[Vision2020] Washington Town Sells for $360,000 on eBay
Tom Hansen
thansen at moscow.com
Mon Apr 19 11:33:40 PDT 2010
Courtesy of the Seattle Times at:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011642822_townforsale19m.html
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SOLD: 1 tiny town, to Bothell couple, for $360,000
By Erik Lacitis
Seattle Times staff reporter
WAUCONDA, Okanogan County -
This town has a gas pump, a restaurant, a small store, a four-bedroom
house and its own ZIP code, 98859.
And in a few weeks - after being listed for sale on eBay - it'll have new
owners. It's a story of the travails of selling property on the site, the
winning bidder backing out and finally a couple stepping up who had
previously fallen in love with the town.
It takes an unusual person to try to flip a town on an auction Web site.
It takes unusual people, too, to buy this isolated place that's surrounded
by cattle ranches, vast stretches of evergreens, grazing land and the
occasional sagebrush rolling along Highway 20.
On this highway, Wauconda is a pit stop at elevation 3,600 feet, a windy
25 miles east of Tonasket, and 12 miles west of Republic, the nearest
towns with actual city streets.
But sell it did on April 12.
Daphne Fletcher, 42 - who once was homeless - sold the place for $360,000.
She bought the 4-acre property in 2007 for $180,810.
Maddie and Neal Love, respectively 48 and 50, of Bothell, put down 5
percent earnest money last Monday. The Loves are both unemployed and are
selling their home and all their possessions to buy the town and move
there. The deal is expected to close in six weeks.
It's not like Fletcher will walk away with a huge profit. After all the
improvements to the property, paid for in part by a loan from her mom,
Fletcher figures she'll walk away with about $40,000 for all those hours
of labor.
Still, the sale will enable Fletcher to pursue her latest dream, and for
the Loves, as they explain, "to come off one mountain, cross the bridge
and walk up that other mountain."
Average, these people are not.
"It takes an adventurous spirit," Fletcher said of buying Wauconda.
Said Maddie Love, "My husband and I are very unique."
Fletcher says maybe 100 families live within 10 miles of Wauconda. That's
a long way from Wauconda's peak population.
This is the third location of the town in Wauconda Pass, established in
1898, as it followed the fortunes of silver and gold miners. According to
the Okanogan County Historical Society, Wauconda in 1900 had 335
residents, three hotels, a store, boardinghouse and four saloons.
Busy in summer
These days, in the busy summer months with tourists driving by, the
restaurant employs maybe five people; in the winter, it's a couple.
Locals stop by to pick up mail - the post office leases space and has one
full-time employee - and to gas up, shop at the small store, maybe have
coffee or on Fridays the all-you-can-eat $9.99 spaghetti and meatballs.
This is a place where one regular calls himself "Prospector Paul" and,
when finding out you're from the big city, has plenty to say about Big
Government.
The store's biggest-selling items, by the way, are beer (Busch is
preferred, with 12-packs stacked beside the register), cigarettes, candy
and pop.
Fletcher says she grossed $300,000 a year, with about $100,000 each coming
from the gas pump, grocery and restaurant, and that she netted $40,000 to
$50,000 a year.
When she bought Wauconda, she worked for a distributing company and
delivered candy and tobacco to stores throughout the county, including the
small town.
Fletcher, who had saved up money selling items on eBay - often clothing
she had bought at thrift stores - owned a cabin in the area.
The previous owners of Wauconda, ready to retire, urged her to buy the
place. She sold her cabin and plunged in.
She ended up running the restaurant herself and becoming a stress case.
"What do you do when 50 motorcycles show up all at once and order food?"
Fletcher said. "People were very patient, but ... "
Putting it on eBay
Selling a town on eBay is not so easy.
Bids for property on the Web site are nonbinding, meaning any joker can
submit an offer.
On March 3, after Fletcher paid a $200 fee, the listing went up:
"Why buy a house when you can OWN YOUR OWN TOWN! Own the Post Office, OWN
YOUR OWN ZIP CODE ... Single owner is tired and ready to retire ... VERY
LOW RESERVE PRICE OF $359,000 ... Please bid only if you will honor it.
... "
The bidding closed April 2.
In between, 112 bids came, with some individuals putting in offers many
times.
Sure, Fletcher was nervous.
"I was logging in three or four times a day," she said. "I spent days
answering questions."
Fletcher got used to fielding all kinds of phone calls, like the
apologetic one from the parents of a young boy.
