In the early 2000s, while living in Kennebunk, Maine, I took a real estate class and got my associate Realtors’ license. I was hoping to parlay real estate into a new career, but I was too nervous to give up a good-paying engineering job for a job that would take years to build up a reputation in the field.
Also, not growing up in the community, I didn’t have the number of connections that I would have had around here, where I grew up, had I tried to work in real estate in the Northampton area. Ultimately, after mainly working condo open houses where most of the people who came were folks awaiting completion of their units and came to the model primarily to measure for furniture and carpets, I gave up.
That being said, I, together with my ex-wife, purchased six properties in our time together, one of which we bought as an investment property. I won’t say we were real estate experts, or even tycoons, but together we generally made some good, solid, purchases on real estate.
One time, while living in an old, somewhat declining, industrial city in the Southern Tier of western New York where I took a job, we were looking to buy a home. We found a house that we liked and would have been comfortable in. It was in good condition and in a good neighborhood, but since we didn’t expect to stay in the area long, we opted out of buying it. We figured, given the area and the local economy, it would be tough to resell were we to leave. To this day, I think it was a good decision.
My ex and I sometimes didn’t fully agree on properties, but when we were on the same page, things generally worked out. I’d usually focus more on the mechanicals and condition of siding, roof, windows, etc. of the property; my ex would dial more into the location and neighborhood. We’d always have the home professionally inspected and did due diligence when it came to the price and to comparable properties.
As I said, we weren’t experts, and not everything we bought was perfect, but the homes we bought served us well, and we improved them as we went, increasing the properties’ value.
I write this because I recently read an article in Gazette discussing how the city of Northampton, based upon a resident-funded real estate appraisal, likely overpaid an estimated $1.5 million for the former Baptist Church, the site of the proposed new Resiliency Hub [“Appraisal faults city on Resilience Hub site,” Gazette, Aug. 16]. That is just about half of what the city paid for the building. I was not surprised by the news story, mostly I was mad, because it is such a waste of money in a city with many other more immediate and pressing money issues.
I would argue that a team of independent homeowners in this community, with personal experience buying a few homes, could have done a better job procuring this building for a more reasonable price. Personally, if the city is so hell-bent on having a Resiliency Hub, an idea I am not wholly opposed to, they should consider other properties. I would argue that a new building and land might have been procured more cheaply.
It might not have been as pretty as the 19th-century church, but it would be all new and designed with the desired function in mind. Plus, from photos published of the church in the Gazette, the inside of the building is studded out, but it still requires extensive drywall work, so you know more money will need to be thrown at this project. I’m no expert, but I figure the final cost will be far more once all the work is completed and the building is adequately furnished.
I wish I understood why this property is so important to the city of Northampton. There are other buildings in town that could have served the same purpose, many of them also churches, that would be more “turn-key” buildings than this one. I know that many other people here are left scratching their heads about this very same issue.
All I know, if my ex and I had been hell-bent on shopping for a church to live in, like Arlo Guthrie’s famous friend Alice Brock, we would have definitely passed on purchasing the former Baptist Church.
Mariel Addis is a native of Florence. She left the area for 16 years but returned in 2013.