791 County Road 19

This is 78.3 acres with an 1880 farmhouse and a post-and-beam barn on County Road 19 about a mile east of the hamlet of Whitesville, in the Town of Independence, Allegany County, New York, two miles from the Pennsylvania line. The remarks describe a family hunting camp of more than twenty years with a year-round stream running the length of the valley, about twenty acres of overgrown fields, two dug roads up the hill, a network of trails, maple and cherry timber, dozens of apple trees, and tree stands that convey. It was listed on September 8, 2026 at $264,900. The public record shows a sale for $48,100 in June 2004. Zillow files it as vacant land. This is the second New York property we have written up, after the cabin shell in Camden.

The land and setting

The aerials show a valley floor with the house and barn beside the paved road, the creek running behind them under a line of trees, and long fields climbing the hill to the east between hedgerows, with woods above. The creek in the ground photos is wide, shallow and stony, more river than stream. The remarks put the fields at about twenty acres, mostly grown up, and the woods at the top as hardwood and hemlock with maple and cherry timber. The photos show goldenrod fields, apple trees, hemlock stands with bare ground beneath, a mown trail, a box blind, a blind on stilts and a ladder stand.

The 2026 tentative assessment roll for the Town of Independence carries the parcel as tax map 295.-1-14.32, class 240 rural residence, 78.30 acres, one parcel. The listing gives the dimensions as 4,355 by 1,500 feet and the lot as irregular, rural, wooded and rolling with a stream. The parcel maps in the listing gallery show an L-shaped tract with a narrow leg running east along the creek.

The house and barn

The county carries the house as built in 1880, 985 square feet, 1.7 stories, five rooms, three bedrooms and one bath, with a partial basement and wood siding, in fair condition. The listing gives the same three beds, one bath and 985 square feet. The remarks call it partially remodeled. The photos show a kitchen with cherry cabinets and a tile floor, a living room with wood floors and sliding barn doors, four rooms with beds in them including one upstairs under a pine ceiling, one bathroom with a pedestal sink and a tub shower, a laundry room with pine walls, and a deck off the front. Several rooms have worn carpet and stained walls. Every room is furnished with what a hunting camp accumulates, and none of it is virtually staged.

The listing gives water from a spring, a septic tank, a leased propane tank, a dirt driveway, and cable, phone and high speed internet available. Heating is not listed. The county record gives electric hot air. The listing lists a barn as the additional structure. The barn in the photos is a post-and-beam bank barn with a metal roof and a lean-to along one side. The county record counts one building.

The facts

What to know before you call

Zillow files it as vacant land. Zillow’s home type is lot and its subtype is unimproved land, on a listing with three bedrooms, a bath, 985 square feet and a barn. The town roll classes it 240, a rural residence on more than ten acres. Redfin’s county record calls the style vacant land and the use rural residence in the same record, and names the municipality Morristown, which is wrong. The roll says Independence. Filing a house as land keeps it out of house searches and can trip a lender’s automated review. Ask the agent to fix the type, and expect an appraiser to price the land and treat the 1880 house as what a hunting camp is worth.

New York assessment, the 75 percent, and no STAR to lose. The Town of Independence assesses at 75 percent of market value on its 2026 tentative roll. The parcel’s $126,800 assessment is $169,067 at full value. The assessment doubled in 2022 from $63,200, the last time it changed. The roll shows no exemptions at all: the owners’ address is in Pennsylvania, so no STAR, and no agricultural assessment or 480-a, so the $3,870 bill is the whole bill and no rollback rides with it. A buyer who makes it a primary residence can apply for the Basic STAR credit. A sale at $264,900 is 57 percent above the roll’s full market value, and the next revaluation will find it.

