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 comparable home from your shortlist — its asking price across the bottom, its days on market up the side. Below ~$1.1M almost nothing lingers. Above $1.5M, the listings scatter up into the months-long sit zone — and the gold line is exactly where a $1.65M Halsted ask would land.
These are the comparable homes that actually moved off their asking price — the muted dot is what they asked, the gold dot is what they took. The longer they sat, the deeper the cut. Each address links to its Redfin listing.
The area's "hot market" reputation is real — but only for median-priced homes. Step up to the $1.5M tier and time-to-sell multiplies. Days on market is carrying cost, and carrying cost is what eventually moves an anchored seller to a number.
It's tempting to say "luxury homes get price-cut more often." That's actually false, and a good agent will use it to discredit everything else you say: nationally only 13.3% of $1M+ listings show a price cut versus >20% of sub-$350K listings — high-end sellers tend to delist and re-list rather than post a public reduction. The defensible claim is the opposite shape: upper-tier homes are cut less often, but the ones that sit cut far deeper and slower. Slow luxury sellers ultimately take ~20% discounts versus ~7% for fast ones, and 54% of luxury homes sit past 180 days. So anchor on two things you can prove cold: this home's days on market versus the ~17-day median norm, and the deep eventual discount that stalled upper-tier listings absorb. A stale listing date — not a visible cut — is the real tell of weakness at this price.
Your full shortlist of $1.25M+ homes across Farmington Hills, Northville, Novi, Bloomfield Hills, West Bloomfield, Franklin, Milford and Plymouth — sorted by asking price. Click any address for the live Redfin listing.
Days on market and price moves are derived from each listing's Redfin price history for the current listing cycle (2024–2026). "Δ vs ask" compares the latest price (sold price where sold, current list otherwise) to the highest price the seller asked this cycle. Two homes sold above a stale earlier list price (shown in green) — the market cuts both ways, which is exactly why the argument rests on the pattern, not any single house.
Sale-to-list in the $1.5M+ row rests on only 2 closed sales on your list — directional, not definitive. The robust signals are the days-on-market tail and the specific deep-cut sales above. Median-priced ($350K–$450K) Farmington Hills / Novi homes, by contrast, are selling at ~100% of list in ~17 days.
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.