You Can Purchase This Entire Connecticut Town with a Starting Bid of $800,000

For the price of a tiny apartment in New York City, you can purchase a whole town a little more than a two hour drive away from Manhattan.

The village of Johnsonville located in East Haddam, Connecticut is up for auction.

The village’s founding dates back to the 1830s when the milling industry was big and Johnsonville played host to a pair of mills.

Around the 1960s, the industry have moved on, and with most of the mills in the area either destroyed or abandoned, Ray Schmitt, an aerospace millionaire bought all the buildings in the town. He planned on developing multiple properties on the land and turning it into a Victorian themed tourist attraction.

He even bought a bunch of Victorian era buildings from elsewhere and moved the buildings into Johnsonville.

Schmitt never saw his dream come to fruition though, and after he passed away in 1998, his estate sold off his antiques and a number of the Johnsonville buildings.

The property was eventually purchased by a hotel developer, and they never got far with developing the land either.

So now it is up for auction. The auction is set to begin on October 28, 2014, and has a starting bid of $800,000 and will only last 2 days.

$800,000 for 62 acres? Even if the buildings are mostly dilapidated, it is still an amazing deal!

The listing is on auction.com here: http://www.auction.com/Connecticut/commercial-auction-asset/193019417-15703-Village-Of-Johnsonville-MOODUS-CT-06469-B846