If you are in the market for a small home on an old city street with a 2,300-piece pipe organ hidden inside, then a Michigan real estate agent has the home for you.
Mark Douglas is selling the home of the late Bill Tufts, an auto mechanic who could not play the organ himself but fulfilled his lifelong dream of having a cathedral-worthy pipe organ installed in his Grand Rapids, Mich., home.
“He would just laugh. He loved it so much,” Douglas said of Tufts, who would host invitation-only gatherings where trained organists would play his beloved organ.
When Tufts died earlier this year at age 72, his estate supervisor contacted Douglas to sell the home. Tufts was not married and had no kids.
“The organ was his life,” Douglas said.
The 2,300-square-foot house is valued at $100,000 to $110,000, according to Douglas, the owner ofMark Douglas Real Estate.
The home is on the market for $129,000, an increase that takes into account the value of the organ. Were the organ to be installed brand-new today, it would be valued at $800,000 to $1 million, according to Douglas.
The organ is set up next to the kitchen table but Tufts built an addition on his early-1900s home in order to accommodate the extra pipes, all of which were installed for free by Tufts’ friends, Guy VanderWageen and Don Haan of Haan Pipe Organ.
"Bill bought it out of an old church," Haan told ABC News of the 1929-built organ. "We took it apart and moved it in and it took about five-and-a-half years, but that was the time we took because we had other work, too."
The home has been on the market for 22 days and Douglas says he has received inquiries from around the world.
“My phone has been lighting up,” Douglas said. “Most of the people who aren’t local would remove it and restore the house and some locals are interested in preserving it.
Haan estimates it would cost around $100,000 to move the organ out of the home, calling it "no small instrument."
What the organ would be worth on its own if were it to be removed from the home is unclear, Haan said.
"It’s kind of like an antique car, it’s worth what you can get for it," he said. "We really would like to see somebody who likes the organ and would keep it there because it is built-in as an integral part of the house."
Douglas describes the Grand Rapids area where the house is located as just like any “old part of town, where houses are kind of small and close together.”
Not many people knew of Tufts' hidden treasure, according to Douglas, because his organ-playing parties were small, invitation-only affairs. That has all changed now, however.
“There’s a lot more traffic down that end of the road now,” he said. VIDEO
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