30943 Halsted Rd, Farmington Hills, MI 48331 · Greek Revival, c.1833 · Local Historic Site #6 · on Minnow Pond
The owner's opening number is $1,650,000 — well above the ~$853K Redfin estimate — and he'll carry a land contract. That pairing is the whole point: at roughly 2× the automated value, a bank won't lend, so a land contract (the seller keeps legal title until you pay it off) is essentially the only way this closes. Adjust the terms above.
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Two things dominate a deal at this price: the premium you're paying over any independent valuation, and the property-tax uncapping the year after you buy. Numbers update live with the controls above.
Michigan's Proposal A caps taxable value while an owner holds, then resets it to the State Equalized Value the year after a sale. The Lavignes' taxable value is far below market after 17 years; yours won't be.
Michigan assesses at 50% of a home's true cash value (market), not your contract price — so paying above market does not proportionally raise taxes. This model caps the post-sale assessment near the top of the home's market range (~$491K SEV) rather than 50% of an above-market price. Verify with the City of Farmington Hills Assessor before relying on it.
On $/sqft against ordinary 48331 homes this looks expensive — but it isn't a $/sqft house (2.75 acres, a pond, three historic structures, a state landmark). The harder problem is the gap between the contract price and what any lender will value it at.
Each dot is a house built before 1927 that sold (or is the closest analog). The gold star is this estate at the $1.65M ask; the navy star is the $1.15M offer. The 1920s bungalow cloud at right is the entire Farmington Hills “100-year-old” market. The 19th-century farmhouses sit in the middle. Nothing in this picture clears $1.3M except a 19-acre Northville farm.
The Boorn-Halsted House at 28325 Halsted is the controlling analog: same corridor, same ordinance, same century. James Boorn bought 160 acres from the U.S. government in 1827. The house sold in July 2022 as a restored historic homestead on 1.89 acres with a pond and a pool — for $655,000.
Lumping “old” with “luxury” is how you get to $1.65M. Split the market the way buyers actually do and the ask sits in empty air.
Do not argue from $1.5M+ luxury DOM. A good agent will say this isn't a luxury subdivision house, it's a landmark, and they will be right about the category and wrong about the price. The defensible claim is narrower and colder: when 100-year-old houses sell in Farmington Hills, they sell as 1920s bungalows at a $244K median. When 19th-century farmhouses on a few acres sell in Novi and Northville, they sell at $375K–$840K. The one on this road sold at $655K. Downtown Northville restorations can clear $1M because they sit on a restaurant street, not a county road next to Country Ridge. $1.15M already pays a downtown-historic price for a farmhouse that is not downtown. $1.65M is a number this category has never printed.
Featured sales: the same-road historic house, 19th-century farms on acreage, and restored downtown Northville. The Farmington Hills ≤1926 bungalow set (n=25, last 3 years) is summarized in the band table below — click any address for the live Redfin listing.
Year-built is the assessor / MLS figure (the same “1910” artifact this house carries). Boorn-Halsted and Theron Murray are dated from the Michigan historical markers (1827 / c.1833), not the assessor. Lot acres from Redfin. “Downtown” = walkable Northville historic district, a different product.
FH ≤1926 band is every Redfin-reported house sale in Farmington Hills with year-built ≤1926 in the last ~36 months (25 sales, pulled 2026-09-18). Nearby 19th-c farm and downtown Northville sales are a hand-checked set from the same pull plus adjacent-city matches — not an MLS dump of every old house in Oakland County.
Mr. Lavigne has named $1,650,000 and is open to a land contract. He's owned the estate since 2008 and likely holds it free and clear — so he can carry the paper cleanly, keep legal title until payoff, and turn an illiquid landmark into income. Here's how that compares to listing it the traditional way.
A Greek Revival pioneer homestead raised from hand-hewn poplar and wooden pegs around 1833 — one of the oldest standing structures in Farmington Hills, and the only landmark of its kind quietly hidden inside a 1980s subdivision.
In 1831, Oakland County pioneers Theron and Rebecca Murray bought eighty acres from the U.S. government — a federal land patent that included this site. Around 1835 they raised a Greek Revival house and a barn of hand-hewn poplar beams joined with wooden pegs. Nearly two centuries later, both still stand.
From 1942 to 1958, owner Charles W. Malpass also held a forty-acre pasture directly across Halsted Road and used it as a landing strip for private planes. He nicknamed the house "Upson Downs."
Today the estate sits on the surviving 2.75-acre core of that original farm — a wooded island ringed by the Country Ridge subdivision (built ~1987). It is a formally designated landmark: Historic Site #6 in the City of Farmington Hills, established by Ordinance C‑1‑2009 under Michigan's Local Historic Districts Act.
The pond at the estate's edge is itself historically marked. A 1983 marker records a glacial valley some 12,000 years old and a Potawatomi camping ground of centuries past — stone tools and artifacts found nearby, an 1817 map showing an Indian trail around the water, and the local legend of "The Potawatomi Curtain." Halsted Road here flooded for over a century until a 2018 reconstruction (an APWA Project-of-the-Year) finally tamed it; the parcel's own flood risk now rates a 1 of 10.
For two decades the open market never validated this home near today's ask. That history is the buyer's strongest anchor in any land-contract negotiation.
As Historic Site #6, the exterior is governed by the Farmington Hills Historic District Commission. This is a real, working process — not a plaque.