A 138-year-old Victorian mansion in Michigan that's been a bed and breakfast for 3 decades is on the market for $749,900 check it out

The three-story building was constructed in 1885, per the listing.

It was originally built for William Sauber, an engineer and the former mayor of the city, per a website dedicated to the property.

In 1991, then-owners Heather and Bill Bokram converted the place into a B&B and named it The Heather House.

The current owners, Mark and Helen Lally, took over the business when the Bokrams retired in 2014. The Lallys were originally from Brighton, Michigan, which is about 80 miles west of Marine City, per Google Maps.

"We were actually guests for 20 years at Heather House," Mark Lally told Insider. "One day, about nine years ago, I was driving by and I saw a 'For Sale' sign in front of the place. And the next thing you know, we were the owners."

"Helen was in the food business and did have some experience in hospitality when she was younger, though not with a B&B. But they wanted to learn it all, so they just jumped right in," Mike Kuligowski, the listing agent from Signature Sotheby's International Realty, told Insider.

The Lallys' daily routine mainly involves tending to guests and getting the house ready for the next day.

"I'm pretty much in the kitchen by seven in the morning, serving breakfast, getting people checked out, and then flipping the rooms," Helen Lally told Insider.

In the summer, Mark is also usually working on projects around the house and the gardens, and helping guests check in, she added.

"We're still fairly busy during November and December with people coming, because we do quite a bit of decorating for Christmas," Helen said. "Generally, we have 13 to 15 trees up around the house, all the porches are lit, and there are decorations everywhere."

The 5,569-square-foot property comes with seven bedrooms: six guest suites and an owners' suite, per the listing.

Nightly rates range between $155 and $205 depending on the type of room chosen, per The Heather House website.

"The business account pays the mortgage and utilities, so it feels like living for free," Helen added.

Most of the furniture are antiques sourced from stores around the area, Kuligowski said.

"Marine City has a very large following for antiquing, and there are a few antique stores around," Kuligowski said. "Heather actually collected pieces throughout the years for the bed and breakfast, and added them as she was running it."

Heather Bokram lives a few houses north of the B&B, he added. Even until today, she still stops by the house to visit the Lallys. Her husband Bill passed away in 2017, per an obituary found online.

"It's negotiable," Helen said. "If we got close to the asking price, we want it to be turnkey for the next people who purchase it, just like it was for us."

There's still potential to further develop and scale the B&B business by tapping into the unused attic space, Kuligowski said.

"It's just over 1,500 square feet, and could be turned into a couple of additional guest suites," he said. The basement and another room above the garage — both of which are currently storage — can also be turned into other rooms.

"There is space there already, so pretty easily you could put another three suites in right out the gate if you wanted to expand the footprint," he added.

The nearest major airport is the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, which is about an hour's drive from The Heather House, per Google Maps.

"We get a fair amount of retired people, but also people who are rocket scientists or dairy farmers," Helen said. "And it's one of the things that makes this so enjoyable and so interesting — just the vast difference of the type of people that we get coming through every day."

Some regular guests at The Heather House also include people who have come from other states to visit family locally, Kuligowski said.

"They do a lot of repeat bookings — so people that have come in the past will come every year or every other year to visit the area, and stay in the home," he added. "My parents own a place just north of the Heather House and I've had relatives stay there in the past," he added.

The St. Clair River flows from Lake Huron into Lake St. Clair, and serves as an international boundary between the United States and Canada.

"Probably every 20 minutes or so, there will be international freighters that are coming by," Kuligowski said. "So you can watch freighters all day and night, 12 months of the year, right there, off the front porches."

Although The Heather House doesn't have its own dock, guests can also go boating in the river or enjoy water activities, Mark said.

"We're in our sixties, we came in thinking we would do it for 10 years, and it's been nine," Helen said. "We're going to just put a few things we can't live without into storage, get a fifth wheel, and hit the road for a few years."

"An ideal buyer would be somebody who enjoys people, enjoys learning about people, and loves the house the way we do," Helen said.

Hopefully, it'll also be someone who has more ambition and energy to grow the B&B into a bigger business, she said.

"We've taken it up a notch since the people who had it before. We'd love to see somebody come in and take it up another notch or two," she added.