Plainfield
James Hollander, who bought the 103-acre property for $205,000 during the October auction by the federal government, is now asking $329,000 for the former Brown compound, according to a real estate listing by ReMax Upper Valley.
Hollander is also marketing Elaine Brown’s former Lebanon dental office, which he also purchased at the auction.
ReMax real estate agent Gerry Stark said that federal agents appear to have removed any of the explosives the Browns were believed to have used to booby-trap the property during a nine-month armed standoff with U.S. Marshals in 2007.
“I don’t believe there’s any explosives now,” Stark said. “It’s pretty safe.”
“I think the likelihood of getting blown up is equal to the likelihood of getting hit by lightning,” agreed Town Administrator Steve Halleran.
Messages left for Hollander on Monday were not returned.
The Browns, who are in their early 70s, gained notoriety when they refused to pay taxes; they were convicted by a federal jury on a variety of charges in 2009.
In the months leading up to the auction, federal authorities said that, while they had removed all explosives from the property, they couldn’t guarantee that the property was free of explosives, because of liability issues.
According to the realty listing, the property includes a 13,950-square-foot house, a generator shed, an attached garage, a separate garage, a small barn and a green house. It has both solar and wind-generated power. The third floor of the house has an entrance to a fourth-floor tower.
Stark said the house is in good condition, but is unfinished.
“It’s not in nearly as bad condition as I expected, since it’s been empty for 10 years,” said Stark. “It will make a nice home for somebody. They’ll have a lot of interesting stories to tell around the campfire.”
According to the listing, Hollander, the owner, “has never lived in the property and has no knowledge of any systems.”
Halleran said at least one person interested in purchasing the Center of Town Road property called the town offices asking about local zoning regulations.
On Glen Road in Lebanon, a second property that the Browns owned and used as a dental office was purchased by Hollander at the October auction, for $415,000, and was listed by ReMax for $599,000.
That property was put under contract by a prospective buyer for an undisclosed price a few months ago, according to Stark.
Meanwhile, Plainfield officials say they’re taking the IRS to court over the proceeds of the October auction.
Plainfield and the IRS have been fighting over the $205,000 in sales revenue since the October auction; the town calculates that it is owed $233,000 in back taxes, including $90,000 in penalties and interest.
But the IRS offered the town a far lower figure — $31,000, which reflects the sales price minus about $175,000 the IRS says it has spent maintaining and managing the property since it took ownership around 2007.
“We’re mad we haven’t gotten our money,” Halleran, the town administrator, said on Monday. “That jousting has gone back and forth for all these months.”
Halleran said that a casual inspection of the exterior of the property suggests there has been little to no active maintenance by the federal agency.
“We feel as though we are due more than $31,000,” he said. “It is hard to fathom how you could have spent $174,000 maintaining the property, if you look at the before and after pictures.”
Halleran said that, because the IRS has been slow to document the $175,000 in maintenance charges, the town asked attorney Barry Schuster, of Lebanon, to file a motion in U.S. District Court to compel the IRS to itemize the charges.
“We’re exactly where we were and just continue to be very frustrated with how long it takes to get any sort of answer,” Halleran said. “It’s not a matter of a few days or a few weeks. It’s months between correspondences.”
Schuster said the IRS has provided a list of categories of expenses, but that it raised more questions than it answered.
“We’ve seen a list but with no itemization. It simply says ‘Browns’ or ‘maintenance,’ general categories but with no explanation,” said Schuster. “There were some categories that did not seem to make sense in terms of chronology.”
Roger Sweeney, a property appraisal and liquidation specialist for the IRS who handled the sale, said Monday he no longer has involvement with the property, and referred questions to a media affairs department.
Luis Garcia, an IRS media spokesman, said on Monday afternoon that he was researching the issue, but did not anticipate being able to formulate an official response until later in the week.
Schuster said he expected the IRS to provide a timely response to the federal court judge.
“I would hope that within the next month, the court might make a ruling to require the IRS to turn over the documents we’re looking for within a short period of time,” he said.
Halleran said the town has had to work hard to protect itself from the potential liability posed by wiping the $230,000 off its receivables ledger.
If Plainfield gets no more than the $31,000 offered by the IRS, much of the loss would be addressed by a contingency fund the town has established, while the remainder would come from the town’s unassigned general fund balance, which stands at about $650,000.
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.