up for sale in our small Colombian town. This one is a bit more expensive, at 135k usd asking price, but the 1.9 acre lot (in town!) that goes down to the river is something I have never seen before. 7600 meters square leaves us looking at 81,800 square feet.
What a lot! The biggest tree is a ficus/rubber tree, and there is a smaller avacado tree, which is still pretty big.
On the day we arrived, it began to rain quite heavily. I think this is why I forgot to take a picture of the front of the house, which is a 6 bedroom colonial style house, made of wood. The walls are packed with material, and all the bedrooms are moderately small.
Here is a look at one room that appears to be being used as an office slash dining room.
As it was raining, we spent a bit of time sneaking around the edges of the house. Because it is built into a hill, what is one story at street level has a generous basement area where everything was quite dry. These old colonial style houses are defined by their wide and ample roofs.
The owners collect rain water in barrels to wash the patio and for use in the garden. Since rain water is slightly acidic, it is really good for cleaning.
I took the chance to sneak back into the basement and see what I could see of the condition of the house from underneath.
The overall revision of the house confirmed my suspicions, that these old housed need a lot of work. The owner told me that he has been fixing it bit by bit, but it would be better just to remodel the old house completely, as it was over 120 years old.
There is a lot of history in these construction styles, but I can't imagine another fixer upper project right now, even the roof needs some work.
But the property is not without its bright spots, the huge lot could be used to build scores of apartments or half a dozen individual homes with smaller gardens. We trecked out to the back fence, though we decided to head down to the river a different day because of the amount of rain that was falling.
What you can see here is a partially complete process of leveling out the land, by hand, to fill in holes and ditches that were naturally occurring over time.
We spent two hours visiting and talking to the owners, descendants of one of the original founding families of this town. They love the old house, which they inherited, but the guy is a professor who was laid off this year without pension, and they just need the money. He's not sure if he will ever get his old job back, or what is in store for education in the future.
While I love the property, and its huge size, its over our budget and requires a lot of work on the house. I don't think this is the one for us unless something changes, but there are more properties to look at! We continue!