For Halloween – Scary Silver Spring Real Estate Story #1
October 28th, 2006 Categories: Silver Spring Neighborhoods, silver spring real estate
As a new real estate agent in 1989, I was always looking for a house to hold open on weekends and would volunteer to hold any house open. An older & more experienced agent was very anxious for me to hold open her new listing on Woodbury in East Silver Spring. It was a cute Dutch Colonial Style house. I was really excited about having it open and kinda wondering why she did’nt want to do it herself. I did get this funny feeling in the office that the other agents knew something I didn’t. I can’t explain exactly what it was, I thought they were snickering, chuckling or whispering about me. I shrugged it all off as my imagination and the that I was a nervous newbie. The day before the open, I was talking to a loan officer friend of mine that had been a real estate agent years ago. She asked me what house I was holding open. When I told her the address there was dead silence and a Huge GASP…. … Her real estate company had listed the house 8 years before and sold it to a nice couple. The couple moved in on a Saturday. The next day while the wife was at church, the husband had gone into the basement and shot himself to pieces with a double barrelled shotgun. The wife never went back, so my friend’s company cleaned the house up and resold it to another couple. Obviously all the agents in town had known about this except me! No wonder they were acting funny around me! It was a long, quiet, lonely, spooky 3 hour open house. I Couldn’t go anywhere near that basement – only one person came to look at the house that day (needless to say, I did not escort him into the basement) and low and behold he bought the house from me. YOU JUST NEVER KNOW!
UPDATE: To those of you who asked if this was disclosed to the Buyer – No, it was not. Because in the state of Maryland it is the Seller’s choice (not the listing broker or agent’s) whether to disclose or not. What is required in Maryland is Disclosure of “Material” and “Latent Defects” only. The Maryland Legislature/Law excludes Murder, Suicide, Violent death and the prescence of Aids from being “Material or Latent Defects”- this from Tom Backus & Tom Rhodden attornies with RGS Title in Silver Spring, Md. In this particular case my buyer purchased the house for an investment and has never lived in it.
