ShareThisWAUCONDA, Wash. - This town has a gas pump, a restaurant, a small store, a four-bedroom house and its own ZIP code, 98859.
And in a few weeks -- after being listed for sale on eBay -- it'll have new owners. It's a story of the travails of selling property on the site, the winning bidder backing out and finally a couple stepping up who had previously fallen in love with the town.
It takes an unusual person to try to flip a town on an auction Web site. It takes unusual people, too, to buy this isolated place that's surrounded by cattle ranches, vast stretches of evergreens, grazing land and the occasional sagebrush rolling along Highway 20.
On this highway, Wauconda is a pit stop at elevation 3,600 feet, a windy 25 miles east of Tonasket, and 12 miles west of Republic, the nearest towns with actual city streets.
But sell it did on April 12.
Daphne Fletcher, 42 -- who once was homeless -- sold the place for $360,000. She bought the 4-acre property in 2007 for $180,810.
Maddie and Neal Love, respectively 48 and 50, of Bothell, put down 5 percent earnest money last Monday. The Loves are both unemployed and are selling their home and all their possessions to buy the town and move there. The deal is expected to close in six weeks.
It's not like Fletcher will walk away with a huge profit. After all the improvements to the property, paid for in part by a loan from her mom, Fletcher figures she'll walk away with about $40,000 for all those hours of labor.
Still, the sale will enable Fletcher to pursue her latest dream, and for the Loves, as they explain, "to come off one mountain, cross the bridge and walk up that other mountain."
Fletcher says maybe 100 families live within 10 miles of Wauconda, which is a long way from Wauconda's peak population. According to the Okanogan County Historical Society, Wauconda in 1900 had 335 residents, three hotels, a store, boardinghouse and four saloons.
These days, in the busy summer months with tourists driving by, the restaurant employs maybe five people; in the winter, it's a couple.
Locals stop by to pick up mail from the one full-time employee, and to gas up, shop at the small store, maybe have coffee. The store's biggest-selling items are beer cigarettes, candy and pop.
Fletcher says she grossed $300,000 a year, with about $100,000 each coming from the gas pump, grocery and restaurant, and that she netted $40,000 to $50,000 a year.
When she bought Wauconda, she worked for a distributing company and delivered candy and tobacco to stores throughout the county, including the small town.
The previous owners of Wauconda, ready to retire, urged her to buy the place. She sold her cabin and plunged in. She ended up running the restaurant herself and becoming a stress case.
"What do you do when 50 motorcycles show up all at once and order food?" Fletcher said. "People were very patient, but ... "
Selling a town on eBay is not so easy, either.
"Why buy a house when you can OWN YOUR OWN TOWN! Own the Post Office, OWN YOUR OWN ZIP CODE ... Single owner is tired and ready to retire ... VERY LOW RESERVE PRICE OF $359,000 ... Please bid only if you will honor it," the listing read when it went up March 3.
The bidding closed April 2. In between, 112 bids came, with some individuals putting in offers many times. "I spent days answering questions," Fletcher said.
The auction caught the attention of media outlets.
"CNN picked it up, and it went worldwide," she said. "I had people calling me from London, and Chinese people."
The high bid of $370,601 was from David Broadbent, of Melbourne, Australia. Fletcher waited expectantly for a wire transfer for the 5 percent down payment. But Broadbent sent only his regrets.
Fletcher began going down the list of other bidders. There were no replies from the top five bidders, lukewarm response from others.
Then came the call from the Loves.
They are enthusiastic riders of Harley-Davidsons, had ridden by the town in previous years, and loved its charm.
"You can look up and see the Milky Way. It's God's country," Maddie Love said. "You can hear the coyotes and wolves."
By the time the Loves first stopped by the town, the price for Wauconda had come down drastically. In 2008, Fletcher had listed the town at $1.1 million. By 2009, the asking price was $495,000. The Loves were interested, kind of.
Maddie Love lost her job in late 2008 after more than two decades as a trade-show coordinator. Neal Love, who worked in telecommunications, lost his job in 2009.
Maybe it was time to make a big change.
When Maddie heard that Wauconda was up for auction, "I fell to my knees and cried," she said. "Why didn't we jump on it when we could have?"
When the eBay bids never came to fruition, the Loves decided it was time to climb that next mountain. "We're terrified," Maddie said. "Honest to God's truth, we're selling everything we own. We're coming here with just the clothes on our backs."
As for Fletcher, she says she likely will buy an RV. She has traveling to do, and it has to do with a past chapter in her life.
She was raped when in high school on the East Coast, she said, and at age 16 gave birth to twin boys, whom she gave up for adoption.
"My life spun out of control," Fletcher said. "I was emotionally unstable. I started getting into drugs."
She ended up homeless in San Diego. Fletcher showed a newspaper article from 12 years ago in which she was profiled in a story about a YWCA shelter for women.
It's been quite a journey from that point in her life.
She has learned that one of her sons had been looking for her, posting on a Web site. She said she wants to contact the boys, now young men, but is still trying to figure out, well, all kinds of things.
Now, Fletcher said, she will have the money and freedom to leave Wauconda and meet them.
(E-mail reporter Erik Lacitis at elacitis(at)seattletimes.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com)
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