- cross-posted to:
- todayilearned@lemmit.online
- cross-posted to:
- todayilearned@lemmit.online
TIL that in 2006, a woman named Edith Macefield turned down a reported offer of $1 million to sell her 108-year-old farmhouse to make way for a commercial development in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Instead, the five-story project was built surrounding her house.
Why is this surprising? Today that house is worth a few million. People hold out all the time. The longer you wait, the more you rake in.
It’s surprising because it was not worth that at the time, and she knew they’d develop all around her, and she lived there. This wasn’t an investment property and she wasn’t holding out for more. She was just stubborn and didn’t want to move. It has sold a couple times since then for ~300k.
She died 2 years later. Assuming she was old and/or in poor health, I can absolutely understand not wanting to move. It’s especially stressful for the elderly who may have lived there for decades. And it’s not like she could take the money into the afterlife anyway.
Oh. That’s the story then. The story isn’t that she was offered a million and refused. That’s normal.
The story is that she sold it for $0.3 million later. That’s remarkable.
She died before it was sold.
Ballard is ridiculously far away from anything and should be its own city at this point. That $300k a a more realistic number.