Torreon home featuring straw bale-insulated walls on the market for $515,000

Sharon Van Hassel still remembers the laughter, the meals and the dirt flying through the air roughly 25 years ago as she, her late husband and neighbors built a home, straw bale by straw bale.

That’s right, straw bales. The walls of Van Hassel’s home at 112 Ten Pines Road in Torreon — 60 miles southeast of Albuquerque — are filled with straw bales, rather than traditional insulation. But, after more than two decades of enjoying the unique, custom-built home, Van Hassel is ready to move on.

The three-bedroom, four-bathroom property, which includes a 2,623-square-foot home and a 1,258-square-foot wood workshop sitting on three private acres, is on the market for $515,000.

Van Hassel’s husband, Ernest Van Hassel, who went by Jim and died in 2023, always wanted his own home and wanted to retire in New Mexico, she said. The pair bought the land in the foothills of the Manzano Mountains in 1994 and left Southern California to build their home there two years later.

But Ernest Van Hassel didn’t want to build just any home. With a knack for innovation and a desire to source everything from inside the state, he began exploring alternative ways to build a home and was sold when he discovered the straw bale infill wall system.

“He was such an outdoors guy. I think just his love of the outdoors and taking care of the outdoors made him like that,” Van Hassel said of her late husband’s resourcefulness. “I was always amazed at the things he would come up with.”

Her husband’s unique construction choice paid off. As it turns out, straw bale homes are more energy efficient, soundproof and fire resistant than homes with conventional framing, she explained.

“You can’t hear anyone drive up in the driveway. You don’t hear a thing from the outside,” Van Hassel said. “It’s very well-insulated. This is the second summer I haven’t even hooked up my (evaporative) cooler; it’s just so nice in here.”

The home’s listing agent, Jennifer Smith with Realty One of New Mexico, added, “When the doors are shut, it’s like you’re just in another world.”

The interior of the home is still well connected with the outdoors, as every room of the home features a large window seat conducive to watching wild turkeys and deer make their way through surrounding meadows filled with Ponderosa pine trees.

You might be wondering, how is a straw bale home more fire resistant? Smith had the same question.

“It’s so tightly packed that if you lit a match and stuck it in there, there’d be no oxygen to keep it (going),” Smith said.

Ernest Van Hassel sourced the home’s straw bales from the Navajo Nation. Many of the home’s other unique features also have local roots, including the kitchen cabinets that he made from a tree stump he got from a neighbor.

While spearheaded and handcrafted by the Van Hassels, the home was largely the result of a joint effort between the pair and their community. From neighbors to friends they made at church, the idea of a straw bale home was intriguing to the many companions that lent a helping hand, Van Hassel said.

“People always wanted to help,” she said. “I made so many meals, I can’t even — I wish I kept track of how many people I fed all the time.”

Through the years, the home became a gathering place for parties of up to 75 people, Van Hassel said. If you didn’t know each other when you arrived, you’d know each other fairly well by the time you left, Van Hassel said.

The home has been good to Van Hassel, but she’s ready to move closer to family in California.

She listed the home early last year and has dropped the price $55,000 since then, with the most recent drop taking place in June.

The remoteness of the location has been a challenge, Smith said.

“It’s a very scenic drive, so that’s the nice part,” Smith said, but the property needs someone who isn’t bothered by the hour-long drive to Albuquerque.

With the price drop, a new roof currently being installed and one of New Mexico’s most productive apple orchards at Manzano Mountain Retreat just a mile away, Van Hassel is hopeful the home’s next owner is just around the corner.

“But everything is in God’s timing,” Van Hassel said.