Not in 480-a or an ag assessment, but eligible for both. The 78 acres carry no forest tax law or agricultural exemption, so there is no rollback to inherit. A buyer could apply: 480-a needs 50 contiguous forested acres and a DEC-approved management plan, with a ten-year commitment and a penalty of two and a half to five times the tax saved if the land is taken out early, and the regulations changed on March 1, 2026. An agricultural assessment needs seven acres in production for two years or a lease to a farmer, and reclaiming the overgrown fields would be the first step. Neither is automatic.

The creek, the flood factor and Zone X. Both sites put the parcel in FEMA Zone X. Zillow calls it moderate risk, which is usually the shaded X of the 500-year plain. Redfin’s flood factor is 10 of 10. The house and barn sit on the valley floor beside the creek in the aerial, and the ground photos show a wide creek. Whitesville had a flash flood emergency in August 2024 and closed roads in the 2021 floods. Ask the owner what the creek did in those two events, whether water reached the buildings, and whether the road washed. Flood insurance is not required in Zone X. Get a quote anyway.

Crossing the stream to get up the hill. The remarks say the property climbs after you cross the stream, and two dug roads go up from there. Nothing says how you cross: a ford, a culvert or a bridge. New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation regulates work in protected streams, and a crossing that washed out cannot always be put back without a permit. Ask what the crossing is, when it last washed, and whether it is permitted.

Oil and gas under Allegany County. The first test well in the county was drilled at Whitesville in 1866, and the state’s Whitesville Field unit for East Resources covered about 7,880 acres in the southern part of the Town of Independence. This parcel is in that town. A century of drilling means oil and gas rights in this county are often severed from the surface or under lease. Ask the title company for a mineral search back through the chain, ask whether the 2004 deed or the 2025 deed reserved anything, and search the county clerk’s records for a lease on the parcel.

The 2025 deed. The roll cites a deed recorded in 2025, and both sites show no sale since 2004. A transfer without a price is usually a family or estate conveyance, and the two owners on the roll share a surname. Ask what changed hands and whether every owner is signing.

Two sales a year apart. The public record shows $1,200 in May 2003 and $48,100 in June 2004. The first is a partial interest or a correction, not a price for 78 acres. The 2004 figure is the last real one. The ask is five and a half times it, twenty-two years on.

Water from a spring. The listing gives the water source as a spring and does not say where the spring is or how the water gets to the house. A spring on the parcel is one thing. A spring across the line with a pipe and a handshake is another. Ask for the location, the easement if there is one, a flow test and a water test.

Heat. The listing does not give a heating system. The county record gives electric hot air, and a leased propane tank sits behind the house. Ask what heats the house, who the propane lease is with, and whether the house has been kept above freezing in winter or drained.

Access and the road. County Road 19 is paved per the remarks and appears so in the aerials. Ask the Allegany County Department of Public Works whether it maintains and plows this stretch. The driveway is dirt.

Unlisted structures. The photos show a box blind, a blind on stilts and a ladder stand, and the remarks say the stands convey. The county counts one building. None of that needs a permit, but ask whether the barn has ever been assessed, because the county’s one-building count suggests it has not.

What is not shown. The basement, the attic, the spring, the septic, the well house if any, the inside of the barn, the creek crossing, the dug roads, the timber up close, the road in winter, and the house’s roof from above at close range. No photo carries a virtual staging mark.

Thirty-five of 48 photos. Zillow and Redfin each carry the same 48 images in the same order, confirmed by perceptual hash, at the same resolution, about 1,020 pixels wide. We used 35: five aerials, the house and barn outside and in, the creek, the fields, the apples, the woods and the stands. Left out: three parcel-line map screenshots and ten near-duplicate frames of woods and fields.

You can see everything else we have listed on the properties page. For other big acreage with a hunting camp on it we have a cabin on 5 acres near Lancing, Tennessee with a share of a 290-acre hunting tract and the cabin shell on two parcels in the Town of Florence, New York.

To ask about this one, call Daniel Heisey at 607-661-0029 or Landquest Inc. at 607-844-9690, and reference MLS S1713098. Tell them where you saw it.