Want to own an old Pierce County mansion? It’s a buyer’s market. You can have your pick
No one expected it to be easy. Each told me they anticipated a challenge, requiring a unique approach — and patience.
That’s what they signed up for, after all.
It’s the business they’re in. It’s why they get paid.
During my time at The News Tribune, I’ve written a number of columns about historic local properties that have hit the open market. The sellers, in most cases, have been more than high-end property owners looking to cash out. They’ve been committed caretakers, hoping to find someone with money to spend who appreciates the value of preserving one-of-a-kind homes — estates that help tell the city’s long and fascinating story.
We’re talking about century-old carriage houses. Mansions designed by famed architects for Gilded Age barons and early century elites. The homes of late race car drivers.
To sell them requires the best of the best: a realtor with the skills to find and seduce a wealthy buyer eager to spend millions on an old home from a bygone era.
Even then, it can be an uphill battle, as recent history illustrates.
Over the last 18 months, The News Tribune has covered at least five historic properties that have been listed for sale, ranging in price from $2.5 to $5 million.
All of them are stunning — inside and out, straight out of the local history books.
To date, all of the storied properties remain unsold.
A ‘very specific buyer’
The task is straightforward. It boils down to finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.
Or, as Joe Bauman, a managing broker at John L. Scott’s Tacoma North office, recently put it: “You’re trying to pull a very, very specific buyer.”
Bauman specializes in the sale and purchase of high-end properties; he’s what’s commonly known as a certified luxury broker.
He’s been in the business more than 25 years, and he’s seen a thing or two.
Selling any high-end property isn’t for the faint of heart, he suggested, even if the payoff is massive — at least by most people’s standards.
“Every property has its pros and cons, regardless of value and price,” said Bauman, who’s on track to close 36 deals this year, his most expensive involving a home on Day Island that sold for just shy of $3 million.
“The challenge is to try to reverse engineer it,” he added. “How are we going to get to the closing table? What does the buyer look like … and how do you target them?”
A century-old English Tudor home in the shadow of Thornewood Castle on American Lake — which can still be yours for the right price — provides a perfect example of how hard it can be.
Thornewood Carriage House
High-end residential real estate listings are generally broken into two categories: homes ranging in price from $1 million to $1.5 million (in this case, the more modest affairs) and anything above.
Thornewood Carriage House — a 7,000-square-foot, four-bedroom home that dates back to 1909 — falls into the latter category, just like every other old home on this list.
Originally constructed as part of the 100-acre Thornewood Castle estate that was home to Chester Thorne, a prominent local banker and one of the founders of the Port of Tacoma, the property is currently listed at $2.45 million.
When I toured the home in April 2022 — getting an up-close look at the painstaking renovation work of its current owner — the asking price was significantly higher, set at $3.25 million.
Thornewood Carriage House had already been on the market several times over the years, including roughly two decades ago when it was offered for $2 million.
Its longtime owner, Jonn Mason, who made his money in financial management, was hoping this time would be different.
“I don’t look at myself as eccentric. But I do look at myself as striving to do things perfectly if it’s possible,” Mason told me at the time, standing under a palatial ceiling he’d had handmade by a Ukrainian craftsman hired for the job.
“I mean, there’s a pig for every pen, right?” he added.
“There’s got to be somebody out there that has tastes like mine.”
According to Mike Larson, a managing broker at Compass real estate who took on the challenge of selling Thornewood Carriage House, finding that person will take perseverance.
The home isn’t just historic, including its inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.
The property has also been a five-decade passion project for Munn, down to the black-walnut entryway he had built, the living room fireplace he salvaged from an 18th-century Italian castle and the marble toilet he installed.
“All sellers are invested in their home to a certain extent, not just financially but also emotionally,” Larson told me this week. “Selling any home is an emotional event; it’s one of those times-of-your life experiences. … Historic homes add an additional layer to that because almost always the seller has put their heart and soul into the property.”
According to Bauman — who isn’t involved with the listing of Thornewood Carriage House or any of the properties featured in this column — it’s not necessarily unusual for a high-end property to spend months on the market without attracting a buyer, or even more than a year in some cases.
This property is unusual, Larson acknowledged. It’s what makes it special.
It’s also what makes his job so difficult.
“I use the collector car analogy. Every detail of the car — or the home — has to be absolutely perfect. Unless a buyer appreciates the sweat and effort to an equal degree, the seller will almost always experience a loss, financially,” Larson said.
“The actual value and the replacement value exceed the fair market value,” Larson added.
“That’s difficult for sellers of historic homes to understand and accept.”
The other Rust Mansion
Prominently located along North I Street, the Rust Mansion has been called “the White House of the West” and “maybe Tacoma’s grandest home.”
Originally built for William Ross Rust, a turn-of-the-century industrial magnate, the descriptions are apt. It’s a fitting estate for the man Ruston was named after.
The property, grand neoclassical columns and all, is hard to miss.
Recent efforts to renovate and sell the Rust Mansion have been well documented. It was put up for online auction earlier this year, but according to recent real estate listings, it’s still up for grabs.
