By Diana McFarland

Managing editor

The Rescue Post Office is for sale.

The actual property and building are not owned by the U.S. Postal Service, but by a couple who have retired to Florida, said Adrian Marshall of Marshall Real Estate Services. Marshall is the listing agent and the property is priced at $60,000 he said. 

Marshall said he has resisted putting a sign in front of the building because the local residents would get upset. 

The assessed value of the .16-acre lot and building is $77,900, according to Isle of Wight County assessment data. 

The Postal Service leases the building and Marshall is unsure how long it plans to remain. {mprestriction ids=”1,2,3,4,5,6″}

There are three years left on the lease, but there is a clause in the lease that allows either side to terminate, said Marshall. 

Marshall said the property has been viewed as an investment and he has had some calls on it. 

The Postal Service has no plans to close the Rescue post office, said U.S. Postal Service spokesperson Freda Sauter.

The Carrollton post office is also owned by an independent company, FDI Postal Properties of Mount Airy, Md., and its lease expires in March 2022, according to the U.S. Postal Service.

Efforts to reach FDI were unsuccessful. 

The U.S. Postal Service owns the land and building for the Battery Park Post Office.

Apparently owning property leased to the Postal Service is lucrative enough to warrant a group called American Postal Owners, which has a website outlining the advantages of making such an investment. One advantage is a high return, according to the website. 

However, operating hours at the Rescue and Battery Park post offices were reduced a few years ago as a way to save money. 

Morgart’s Beach resident Fred Walls once owned the Isle of Wight Post Office across from the Isle of Wight Courthouse. He has since sold the property to Isle of Wight Academy.

Walls said he doesn’t remember exactly what he was paid, but said that the rent he received from the Postal Service was far better than what he could receive on his other rural properties. 

“It was a decent rent,” he said. 

Walls is aware of a company that buys up postal properties, as well as builds post offices to the Postal Services’ specifications. Walls said his father did that with the Isle of Wight Post Office.

What makes the venture valuable is whether the post office is going to remain sin an era of diminishing use of the Postal Service in favor of digital methods of communication, said Walls.   {/mprestriction}