An accused serial killer’s house attracts unwanted attention, a royal couple’s possible arrival created agita, and what does Iceland have that the U.S. doesn’t? Looking into the wild and wooly world of real estate, here are our Hits and Misses for this week.
Miss: Curiosity Seekers, Get Lost. The Village of Massapequa Park on New York’s Long Island has attracted waves of visitors eager to get a look at the home of Rex Heuermann, the architect who was arrested earlier this month for a series of murders that occurred in 2013. The disruptions created by these curiosity seekers has become so onerous that local police began ticketing drivers who block traffic by driving slowly past the Heuermann house, and Mayor Daniel Pearl has begun exploring the potential purchase of the property, which Zillow has estimated as being worth $635,000. Heuermann’s home is obviously not open to the public, but the site is clearly not a tourist attraction and the people crowding around the property really should be ashamed of themselves for creating havoc in that small village.
Miss: Harry and Meghan, Get Lost. In most wealthy communities, the NIMBY vibe comes from high-income folks who don’t want low-income households in their neighborhood. But in the swanky Hope Ranch enclave of Santa Barbara, California, the high-income crowd is doing the NIMBY routine to keep out an even higher-income household – specifically, Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle. A rumor that the royal couple was eyeballing a move to Hope Enclave nine months ago, but the New York Post reported this week that a Hope Ranch realtor is still getting calls from residents who are agitated that the couple and their extensive security team will become a disruptive presence in that quiet and secluded community where properties can cost $22.5 million – obviously, the residents will need a lot of quiet in order to count their money.
Hit: Give Peace a Chance. Score one for Iceland, which ranked first in the Institute for Economics and Peace’s 2023 Global Peace Index. The index is ranked by – the level of societal safety and security, the extent of ongoing domestic and international conflict, and the degree of militarization – and 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators ranging from the level of perceived criminality in society to the number of internal security officers and police per 100,000 people. In a listing of 163 nations that were judged as being the most peaceful on Earth, Canada ranked 11th, Australia was 22nd, the U.K. was 37th and the U.S. was 131st – which may seem a tad low, considering that China, with its growing militarization and ongoing genocide of the Uyghur Muslim population, came in 80th place. Afghanistan ranked last.
Hit: Preserving a Special Legacy. Kudos to the Friends of the Tanner House, a grass roots organization that has successfully coordinated the stabilization of the historic Henry O. Tanner House in North Philadelphia. The property was the childhood home of Henry Ossawa Tanner, the first Black American artist to gain international acclaim – and while the property is designated as a National Historic Landmark, it had been in disrepair for too many years and declared unsafe by the city government in 2021. The Philadelphia Inquirer has a great article this week that details how the Friends of the Tanner House partnered with municipal agencies and nonprofit organizations on successful fundraising efforts that are financing the stabilization work that is now underway. “Our work is far from done,” said Friends of Tanner House Co-Director Christopher R. Rogers. “But it’s important we name our benchmarks to inspire others that this is possible for our communities.”
Miss: Too Antiseptic for Comfort? Adam Neumann, the former CEO and co-founder of shared-workspace company WeWork, is having no luck selling his New York City triplex penthouse. He first listed it in 2020 for $37.5 million, but Realtor.com reported that he still has it on the market at a discounted $32 million. But perhaps the problem isn’t the price, but the interior design. Take a look at the residence’s rooms in the photos above and below – don’t they look like the rooms that Keir Dullea arrived at the end of “2001: A Space Odyssey”? The rest of the unit has the similar sterile-clean style – it looks like a great place to make a sci-film film, but would you really want to live there?
Photos courtesy Realtor.com.
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