802 Main St

This is a commercial building, and the first thing to know is that the listing does not file it as one. Zillow carries 802 Main Street as a single family home with a subtype of Other, no bedrooms, two full baths and 4,732 square feet. The remarks describe the Glory Days Restaurant, a diner and bar on the main street of Clay City in Clay County, with restaurant equipment, antiques and signs included, and a seller who would consider a rental agreement with the right operator. It is listed at $150,000 after three cuts from $220,000 since March. No county record, tax figure, year built, zoning or flood zone appears at either source. This is the first Indiana property we have written up.

The building

The photos show a two-story brick storefront on a Main Street block with a flag on a pole out front and the restaurant sign above the door. Inside is a 1950s diner room with red booths, chrome tables, a soda fountain counter with stools, a pressed tin ceiling and walls covered in signs and memorabilia. A long hallway with a wood floor and a wooden phone booth leads to a bar room with a wood bar, stools and neon, a dining room set for a party, and a pool room with framed jerseys. Behind it all is a commercial kitchen with a hood, fryers, prep tables and a dish line, a walk-in cooler, restrooms, a utility area with the water heater and a plumbing manifold, a furnace, and a small office.

The listing gives 4,732 square feet with no basement and two full baths. It gives no year built, no construction, no heating or cooling, no utilities and no parking. The photos show a furnace and a water heater and nothing about their age.

The lot and setting

The listing gives 4,791 square feet, which is about a tenth of an acre, and no parcel number. The building fills its frontage on Main Street and the photos show on-street parking along the block. The remarks call it the main drag of Clay City. Zoning is not listed. No county record exists at either site to check the lot, the building or its classification.

The facts

What to know before you call

It is a restaurant filed as a house. The listing’s type is single family, subtype other, with no bedrooms. The remarks and every one of the 23 photos describe a diner, a bar and a commercial kitchen. The classification matters for the loan, the appraisal, the insurance and the tax bill, none of which will treat this as a house. Ask the agent how the county classes the parcel and expect a commercial lender, a commercial appraisal and a commercial policy.

Zoning, and whatever the town says about its main street. Zoning is not listed. A restaurant with a bar on the main street of a small Indiana town sits inside whatever commercial district the town has drawn, and towns of this size often carry rules on signs, facades and uses in the downtown blocks. Ask the Town of Clay City what the zoning is, whether the restaurant use is grandfathered or by right, what a change of use would require, and whether any downtown or historic district rules apply to the front of the building. Ask the state about the liquor license, which does not convey with real estate.

A rental agreement with no rent. The remarks say the seller would consider a rental agreement with the right entrepreneur, and the listing’s lease field says contact for details. No rent, no term, no expenses, no sales history, no occupancy and no operating figures appear anywhere. A working restaurant is a business as much as a building. Ask whether the restaurant is open now, for three years of revenue and expenses if it is, for the rent the seller has in mind, and whether a lease would come with an option to buy.

What conveys. The remarks include the restaurant equipment, the antiques and the signs. The photos show a hood, fryers, a dish line, coolers, a walk-in, a soda fountain, a pool table, a phone booth, neon signs, framed jerseys and walls of memorabilia. Nothing itemizes any of it. Ask for a written inventory before you make an offer, with the equipment separated from the decor, because the equipment is what a health department inspects and the antiques are what a seller carries out the back door.

Nothing is on the county record. Neither site holds a Clay County record for this address, so the 4,732 square feet, the 4,791 square foot lot, the classification and the building’s age are all as the listing states them, with nothing to check against. Ask the Clay County assessor for the parcel number, the record card, the legal description and the assessed value.

Indiana taxes on a commercial parcel. Indiana assesses every year at market value in use and caps the bill as a share of gross assessed value: 1 percent for a homestead, 2 percent for other residential and farmland, 3 percent for everything else, including commercial. A restaurant gets the 3 percent cap and none of the homestead deduction. The listing prints no tax figure at all, so there is nothing to inherit or lose. Ask the assessor for the current bill and the assessed value, and budget at the commercial rate.

Three cuts in six months. Listed at $220,000 in March, cut to $200,000 in June, $175,000 in July and $150,000 in September. At $32 a square foot the price is low for the space, which usually means the space is the easy part. Ask what the showings have said and why the seller moved from selling to offering a lease.

The systems. A furnace, a water heater and a plumbing manifold appear in the utility photos, with no ages, and the kitchen hood, fire suppression, grease trap and the walk-in compressor are the systems a restaurant inspector cares about. Ask for the last health inspection, the last hood cleaning, the fire suppression tag, and the age of the roof.

Twenty-three photos, small ones. The listing carries 25 images. Two are map screenshots, a satellite view with a pin and an aerial of the town, and we left them out. The 23 photographs are low resolution and read as phone screenshots of a video tour, with letterboxed landscape frames and narrow portrait ones. That is what the listing serves. Not shown: the upper floor, the roof, the rear of the building, the restrooms themselves, and the building at close range from outside.

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 a 1921 brick school in Glasco, Kansas.

To ask about this one, call Integrity Realty Group on 812-787-2683, ask for Delmar Wagler, and reference MLS 86426. The listing prints no direct number for the agent. Tell them where you saw it.