"The little kid had placed a bid, trying to surprise his parents by buying
a town."
Then there was the guy who flew in from New York, looked around, said he'd
get back to Fletcher, and never did.
The auction caught the attention of media outlets.
Story goes global
"CNN picked it up, and it went worldwide," she said. "I had people calling
me from London, and Chinese people."
With the initial news stories, people from the Northwest stopped by, like
the two women from Spokane.
"They wanted to turn it into a happening night club," Fletcher said. The
women never got back to her.
But serious or not, the bidding continued.
The high bid of $370,601 was from David Broadbent, of Melbourne, Australia.
Fletcher waited expectantly for a wire transfer for the 5 percent down
payment.
Broadbent sent his regrets.
Contacted by phone, he said that during the time he was bidding, Maria,
his longtime companion, had ended up in the hospital with some kind of
illness.
And, he said, "I can't find mainstream financing in Australia for anything
that's offshore."
Fletcher began going down the list of other bidders.
There were no replies from the top five bidders, lukewarm response from
others.
Fletcher made contingency plans. Maybe she'd stay, but lease the restaurant.
Then came the call from the Loves.
They are enthusiastic riders of Harley-Davidsons, had ridden by the town
in previous years, and loved its charm.
Atop a Pepsi cooler in the store, for example, Wauconda's first TV set, a
boxy Capehart brand from the early 1950s, is displayed. A sign explains
that the antenna consisted of "2x4s and chicken wire on top of the
warehouse."
"You can look up and see the Milky Way. It's God's country," Maddie Love
said. "You can hear the coyotes and wolves."
By the time the Loves first stopped by the town, the price for Wauconda
had come down drastically.
In 2008, Fletcher had listed the town with a real-estate agent - asking
price, $1.1 million.
Well, you can dream about really flipping a town, can't you?
Not surprisingly, there were no takers.
By 2009, the asking price was $495,000. The Loves were interested, kind of.
Life changes
Maddie Love lost her job in late 2008 after more than two decades as a
trade-show coordinator. Neal Love, who worked in telecommunications, lost
his job in 2009.
Maybe it was time to make a big change.
When Maddie heard that Wauconda was up for auction, "I fell to my knees
and cried," she said. "Why didn't we jump on it when we could have?"
When the eBay bids never came to fruition, the Loves decided it was time
to climb that next mountain.
"We're terrified. Neal almost puked the other night when we signed the
paperwork," Maddie said.
"Honest to God's truth, we're selling everything we own. We're coming here
with just the clothes on our backs."
As for Fletcher, she's staying on for a while to show the Loves the ropes.
Then, well, Fletcher likely will buy an RV.
You see, she has traveling to do, and it has to do with a past chapter in
her life.
That chapter so traumatized her that Fletcher hesitated when talking about
it.
Then she blurted it out.
She was raped when in high school on the East Coast, she said, and at age
16 gave birth to twin boys, whom she gave up for adoption.
"My life spun out of control," Fletcher said. "I was emotionally unstable.
I started getting into drugs."
She ended up homeless in San Diego. Fletcher showed an article from 12
years ago in The San Diego Union-Tribune, in which she was profiled in a
story about a YWCA shelter for women.
It's been quite a journey from that point in her life.
She also found that one of her sons had been looking for her, posting on a
Web site. She said she wants to contact the boys, now young men, but is
still trying to figure out, well, all kinds of things.
Now, Fletcher said, she will have the money and freedom to leave Wauconda
and meet them.
And that's the story of the town for sale on eBay.
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Wauconda, a town of 335 residents in 1900, now consists of a 100-year-old
home, the original store (now a cafe/saloon), gas station, post office and
a general store.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2010/04/15/2011619898.jpg
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A map locating Wauconda, Washington.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2010/04/18/2011642394.gif
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Daphne Fletcher, who bought Wauconda in 2007 and fixed up the buildings,
figures she'll walk away with about $40,000. She'd like to buy an RV.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2010/04/15/2011619884.jpg
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"Wauconda store in 1915-16. Facing camera is Clarence Rowe. He and Charlie
Merrill bought the store. ... Clarence had been a stage driver on
Wauconda-Loomis Line."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2010/04/16/2011627991.jpg
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Seeya round town, Moscow.
Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
"The Pessimist complains about the wind, the Optimist expects it to change
and the Realist adjusts his sails."
- Unknown
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