This house is free, but it comes with a ‘godawful’ catch

If you’ve ever dreamt of turning your holiday into a permanent relocation, this house could be the best — or the worst — way of doing it.

There is such a thing as a free house — although, like with lunches, there’s always a catch.

And if you’ve ever thought of turning your holiday into a permanent relocation, this house could be the best — or the worst — start to that dream.

A Minnesota woman is selling her historic home for a whopping zero dollars. But the lucky homeowner will be stuck with the costly task of moving the darn thing due to zoning issues.

“It’s gonna cost US$50,000 ($A71,000) to move it, and US$150,000 ($A214,000) to fix it up,” says the owner, Barbara Kochlin. “So, I’m not giving away some hidden gem.”

Ms Kochlin inherited the house from her grandmother, Gail Andersen, who relocated the house in 2002 to the side of the highway leading into town — and neglected to connect it to water and sewage.

This could be the kitchen of your new dream home. Picture: Barbara Kochlin

“She was in her mid-80s when she moved this house and wasn’t thinking 100 per cent logically at the time,” Ms Kochlin, a property manager in Jordan, tells The Post.

Hence the design aesthetic inside the house, she says: “The inside needs to be gutted … there’s a cork backsplash, orange countertops in the kitchen, and nobody wants that today.

“It’s pretty hodge-podgy, I’m not going to sugar-coat it,” Kochlin says. She describes it to her local paper as “godawful ugly” with “horrible wallpaper and fake brick — from some era when nobody had any taste”.

While the house is free, it’s going to cost US$50,000 to move it and US$150,000 to fix it up. Picture: Barbara Kochlin

The four-bedroom house also has no space for parking, being on the side of a winding road against a steep hill. And that’s the rub: Since the house is zoned for commercial use, it has to have ample parking, which it physically can’t. Ms Kochlin says she’s tried to fight the city’s stance on this to no avail.

“All the answers I got from the city were no,” she says. “I can’t even use it as storage … It’s become a massive pain in the arse.”

But even considering all that, the house is an important piece of history — her grandmother was the town’s first female mayor and had the house built in the early 1900s — so Ms Kochlin doesn’t want to demolish it, and she’s hoping someone with deeper pockets will pay to have it relocated.

The house will need a bit of TLC. Picture: Barbara Kochlin

“(My grandmother) spent 15 grand to buy it, 20 grand to move it and 40 grand to fix it up — and now it’s worth nothing,” Ms Kochlin says.

She’s hoping that whoever ends up with the house won’t just get it for the (semi-) attractive price tag.

“It’s gotta be someone who loves old houses and wants to preserve something like this.”.

This article originally appeared on the New York Post and was reproduced with permission