WELLFLEET — The estate sale of furniture, small appliances, and decorative items at the house that has loomed over the estuary and bay as well as over residents’ minds from the far end of Chequessett Neck Road since 2010 wouldn’t start until 10 a.m. on Nov. 3, but prospective buyers and nosy neighbors were queued up by 8:30 on a crisp fall Sunday as if for a local sporting event.

When the doors opened, those at the back of the line were still in for a long wait, because people were allowed into the house only 15 at a time. The event drew both serious buyers and people who were just curious to get a look inside the 5,153-square-foot structure known as the Blasch house since Barbara and Mark Blasch built it 14 years ago on a narrow strip of barrier beach known as “the Gut,” between harbor and bay.

“I’ve stared into the house for many years, and now I’m staring out of the house,” said Truro resident Thomas Bass. The structure is at the Great Island trailhead, the start of a walk that Bass had enjoyed before the house was built.

The views from the numerous windows, including one that looks over the Herring River estuary from a bathtub, are spectacular, but the home’s proximity to the edge of the dune, now just a couple of feet away, is unsettling.

Brian Voke of Eastham was there with a mission. “I have four kids and some grandchildren,” he said. Voke was interested in the two sets of bunk beds that had been advertised. “The problem is, if you buy them, you have to take them apart.” Those bunks turned out to be full-size beds. The purchaser would also need a way to haul them home.

Amanda Andrade, who arrived from Malden shortly after 8:30 a.m., was among the first to be let in. “I’m pregnant, so I’m looking for a crib,” she said. She and her husband purchased the large white Land of Nod crib for $180. Thanks to the Allen wrench tucked into a hidden drawer below the mattress, taking the crib apart was a breeze.

Speculation circulated about the fate of the house, which seems to teeter on top of the bluff, its bulk undercut by years of erosion.

“I heard they are doing it to defray the cost of demolition,” said Maria Juster of the sale. She and her friend Claire Minnerly, who both live in Wellfleet, were among the just curious. “It’s a unique house,” Juster said. “And we might find something small.”

There were some smaller items for sale: paperbacks, jigsaw puzzles, wire whisks, and baking pans. But other than a half dozen unremarkable vases, there were very few decorative items that one might expect a family living there to have collected over the years. “It reeks of short-term rental,” one visitor said as he headed out empty-handed.

The house’s owner, New York attorney Anthony G. Bonomi Jr., bought it in 2021 for $5.5 million and used it as a vacation rental property, according to neighbors who said signs advertising its availability went up shortly after the purchase.

Cindy and Mike Giallongo, who live nearby and have walked the beach in front of 1440 Chequessett Neck for decades, recall the days when a small cottage was there and an adjacent public parking lot. “We used to park there and watch the sunset with the kids,” Mike said.

According to the Giallongos, some dismantling of the house has already taken place. The large octagonal turret was put on a flatbed and taken away, Mike said. He heard it had gone to Provincetown.

The turret, with its bedroom, expansive deck, and hot tub, was cut into pieces and removed under an emergency order issued by Wellfleet Conservation Agent Lecia McKenna in April. It took a few months to secure the permits to get the work done.

A Move Is Unlikely

McKenna and members of the town’s conservation commission have been closely monitoring the precarious situation at the house since receiving a July report from Bryan McCormack, coastal processes and hazard specialist for the Cape Cod Cooperative Extension. McCormack had determined that the whole structure was at risk of being undermined by even one storm, according to the minutes of the commission’s Aug. 21 meeting.

The commission has ordered Bonomi to provide a plan for the removal of debris should it fall to the beach below. According to the Aug. 21 minutes, the commission will also require monitoring of the property, biweekly reports, and reports after significant storms.

Also at that meeting, McKenna expressed concern about delays, saying the coastal bank the house sits on had lost about two feet in the month following McCormack’s report.

Building Commissioner Victor Staley said the house was well built and that it couldn’t be taken apart and reassembled. Neither Staley nor conservation commissioner John Cumbler could confirm whether the owner plans to move or demolish the structure.

Cumbler said he believes it has become clear to the owner that his options are limited: “There’s the option to move or the option to demolish, but there is not the option to keep,” he said in a Nov. 4 phone interview. “Our agenda is to make sure that house doesn’t come down on the beach.”

Cumbler agreed with Staley that a move was unlikely. The front of the house sits on a floating cement platform supported by pillars, while the back half sits on a more traditional foundation. “It’s not a simple pick up and move back situation,” Cumbler said. “It’s also a huge house, so a move back is not going to be easy.”

Whatever the decision, “we just want them to take action before the next big storm,” Cumbler said. “If it goes down on the beach, there is a lot of toxic material in a house like that, and the currents would bring that toxicity into our harbor.”

Cumbler expected Bonomi’s attorney and engineers to present their plan to the conservation commission at its Nov. 5 meeting or perhaps at the next meeting two weeks later.

The precarious situation the house is now in could have been predicted by coastal experts in 2010, when it was built. The coastal bank was already eroding at that time, as the Independent has reported. According to a 2020 estimate, the rate of erosion was then six to seven feet per year.

In November 2019, the Blasches had a huge pile of sand dumped over the edge of the bluff in hopes it would slow erosion. By February, the 2,000 cubic yards of sand had been washed away entirely. The owners continued to add “sacrificial sand” in subsequent years, an approach that adds sediment to the water column that may harm fish and shellfish — which is why experts working to preserve coastal land look to biomimicry and retreat instead, according to the Independent’s February 2020 report.

In 2018, the Blasches requested permission from the conservation commission to install a 241-foot rock revetment to protect the house from the collapsing dune. They were turned down then and in a 2021 appeal. The commission cited the disruption in flow of both water and sand that the rock barrier would create.

In 2019, following the first denial, attorney James Hoeland, trustee of the Blasch family trust, filed suit against the conservation commission in Barnstable Superior Court. When the Blasches sold the property in December 2021 to Bonomi, the new owner decided to keep pursuing the suit.

In October 2023, the Superior Court upheld the conservation commission’s opinion that a revetment would violate wetlands protection laws. Hoeland immediately appealed the lower court’s ruling in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, where it remains pending.

Last November, Bonomi put the property up for sale. The asking price was $4.5 million, $1 million less than he had paid just two years earlier.

Bonomi still owns the house, but it is no longer listed for sale.