For sale: Fixer-upper home. Used to be a school. Cash only.

HUNTER, N.D. — A property for sale 40 miles northwest of Fargo could have people yearning for nostalgia and the early days of their education.

Built in 1903, the old school in Hunter, North Dakota, was purchased, renovated and lived in by Larry Schuler and his wife, Cheryl, from 1999 until her death from a heart attack in 2020.

Schuler stayed for a few years longer, but the sheer amount of space and upkeep was just too much for him and his dogs.

“I’d still be there if it wasn’t for life-changing situations,” he said.

Now, the property at 320 Second St. E. in Hunter — population 332 — is on the market for $150,000 for a unique buyer who must be willing to pay cash.

Listing agent CJ Anderson with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Premier Properties said lenders have told her the property cannot be financed due to safety concerns.

A gym addition has holes in the roof, and a stage in a community room has collapsed into locker rooms below, she said.

Still, she has no worries about the old school ultimately being sold.

“It’s a one-in-a-million property,” Anderson said.

She’s had inquiries about it from all over the tri-state region and from people in Florida, Texas and California.

While a few parties are trying to work through financial options, no offers have yet been made, she said.

Both a business and home

Schuler and his wife were living in Fargo in the late 1990s when her three-dimensional embroidery business, JDR Brazilian Embroidery, began to take off.

The couple needed much more space to store the hundreds of colors of threads and embroidery patterns that they were shipping to customers around the world.

They heard the school in Hunter was for sale, having been vacated for the startup of the Northern Cass School District.

He was lukewarm to even looking at it initially but was persuaded.

“Long story short, after we toured it and drove back to Fargo, my wife talked me into buying it,” Schuler said.

They went to work transforming the school into a home and business.

The entire second floor was taken up with embroidery supplies and equipment, and Schuler renovated the living spaces bit by bit when he wasn’t doing other carpentry work.

He used the school’s original kitchen to make a very large family kitchen, with three times the amount of cabinets found in most single-family homes.

To recycle and save money, he took chalkboards from a number of classroom walls and used them for the kitchen countertops.

The couple heated and cooled rooms judiciously based on their location and use.

They used a large open area to hold seminars for the embroidery business, with guests staying in refurbished rooms along an upstairs balcony.

Everyone seemed to love living in the old school except for their son, who graduated from Northern Cass in 2003.

“My son did not enjoy getting up in the morning at a school, going to school and then coming home to a school,” Schuler laughed.

Time to downsize

The three-story, 25,496-square-foot property, described as a fixer-upper, is located on a 1.58-acre block in Hunter.

It’s advertised as a six-bedroom house and one-bedroom apartment, two woodworking shops, classrooms, a music room with stage and more, for a total of 40 rooms.

The property is listed as having 11 baths and 7 bedrooms, but even that is a little confusing.

Anderson said it was difficult to fill out the standard listing form because of the property’s unconventional configuration.

Schuler hasn’t lived there for a while, having moved in with his son and and daughter-in-law in Fergus Falls while he waits for the Hunter property to sell.

According to his assessment, downsizing is a good thing.

“I’ve become a minimalist and love it,” he said.

For her part, Anderson just hopes to find a buyer who loves the property as much as Schuler and his wife did.

She said she hopes for an outcome that would “do their memory good.”