For the same price as a condominium in southern Maine, you could get a 12,000-square-foot mansion in Presque Isle with some crazy features.
The $650,000 property at 123 Hardy St. was built in the 1970s. It would be millions in other parts of Maine, with five bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a large indoor pool and a seven-car garage. Other amenities include several living areas, offices, six working fireplaces, a walk-in closet and pantry, a gym and a finished basement with a bar, pool table and foosball.
“It’s probably the closest thing you’ll find to a mansion in Aroostook County,” said Dan Castle, broker-owner of NextHome Discover, the agency that listed the property.
The one-of-a-kind home was bought in 2020 from its original owners by nurses James and Stephanie Grandy. They moved to Presque Isle from North Carolina with two of their children to help underserved hospitals here respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, Castle said.
As Messianic Jews, the Grandys had had a religious exemption to getting the COVID vaccine, but that was overturned in August 2021 after Gov. Janet Mills issued a mandate that all healthcare workers receive one. That led the Grandys to lose their jobs.
Stephanie Grandy, a wound care nurse, continued treating some patients at home in a black surgery chair pictured in the listing. Though the family raised $19,000 through a GoFundMe campaign to support themselves while out of work, eventually they had to sell their home.
They moved to Hawaii in late 2023. Only a few days after they settled into their new home, the Democratic governor’s administration announced that it was winding down the mandate. Now the Presque Isle home is back on the market.
For about the same price of a new-construction 1,300-square-foot condo in Saco, a Maine homebuyer could get a mansion with all the trimmings in The County. What you see is what you get with this home because it is being sold as is and furnished — complete with the medical chair that Stephanie Grandy saw patients in.
NextHome Discover’s luxury agency took over the listing in the summer of 2023 and hoped to find a unique buyer for the property who appreciates its eccentricities. Though there’s been a lot of interest in the property, Castle said that a few potential buyers have backed out because of the home’s overwhelming size.
“It’s such an immense, massive home. People don’t really realize what they’re walking into until they do walk into it,” Castle said. “And for most people that walk in there, they just say, ‘Wow, this is way too much house for me.’”
