About Washington County, VT

Waterbury Vermont - Auction Property - Bed and Breakfast - DATE December 11, 2009

Another local property is up for auction. The photo below was supplied by Thomas Hirchak Company. For more information about this B&B, click on the photo.

There are other properties in Waterbury that may be of interest you. Below are Links to them:

Waterbury Vermont Homes for Sale

Waterbury Vermont Condos for Sale

Waterbury Vermont Land for Sale

Waterbury Vermont Commercial Properties for Sale

OR, maybe you want to know about Bed and Breakfast Properties for sale in the area:

Bed and Breakfast Properties in Lamoille and Washington Counties, Vermont

Let me know if I can assist you with properties in the Waterbury and Stowe, Vermont area!

Just had a home inspection on an 1850s farmhouse near Northfield, Vermont. The community is actually Brookfield, and is an idyllic little area. Just a handful of houses and a church.

But that's not the point. That's just the setting.

It's written right there on the furnace "Installed 1995". I mean, it's handwritten in Sharpie. That's got to be official right? Well, it's technically true. The furnace was installed in 1995.

Oh, except that when you look at the manufacturer's information sticker, it turns out that the furnace was actually built in 1989.

What was it doing for those six years? Finding itself? Studying with a yogi? Fulfilling its civil service duty? Sitting around in a warehouse, hopefully and tearfully waiting to be adopted by a loving family?

Lesson: Buyers: Do a little detective work to find out the true age.

Lesson: Sellers: Keep all that info and paperwork, and make it available for buyers. Full, accurate disclosure is the best way to go.

Guess the High Sale in Barre, Vermont

My wife's parents are from Southern California, and in so many ways, it's a different world from ours here in Montpelier and Barre. There's traffic, the ocean, gigantic malls, etc. But, as a realtor working my tail off for buyers and sellers in Montpelier and Barre, the funniest difference is in the cost of houses.

Two years ago the median home price in their county was $600,000. Now, with the California Correction, it's down to $400,000. How the heck does the "median" person buy a "median" priced home in that county?

In Barre, there were two homes that sold this year (so far) at or above $200,000. Both were listings from our office (don't mind tooting my own home now and then). What does that mean? It means that there are a lot of good values in Barre. It means that if someone's looking for a good house in a good neighborhood in a good community, they could do well by buying in Barre.

Is it a perfect town? No, but which town is? All I'm saying is that if I had $200,000 to buy a house, I'd rather have a 3 bedroom 2 bath nicely cared for home in Barre than whatever shack you can get for that in SoCal.

Stick Season In Montpelier and Barre

I will admit, the phones aren't ringing as steadily, and I'm getting fewer email inquiries about our listings as I did throughout the spring, summer, and early fall...but it's not dead. Not by a long shot.

Two weeks ago I had three offers come in (2 are accepted, one is a short sale, so you never know when that'll land). Last week I added another offer and a new listing. Today I'm headed out to see about a listing, and then this morning I had an email inquiry wanting to know about selling her house.

I'm not going to count any chickens before they've hatched, but this is certainly a busier November than I thought I'd have. Back in January when I started (I can't believe this is my first year...I should've been doing this for a long time!), people assured me that it was the worst possible time to start a career selling real estate. My (perhaps naive) response then was that if I could make a go at it and stay in business when the market's down, when unemployment's up, and when people think it's a bad time to start a career selling real estate, then I'd have a grand old time when things turned around.

I think I was right. When I hear veteran agents talking about how this was the strangest, least profitable year in which they had to do more work to close fewer deals than in recent memory, I smile to myself. You mean it gets better than this?

Perhaps I better bookmark this posting, and read it again in January to cheer myself up. Then again, I spent all summer telling my wife that she'll get enough of having dinner with me come November. Well, here it is the week before Thanksgiving..

We just had a very interesting experience with a multi-family property in Montpelier, VT. It gets pretty cold here in the winter, and, with this property there are two furnaces servicing the four units. Ideally, they'd be split off and have each unit with their own separate heat source, but that's just not happening.

I called Montpelier Construction, and Malcolm Gray came right out to do the blower door test. Turns out the old building is leaking air like a sieve. That's bad for the environment, and it's costing money. I had Montpelier Construction spray foam the basement sill, seal all the basement penetrations (where pipes, wires, and ducts come through the basement ceiling and into the house), airseal the attic, weatherstrip the doors, and take care of a couple egregious air leaks within some of the units. Total cost was just around $2000.

But then the incentives start piling up. The electric company throws a little money at it. There's the federal tax credit. And then there's another source of state money used to help incentivize weatherizing. At the end of the day, it's going to cost me right around $400.

Last year we burned close to $4000 worth of oil to heat the place. The estimated savings from the work that was done was somewhere around 20%. That's a 6 month payback!

I love it when the right thing to do, the good thing to do, and the easy thing to do are all the same thing!