There are many legends about the infamous Florida 'Holdout House,' including one of an old woman who would stand on her back balcony with a gun to chase greedy real estate developers away as tourist boats and shrimpers passed by.
But what the three-story home is most famous for is eventually being surrounded by intimidating high-rise condo buildings and being the only single-family home to hold the line.
The home's original owner, Mary Ackert, became the figure of local folklore after she and her husband, Carl Wilken, built the home in 1963.
The Victorian-style home sat on a 0.3-acre lot on Clearwater Harbor, with coveted 180-degree views of the Gulf of Mexico. It quickly became the prize developers wanted to win.
For decades, Ackert was asked to sell the land for eyewatering sums of money, but she refused. It didn't matter when developers 'accidentally' broke the water main to her house or cut her power lines, her position remained firm.
And when she finally did sell the house in 1986 for $133,200, the developers still didn't win because old Ackert sold the house to newscaster Joe Mannion, his wife Elizabeth and their four boys on the condition that they couldn't sell the house to developers.
'I got many, many offers to sell my house, but I wouldn’t. It meant too much to me,' Ackert told the Sun Sentinel in 1979.
It was an oath the couple would keep until their deaths, and one their children, Joseph, Thomas, Robert, and John, continued after inheriting their childhood home after their mother passed away in 2018 at the age of 80.
One of the many legends about the infamous Florida 'Holdout House' include an old woman who would stand on her back balcony with a gun to chase greedy real estate developers away as tourist boats and shrimpers passed by
'That was the agreement that we had with the original woman,' Thomas, 56, who spent most of his childhood living there, told the Daily Mail. 'Mary was a feisty person.'
The four brothers would finally place the house on the market once more in September 2023 for $7million.
They would eventually sell it for just under $3million last Fall to JRP Property Group, which is owned by James R Polacek, a real estate agent.
It quickly sent locals into a frenzy, wondering if the Holdout House would finally fall victim to demolition. Would a sparkling new condo building appear in its place?
Thomas, however, told the Daily Mail that he believes the new owner plans on living in the three-story home, saving it from demolition and carrying on Ackert's wishes.
'They're not selling it,' he said. 'I think they moved in. It was going to be a flipped home, but I'm not exactly sure of that, but I know that they haven't relisted it, and they did fix it.'
The Daily Mail has reached out to Polacek for comment.
Thomas said since the land was sold as a residential property and not a commercial one, there are height restrictions on what could be built on the land, as it would oppose the view of the condo buildings.
But what the home is most famous for is eventually being surrounded by intimidating high-rise condo buildings and the original woman, Mary Ackert, refuses to sell her home
'You can't change it to the condominiums,' Thomas said. 'So, because of that, it limited some of the potential buyers from the condominium side.'
The home also suffered damage from Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in Florida in September 2024.
When the brothers returned to assess the damage, their childhood home was full of sand that stacked up feet high, their furniture was gone, and there was plenty of water damage.
'The refrigerator that we had wasn't even there,' Thomas told the Daily Mail. 'No one could find it. It's probably in the Gulf of Mexico someplace.
'The windows were shattered and busted. And obviously, a lot of damage from the water, but it was so forceful with the water being feet in height. It took our furniture out, and we never found it. It wasn't on the streets, wasn't down the road. When the water recedes back to the Gulf of Mexico, it took all this stuff with it.'
Although the brothers received money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, it wasn't enough to fully repair the house, which the brothers had been using as a rental property since 2020.
'There's another factor in that we had moved out of the area,' Thomas, who is based in Atlanta, told the Daily Mail.
With the hurricane damage, in addition to the City of Clearwater restricting short-term rentals and only allowing a 31-day minimum, which cut into their profit, they decided it was time to leave their childhood home behind.
Hurricane Helene devastated Clearwater Beach in September 2024
'You know, when my dad passed away, it was his death. When my mother passed away, it was their death. And it was just a house,' Thomas told the Daily Mail.
'And the house felt emptier and emptier over the years. You go home, it's not quite the same.'
The halls that used to be filled with family photos were now pictures of pelicans for the guests to enjoy, and any resemblance to the home that holds his childhood is long gone.
'So it kind of lost some of that homecoming nature to it. And then what it was, was a property that, you know, sometimes the brothers had disagreements on what we should do, how to fix it, should we paint the deck, should we change the deck from wood to a composite, and little knick-knack arguments.'
Growing up, Thomas knew he lived in a house of legends. When he went outside, he saw tour guides pointing from their boats as eager tourists lapped up the alleged stories about the four-bedroom, three-bathroom house.
From a distance, the gray house looks massive, but Thomas said it was a 'relatively small house' that is only around 2,000sq ft. It was a duplex when the Mannion family bought it, he said.
'It looks a lot grander now,' Thomas told the Daily Mail.
'It was a small house from the 1960s. It had a relatively small kitchen, it did not have central air, so there were some issues, some core issues with that house, where the house's legacy and traditions and how it looked far out exceeded the assumed value that some people had placed on that house.'
Like many, the brothers received FEMA money, but decided it wasn't worth the money to repair the house. Picture is damage from Hurricane Helene in Clearwater Beach in 2024
A third floor was eventually added to the home, and it got a new roof, staircase and flooring. And it does have air conditioning nowadays. However, the last major redesign on the home was done in the mid-1990s, Thomas said.
But despite the legends, to Thomas, Holdout House was just home growing up, even if being associated with the property did give him a bit of popularity.
'It gave you some street cred,' he told the Daily Mail. 'They have these boats come by and talk about your house. At some point, you're just staring straight ahead. You've heard it so often. But then people would see you, and they would cheer, and they would clap, and it was always fun.'
But for four rambunctious boys, Clearwater Harbor was a place to play.
Thomas often went fishing in the harbor, where he would catch sharks and flounder and crabs.
The boys also went skimboarding, where one uses a small finless board and rides across wet sand and a thin layer of water.
'That was all the craze in the 80s and 90s,' he recalled. 'Great memories.
'It was hard to let that go, but obviously, things change over time, and this was one of them.'
