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.
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.