Selling A 1849 Gold Rush Home

This was a neat project. A fascinating--yet tricky--house to get sold. Tricky because the house is 166 years old. Not the sort of thing banks loan money on…

See, these gold rush era houses are just too unique. And because house appraisals are based on what other similar houses are selling for in the area, it cannot be appraised. So a bank cannot, in good conscience, loan out a bunch of money on a house that has no standardized value. Making it “unlendable,” requiring a cash-only sale. It had sat for a year.

Our mission then was to find the buyer who sees the worth of a historical one-of-a-kind place.

So I researched. I looked up old ancestry records and court documents. I found correspondence between the former owner (Captain Josiah Prentiss Brown, commander of the Yuba light infantry) and the US Army.

The house, and the family of 14 that lived in it, was a really cool story. So I wrote an article about it and we used it all over. Repurposed it to her social media, sent out a shortened version to old home pages, and even gave the current homeowner and potential buyers a copy of the article and copies of original documents that I found. (see below) 

The turning point was when my guest post query was used by Cheap Old Houses. An account on Instagram with 1.6 million followers. Our post for the Captain Brown House had 734 comments and over 30,000 likes. It was the exposure we needed. Sold, cash offer at asking price!

And here is a .pdf of the article I referenced.