Purchasing Star Manor
My husband, Matt, and I were house hunting for a few months. At first, we found a house in Newport, NY. The home was right next to a major roadway and if your mother is anything like mine, she instilled in me that I should never live on a double yellow line road. The home itself was decent, to say the least, but sat in a heavy flood zone. It was at this house that we met our realtor, John McCann. From the very beginning, John exemplified professionalism and expertise in gunning to help us find the perfect home.
We explored a few more houses after House #1 but nothing aligned with our interests or future family growth plans. Honestly, in this market, we had a hard time looking at homes that weren’t worth the high price tag associated with them - but I guess that’s today’s market. Until one cold afternoon on February 18th, 2022 when the Second Empire home came up for sale.
The previous homeowner shared all of the histories with me, which I will share here on this blog, so keep reading!
The Second Empire House
Built in 1832, this home is jam packed with history and boasting with architectural glory.
Although online records state the Second Empire home was established in 1832, there was an establishment on this 5-acre property as early as 1805. In the early years of the 1800s, John Hancock's brother, Silas Jabez Hancock settled in Waterville NY until his death in January of 1816.
In the early beginnings of this central New York town, there were two manufactories. The first one was carried out by Jabez Hancock himself. Jabez made milk pans and smaller domestic ware.
“This kind of milk pan continued to be used by the good housewife long after the introduction of tin, because it was supposed to be of pure metal.”
After Jabez Hancock died, Colonial William Osborn took over the property. Records state that the Second Empire home was constructed as a wedding gift for one of his daughters. Col. Osborn’s history is intriguing as well.
“As a boy he worked in his father’s store and taught school for two winters. At the age of twenty-seven he was one of the commissioners for distributing the stock of the Oneida National Bank. In 1837 he went to Michigan to join an emigrating corps to locate the line of the Michigan Central Railway, and in 1841 he returned to Waterville and engaged in farming until 1845, when he sold his farm, excepting ten acres for a homestead and went to Missouri, where he took an interest in the contract for building the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, a contract amounting to $6,000,000, and they completed the railroad in 1849-50. He then organized the company to build the flat country railroad to Council Bluffs. In 1865 he took the contract to construct the central branch of the Union Pacific Railroad extending from Atchinson 100 miles west. All of his railroad contracts were of large magnitude and were carried through most successfully by him. In 1830 he married Amelia Waldo, by whom he had one son and six daughters.”
The history just gets better… When William Osborn traveled to Missouri, the Second Empire was the first-ever constructed Eastern Star in the United States. There is still the historical cement wheel with the Eastern Star emblem on the property today, hence the reason we named this home “Star Manor”.
Eastern Star Emblem
This is the primary reason we’ve named our home “Star Manor”!
The Eastern Star was known in Europe before it made its way to America. However, the Eastern Star was founded on Masonry for the benefit of female relatives of Master Masons. As you can tell, there is likely far more history here than I can dig up myself. I have a mound of historical documents that I have yet to comb through, but when I do, they will be shared.
Continuing on the story of purchasing Star Manor, Matt and I saw the massive potential this home could have if properly restored. We put in the very first offer after this house had been on the market for a mere 18 hours. We were told that entrepreneurs and people from out West were flying in to see the home with large cash offers, so we honestly didn’t think we had a chance.
The following Sunday, we were told that we were selected to move forward in the purchasing process. The homeowner accepted our offer for three reasons.
We are a fast-growing family with two children, one on the way, and likely more in the future.
We are local to the area, not out-of-towners.
We have plans to restore the home properly without monetizing it to become a B&B.
That’s when this wild home buying process got started. If you are connected with me on LinkedIn, you might be familiar with these stories already.
Given the current state of the property, mortgage companies are not necessarily jumping with excitement to provide a loan. That said, we had one appraiser come to the property who gave us the “All Set” and sent back a clean report to the mortgage company. The underwriter at the mortgage group found massive red flags in the report. What I mean by “red flags” is that the appraiser merely stated the house required significant work to be fully restored and included pictures of the home that needed some work. Since he finalized the report saying the home was in livable condition, the underwriter found a contradictory statement.
That said, we got a hefty list of items needing to be repaired from the mortgage company and promptly got to work on an 8-hour venture of fixing a home we don’t own yet.
We then set up another appraisal appointment. This time, a new guy came to the property and instead of reviewing the work we completed, called out even more items that required repairs. His report back to the mortgage company set us back greatly. Once more, we received another hefty list, requiring 8-hours of hard labor and a decent investment into a property that was not yet ours.
On the mortgage company side, there was significant internal conflict between the underwriter and leadership. It seemed as though the mortgage company was merely trying to make this process impossible. John, our realtor made many phone calls, and I even did significant research to locate which individuals were assigned to our potential loan, but weren’t working with any type of urgency to get our house closed.
As of today, we are awaiting our third appraisal as per the mortgage company. So, we still do not formally own the house but moved in early and pay to live here per day until closing.
Regardless, I wanted to get this blog started and start sharing some of the awesome things we plan to do with this monstrous property.
Find our YouTube Channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFAf_i_pQcYoZv0rmfaMiWA
