A Maine village is listed for sale, a Chicago stadium controversy that doesn’t involve the Bears, and was a Florida man kidnapped by dolphins and forced to build an underwater multifamily property made of coral? From the wild and wooly world of real estate, here are the Hits and Misses for the week of March 2-6.
Hit: Village for Sale. Anyone can buy a building, but in Maine you have the opportunity to buy a 40-acre, 21-building village for $6 million. The locality in question is Tuthill, which was started with a single antique shop in 1967 and expanded over time to include a Greek Revival-style home and a restored 1825 church. Real estate broker Anna Boucher admits the pricing on Tuthill is difficult to judge, noting, “It’s hard to take this property and compare it to something else. I think when you take into account all the buildings that are part of this package and the land that it sits on and where it sits in central Maine, I think that all plays into the price of it.” Any takers?
Miss: Digital Petulance. This week, Bill Pulte took to his personal X account to announce the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac will phase out their use of the artificial intelligence products offered by Anthropic, including the Claude platform. This was because President Trump ordered all federal agencies were to cease using Anthropic products because CEO Dario Amodei refused to allow the Department of Defense to use its technology for mass surveillance or autonomous armed drones. Trump called Anthropic a “radical left, woke company” and its executives “Leftwing nut jobs.” But if there was no problem in using the products for housing policy, why is Trump forcing Pulte’s agencies to jettison technology that works? The issue is between the company and the Pentagon, and this new ban could put the housing agencies at a disadvantage.
Miss: Chicago’s Other Stadium Controversy. The Chicago Bears aren’t the only team bedeviling the Windy City with stadium building shenanigans. A new $750 million, 22,000-seat stadium for the Chicago Fire, the city’s Major League Soccer team, is being planned in a section of the South Loop known as “The 78” adjacent to the Chicago River. While the developers claim it will create up to 15,000 new jobs and generate $8 billion in economic impact for the area, some community groups have complained they were denied input on the project. They launched a Community Benefits Agreement that calls for the developers to pledge affordable housing protections, local job commitments, transportation planning and environmental safeguards. Maybe Chicago needs to focus on creating something other than stadiums? It would certainly cause less headaches and ill will.
Hit: Doing a Very Good Deed. Kudos to Century 21 Real Estate LLC, which announced that the Century 21 System raised nearly $2.2 million last year for Easterseals. This brings the network’s 47-year commitment of support giving to Easterseals to over $143 million, which helps support the organization’s very important mission of improving the quality of life for people with disabilities, older adults, veterans, and their families nationwide. Keep up the good work, Century 21!
Hit: Read All About It. A shout out of congratulations goes to Paul Baird, co-founder of the iBuyer platform 1-800-BuyHouses, on the publication of his new book “The Perfect Cash Offer.” Baird’s book is aimed at home sellers who may be considering taking all-cash offers for their properties, and it goes into great detail on how this approach works. Baird also offers blunt warnings about some of the sketchier characters in the cash offer space and offers tips on how to identify them. He also details which sellers may not be the best candidates for cash offers. I reviewed Baird’s book earlier this week for The Epoch Times – you can read the review here – and I believe “The Perfect Cash Offer” is one of the most interesting and invigorating real estate books now in release.
Hit: A Sense of Porpoise. The Internet has no shortage of fake stories, but perhaps the funniest fraud online this week involved an alleged report from Florida’s Lee County Sheriff’s Office regarding Ricky James Hollowell, who was supposedly found frantic and soaking wet on the beach. According to the story, Hollowell claimed he was swimming off Fort Myers Beach when he was kidnapped by a gang of dolphins – yes, dolphins – and was taken underwater, where he was forced to construct a multilevel, multifamily structure made from coral. Hollowell said he was held against his will for three days, although he was not sure how he managed to breathe underwater for so long. Deputies found Hollowell drawing blueprints in the sand of his project that were described as “detailed enough to be concerning.” Oh, brother! To their credit, the Lee County Sheriff’s Office had a good laugh over the hoax, writing on their Facebook page: “While living in Lee County is paradise – we can confidently confirm the underwater real estate market has not been tapped into…yet. We checked with our newly implemented Underwater Construction Investigation Team and learned the dolphins of our oceans deny any involvement.”
Phil Hall is editor of Weekly Real Estate News. He can be reached at [email protected].
