Selling 20 Acres at Harts Lake: Marketing Land With No House to Show

Some properties need an agent who can see what they're really worth, and then prove it to the market. Albion Heritage Farm was one of those.

My sellers had built something extraordinary: 53+ acres of rare, usable land in one of the most desirable recreational corners of the state, with a view of Mt. Rainier that stops people in their tracks. Properties like this don't have comps sitting next door. Pricing and marketing it meant telling the full story of what was here, and finding the buyer who understood it.

And there was a lot of story to tell. The nearly new farmhouse is warm in a way photos barely capture: shiplap walls, slate floors, 10-foot ceilings, big open living spaces, and a bright kitchen centered on a gorgeous English wood cookstove. It's the kind of home that makes you want to put a kettle on.

The land works as hard as it charms. A 72-by-30 greenhouse and raised beds for year-round growing. An established orchard with more than 40 trees. Fenced pasture, 16 acres of forest, and a year-round creek. A 100 gallon-per-minute well, which anyone who knows rural property will tell you is a remarkable number. A large new barn with office space. Even the 4-bedroom septic left room to expand, and existing agriculture and forestry designations keep the taxes low.

We marketed it as what it is, a legacy farm, and the result was one of the highest-priced sales this area has ever seen. When a property is one of a kind, the marketing has to be too.