The house that wouldn't sell itself

My father's 18th century stucco over fieldstone and clapboard mixture house has been on the market since mid-March with about 15 showings and no takers, even when the listing price was taken down from $220,000 to $200,000.  Mind you, this house comes with extraordinarily crafted old stone walls and 3.5 acres of land, including a tarn (don't ask) an old barn, garage, and guesthouse, which back in 1960 has an outhouse which my brother and I delighted in, but which has since sunk into the surrounding woodland.

The old saying, "Location, location, location" was never more true than in this case.  The house is located in a historic district full of lovely 18th century houses (some even older) in various states of disrepair, or remodeled with the modern kitchen and master bedroom suites which are de rigueur nowadays, at least if you believe the shows on HGTV.  The problem is not so much that my father's kitchen and bathrooms have not been remodeled since 1967 (though the kitchen has a floor only a few years old) but that there is nothing to do in Mansfield.  Not unless you are Emily Dickinson (I can hear my father laughing at that one) or perhaps an herb farmer or horse owner.  The house is an 8 minute drive from the University of Connecticut, which was a selling point for my father when he got the teaching job at UConn.  My mother was sold on the beautiful grounds, upon which she eventually created an herb garden, rose garden, perennial beds, and vegetable garden, all lovingly tended.  If only a couple like them could materialize today.  An unworldly faculty couple who don't notice if there are ants in the non-trendy kitchen, or the occasional mouse.  People who regard the phrase "master bedroom suite" with scorn if not derision.
Writers, people whose lives are largely in their minds, as my father's was.

You wouldn't want it as a vacation home even though there is Echo Lake nearby where you can go sailing or boating (at least when I was a kid) and there wasn't a town beach then, though maybe there is now. No, it must be a year-round residence (unless you have a vacation home somewhere else, in which case you'd be rich enough to afford an upgraded house with all the demands of modern yuppie life) My brother wanted to hold on to the old homestead for our sons, but my guess is that neither of them would want to live there, nor would they want to be absentee landlords.  And I would never want to put them through the sheer pain in the ass that selling this house has turned out to be.

Land, you say? "It's the only thing that lasts! Tara!"  Well, not exactly.  Land is almost worthless in Mansfield because of its lack of desirability as a residence--after all, the nearest mall is a couple of miles away, and it doesn't have Abercrombie & Fitch because the beautiful people don't shop there.  For some reason, it galls me that my father's land is worthless.  And it's not just any land.  It's land that was lovingly cultivated for years, and then lay fallow after my mother's death 28 years ago.  Old apple trees and evergreens.  Lilacs taller than you.  Boxwood hedges kept clipped as topiary, large round balls which look as though they belomg to a much grander house. (Not sure whose idea this was; someone probably suggested it to my father.) A hidden garden (or what used to be one) in the foundation of the original barn which blew or burned down in the hurricane of '38.

Tomorrow I am going to the house at 21 Browns Rd.  I will be consolidating bank accounts and paying off the last $400 odd dollars that are owed on my father's loan.  Tuesday at noon I meet with Paul Johnson, the landscaper who has worked for my father for eons and who wants to do some things that will give the house more "curb appeal."
There is a broken-down fence in back that should be taken away--I hope he can do that, because even if I could fit the wood into my Civic, the town of Mansfield makes you pay for the priviledge of dropping off your oversized trash at the dump.

Then there's the problem of the junk in the garage left there by a handyman friend of Dad's for a few years and which I hope he has taken out by now.  If he hasn't, I will have to take legal action to get rid of it which will cost me another $1000+.  And the old mattresses in the barn--I have to pay to get someone to cart them away.  And the carpenter ant problem in the kitchen.  And the leaky roof.  This is my karma.  I wonder what I did in a former life that was so terrible that I deserve this punishment in this life.  I want to be paid a nuisance fee for having to be the executor and give my brother less than half the estate.  But this will foment discord, which is more bad karma.

Someone will buy the place. Someone.  But when?