200 S Haynes St

A two-story brick school built in 1921 in Glasco, Kansas, 10,980 square feet with an auditorium and gymnasium, a stage, twelve classrooms, a library and offices, listed at $75,000 with a 1940 garage building. The brokerage is an auction house, so we checked: this is a conventional listing with a price, not an auction. No auction date, terms, premium or deposit exist on the brokerage’s site, its auction site or the MLS. The listing says the building has no heat or air conditioning. No tax figure, no assessment and no county record appear anywhere. The brokerage’s own page calls it under contract and the MLS and Zillow call it for sale. This is the first Kansas property we have written up.

Is it an auction

No. Thummel Real Estate & Auction LLC runs a real estate site and a separate auction site. This building sits on the real estate site under Property Listings with a price of $75,000, not under Auctions, and it appears nowhere on the auction site or its calendar. The MLS record carries a list price and no auction language. There is no auction date, no opening bid, no reserve, no buyer’s premium, no deposit and no closing deadline to report, because none is offered. It is a priced listing you make an offer on.

The lot and setting

The listing gives 0.9 acres. The brokerage’s page gives the lot as 170 by 100 feet, which is 17,000 square feet, or about 0.39 acres. Those do not agree, and neither Redfin nor Zillow holds a county record for the parcel to settle it. The parcel number on the listing reads 07,03,7E,75,334,01,02,34,43,89013.0000, which is not a usable Cloud County parcel number as printed.

The photos show the school on a street corner with a lawn, mature trees, a gravel parking lot, and a white stucco garage building with a painted mural on its back wall. The listing says nothing about the road, utilities to the lot, or zoning. Glasco’s current school is a tenth of a mile away per Zillow’s school panel.

The building

Built in 1921, two stories, brick, 10,980 square feet per the remarks and the brokerage’s page. Zillow’s structure field gives 21,960, exactly double, which is the kind of number a feed produces when it counts two floors twice. The listing files it as a single family residence with zero bedrooms and zero bathrooms. The brokerage’s page says one bedroom and two bathrooms. Neither describes a school.

The remarks list an auditorium and gymnasium with a stage, twelve classrooms, bathrooms, a library and office space. The photos show all of it: a hardwood gym floor with a stage and a balcony, a library with its shelves, a science lab with its benches, classrooms with tables and chalkboards, corridors with lockers, a locker room, a weight room, an office, and a boiler room full of old equipment. The floor plans, drawn as fire evacuation maps, show the layout of both floors with the exits and a tornado refuge marked.

The listing says the building has no heat or air conditioning. Zillow’s heating field reads “Has Heating (Unspecified Type)” and its electric field reads Amps(0). The photos show cast iron radiators under the classroom windows, a boiler room, and window air conditioners in several rooms. So a heating system exists and does not work, and the cooling is window units. Nothing in the listing says what failed or when.

The 1940 garage building is white stucco with a cracked corner in the photos. The listing says it is included and nothing else about it.

The facts

What to know before you call

It is not an auction, and the seller’s own brokerage runs auctions. That is worth saying twice because the name on the sign says auction. This building is a priced listing. Ask anyway whether the seller would take it to auction if it does not sell, and whether an offer now is treated any differently from a bid later.

Under contract, or for sale. The brokerage’s page for the building says under contract. Zillow and the MLS say for sale, on a listing four days old. The building went under contract once already, in February, and came back on the market in March. Either the brokerage’s page is stale from that first contract, or the building went under contract again in its first days back. Ask which before you spend time on it.

Nothing is on the county record. Neither listing site holds a Cloud County record for this parcel, and the parcel number the listing prints is not usable as printed. That is what a building owned by a school district looks like in the data: public property, exempt from tax, absent from the rolls that feed these sites. The lot size, the square footage, the classification and the building’s own history are all as the listing states them. Ask the Cloud County appraiser for the parcel number, the record card and the legal description.

No tax figure, and there is a reason. A school district does not pay property tax, so there is no bill to quote and no history to show. The day a private buyer takes title, Cloud County appraises the building at market value and the bill starts. Kansas appraises every year and assesses commercial property at 25 percent of appraised value and residential at 11.5 percent. Which rate applies to a school converted to whatever you make of it is the county’s call, and the bill on a 10,980 square foot brick building at commercial rates is not a small number. Ask the appraiser for an estimate before you write an offer, and ask what use would make it residential.

No heat, with a boiler room in the photos. The remarks say no heat or air conditioning. The photos show radiators in the classrooms and a boiler room full of old equipment. Something heated this building once. Ask what the system is, when it last ran, what it burned, and whether the problem is the boiler, the piping or the fuel. A 1921 building this size in a Kansas winter without heat is a building that freezes, and a boiler room this old may hold asbestos.

Electric reads zero amps. Ask what service the building has, whether it is on, and whether it was ever upgraded from what a 1921 school was wired for. Water and sewer are not listed at all. Ask whether the building is on city water and sewer and whether the accounts are active.

0.9 acres or 170 by 100. The listing says 0.9 acres. The brokerage’s page says 170 by 100 feet, which is less than half that. The photos show the building filling most of a corner lot with a parking lot and a garage. Ask for the survey.

Filed as a house. The listing calls it a single family residence with no bedrooms and no baths. The brokerage’s page calls it one bedroom and two baths. It is a school. The classification matters for financing, for insurance, for the tax rate above, and for what the city of Glasco will let you do with it. Ask the city about zoning and what a change of use requires.

What $75,000 buys, and what it costs to hold. The price is the small number. A private owner of a 1921 school takes on heating 10,980 square feet of brick through a Kansas winter with a system that does not work, insuring a vacant commercial building that most carriers will not write at ordinary rates, a tax bill that starts the day the exemption ends, and a zoning question, because the city of Glasco has to permit whatever you plan to do with it, and a residential conversion is a change of use that may or may not be allowed on this lot. Ask the city about zoning, ask an insurer for a quote on a vacant school, and add a year of heat and taxes to the price before you decide it is cheap.

Age, and what the photos show. The gym floor looks sound and the classrooms are furnished with desks, tables and chairs that are still there. The stucco on the garage is cracked at the corner. The roof, the windows from outside at close range, the stairs, the basement, and the condition of the brick and parapets are not shown. A flat-roofed brick building from 1921 has a roof, a parapet and windows that are the whole budget. Bring an inspector who does commercial buildings.

What conveys. Desks, tables, chairs, library shelves, lab benches, lockers, weight room equipment, folding chairs and the contents of the storage rooms are all in the photos. The listing does not say what stays.

Forty-four photos. That is the full MLS gallery. The brokerage’s own page carries 17. Not shown: the roof, the second floor stair, the restrooms beyond one locker room, the building’s exterior at close range, and the garage interior.

You can see everything else we have listed on the properties page. For other buildings that are not houses we have a 1914 limestone bank on Main Street in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, gutted to the joists, and for another as-is project a 1939 brick house sold for a full rehab in McKeesport, Pennsylvania.

To ask about this one, call Kevin Motes on 785-738-8381, or the Thummel Real Estate office in Concordia on 785-243-1908, a number from the brokerage’s website rather than the listing, and reference MLS 11968414. Tell them where you saw it.