A few blocks away, on North Yakima, there’s another property with ties to Rust and his family. It’s one far fewer people recognize.
When it was built in 1913, the William and Helen Rust’s second mansion — which they moved into following the untimely death of one their sons— cost tens of thousands of dollars to construct, a relative fortune when adjusted for inflation.
The home with a view of Commencement Bay was designed by Frederick Heath, the architect responsible for Stadium and Lincoln high schools and the Pythian Temple on Broadway downtown.
Purchased by Glen and Maxine McCallum in 2018 for just over $1.5 million, at the time the owners of McCallum and Sons Whisky in downtown Tacoma envisioned settling down and raising their family there. They quickly embarked on a costly, nine-month renovation effort, preserving the exterior down to the finest detail and modernizing the interior, including the home’s breathtaking kitchen and walk-in closets that automatically light up when you enter.
Then they got the itch, Maxine McCallum explained late last year — and ponied up for a 28-acre horse farm near Summit-Waller. Plans changed.
They listed their North Yakima home for $4 million.
A year later, a buyer has yet to emerge.
In early October, the price was reduced to $3.25 million — the third price reduction since it hit the market.
According to Jami Luther, one half of the mother-daughter real estate team working to sell the property, the historic home presents “a great value considering everything that was completed with the renovation.”
So far, Luther has worked to ensure no stone goes unturned, she told me.
She’s in it for the long haul, she said.
“We have advertised in Luxury Home Magazine. We have done strategic, direct mail marketing, targeting potential buyers. Additionally, we have marketed on social media, again targeting specific buyers. When we do our Facebook and Instagram ads, we reach out approximately 50 miles,” Luther explained.
“Every comment that we have received has been very positive. But …these historic homes take a specific buyer,” she added.
“Time will definitely bring the right person.”
Pete Lovely’s old place
Unlike other properties featured in this column, the 5,000 square-feet estate at 4125 North Mason Avenue in Tacoma’s North End is easy to overlook.
As I wrote earlier this year, from the street it’s hidden behind a wall of lush hedges. It’s not until you pass through the gated entrance and walk through a tunnel carved into the foliage that you begin to appreciate the history you’ve stumbled upon.
Originally built in 1929 for early Tacoma furniture magnate Edwin Gregory, in the 1970s the estate was purchased by renowned race car driver and local businessman Pete Lovely, who owned the home until his death in 2011.
The property — which features unmistakable Italian architecture and many of the things Lovely and his family added along the way, down to the light fixtures and stunning, wood-covered entryway — was purchased roughly a decade ago by a Seattle native who now operates a clothing and furnishing business out of the 12-car garage.
Last April the home — and the eight-tenths of an acre property that surrounds it — was put on the market with an asking price of $3.45 million.
It’s still available today, according to recent real estate listings. The price is now $3.25 million.
Local real estate listing broker Michael Morrison, who’s no stranger to selling historic, high-end homes, spoke to me in April.
At the time, Morrison was leading efforts to sell the old Pete Lovely estate, including describing the targeted efforts it takes.
“What we’re looking for is probably an entrepreneur, or a business person or a car collector, somebody who’s going to appreciate a big show garage with roll-up glass doors, or somebody who wants to use that garage for part of their business,” Morrison said.
“It also has to be someone who loves old houses. You have to be a steward,” he added.
“If you’re looking for new construction, this isn’t it.”
The Blackwell Mansion
The nearly 9,000-square-foot former home of William and Alice Blackwell, who arrived in Tacoma in the late 1800s along with the Northern Pacific Railroad and built the burgeoning city’s first premier hotel, has welcomed a long list of famous guests.
Mark Twain visited the home. So did Rudyard Kipling. Perched on Broadway, overlooking Commencement Bay and with a view of Mount Rainier in the distance, the elegant property dates back to a time when Tacoma’s destiny was yet to be determined.
Today, the former Blackwell family home has found new life: functioning as a commercial office. That could soon change.
Robert Slattery, a transplant from Texas with a keen appreciation for historic homes, purchased the property in 2016.
Slattery first tried to sell it in early 2022, hoping to fetch $3.3 million. But after nearly 18 months of futile attempts to find a buyer, he’s altered his plans.
Slattery now hopes to transform the mansion-turned-office-building into 12 units of residential apartments, he told me this week, indicating he’s hired a well-known local architectural firm to draw up the plans.
It will require the city of Tacoma to sign off on multiple permits, Slattery said, including major electrical and plumbing upgrades.
Working through the red tape and onerous code requirements is “more than a formality,” he acknowledged.
Still, given the current realities of Tacoma’s real estate market, Slattery considers it making lemonade from lemons.
“We’ve kind of determined that the office market in Tacoma is dead…. We’ve been trying to sell the Blackwell buildings since January; it’s been largely vacant since COVID,” Slattery told me by phone.
“We’ve determined that the highest best use of the property at this point is to work on converting it all back into residential,” he added.
“Barring any major setbacks … we will be moving forward with making some minor adjustments to the building to turn it into 12 apartment units next year.”
This story was originally published November 2, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
