We've seen plenty of cool home offices where homeowners have carved out a personal HQ. But what about flipping the script and buying a house that's surrounded by your business?
That's the opportunity this 2-plus acre property in central Pennsylvania presents. It includes a main house and four other buildings used in a flourishing antique business. The $395,000 asking price includes all the structures on the property. Buying the inventory of the antique store is negotiable, says owner Jay Thompson.
The building that houses the store is a two-story brick structure with a long history in the local community of Waynesboro. Built in the late 1880s, it has served as a packing house for local peach and apple growers, as a feed mill, the local post office, and as a train station, Thompson said.
As for the house, it's also solid brick and measures in with 2,700 square feet of living space. It dates from around 1889 and Thompson, who tears down and rebuilds old structures, built a 26-by-30-foot addition to the home. The house has four bedrooms and two full baths, and features a basement room with a vaulted brick ceiling that still sports the hooks once used to hang meat, notes Thompson's daughter Tracey Molz, who grew up in the house and now works with listing agent Cynthia Moler.
Thompson has added other structures on the property over the 19 years that he's been the owner. The antique business takes up four structures, including a rebuilt corn crib with a 14-foot diameter. Thompson, who also serves as pastor of a local church, has decided it's time for him to devote more time to other endeavors, and so he is selling the property.
"It's time for me to move on," he says. But with what he's added in terms of buildings, "Someone else could take this property to another level," he notes, perhaps creating an antique mall. The property is zoned agricultural and commercial, he says, so "You can do anything you want on this property."
Waynesboro gets its fair share of tourists from the famed Civil War battlefield site at Gettysburg, about 25 miles to the east. The property actually sits along the road that Southern General Robert E. Lee's retreating army followed after losing the Battle of Gettysburg, Thompson notes. The property is also 23 miles north of another noted Civil War battlefield at Antietam.
History surrounds this property, which has a pretty interesting history of its own in the local community. A new owner can write the next chapter in the history of the antique business … and the house.