Newmans Own: Our family's search for a house.

A Mystery on Brandywine Street

I was not impressed with this house. And when she looked at it in February, neither was Nora. It was a foreclosure special, and even though it was cheap relative to the neighborhood, it needed work. So we moved on, though I made a mental note to keep track of what happened to the place. If it sold for more than list ($629,900), I figured, then this market was still seriously out of whack.

I learned last month that not only did it sell for more than list price—it sold for 25 percent more than list price. (See also this site.) What kind of madness was this? Then I noticed the sale price—$789,000—was about what the property was assessed for. I chalked it up to my ignorance and inexperience as a first-time would-be homebuyer. Maybe the bank was obligated by its fiduciary duty to its shareholders to accept nothing less than assessed value on its houses. There was probably a provision to this effect in the TARP legislation. Tim Geithner drives a hard bargain.

Which was a ridiculous thought—I have a fair amount of those—because the bank wouldn't have offered it for less than its assessed value if it couldn't have accepted less than its assessed value. What was going on here?

The mystery only deepened when I learned—just today! (thanks, Frank)— that the house sold for $651,000. (See also this site.)  What happened to the earlier sale? Did someone buy it again? A check of the public record (you have to type in the address) shows only the earlier sale, from February.

Maybe the earlier price was a mistake. Maybe the later one is. Maybe there has been a glitch in the D.C records-keeping department. Maybe, hard as it may be to believe, I have uncovered a mistake on the Internet. Undoubtedly, there are things I do not know about the foreclosure process.

Oh well. It was near the top of our price range and needed a lot of work, so we weren't going to buy this house anyway. So no non-buyer's remorse for us. We'll save that for houses we could actually have afforded.