So a guy, an Austrian fellow named Andreas Gindelhuber, with apparent dreams of making money in real estate here in the United States, resorted to selling his home in exchange for an iPhone 6 last week.
He originally purchased the foreclosed 3-bedroom, 1.5-bath Detroit home (you probably already knew it was in Detroit) for $41,000 in April 2010, per Zillow.
Two weeks later, it was listed for rent at a seemingly reasonable $750 per month. After languishing on the market for two months, Gindelhuber lowered the rental price to $695 per month and finally found some tenants.
But the neighborhood where the home is located was hard hit by the housing crisis, prompting nearby residents to move out and leave their properties behind.
Eventually his tenants also headed for the exits, leaving the place vacant and in disrepair. He also had a $6,000 delinquent property tax bill to worry about, so he hired local real estate agent Larry Else to market the property.
It’s unclear how the property got so badly damaged, but it’s supposedly missing all its doors and windows, and also has extensive smoke damage. I’ve heard about houses getting set on fire in Detroit…
Anyway, it seemed no one wanted the thing, even for the price of FREE.
Still, Gindelhuber listed the badly damaged property for $5,000, hoping to get some interest from somewhere, hopefully.
Then reality set in, forcing him to lower the asking price twice in two months, first to $4,000 and then to $3,000.
Then His Real Estate Agent Got Creative
That still didn’t cut it, so Gindelhuber and Else brainstormed. At some point Else remembers Gindelhuber telling him he would trade the house for an iPhone 6 or a new iPad 32 GB.
Realizing it could be a great publicity stunt that would no doubt put Else’s name on the map, they decided to add the potential barter to the official listing.
It didn’t take long for news outlets to pick up on the story, including a local Fox affiliate and Yahoo!, then it went viral.
A short week or so later the property has been sold to a local man (who lives down the street) for an unknown price, but apparently less than $1,000. He plans to fix it up.
The funny part about the story is that Gindelhuber didn’t actually get his iPhone 6 or iPad in exchange for the sale.
But thanks to the Internet and its greatness, a man from Germany has offered to donate his brand new iPhone 6 to Gindelhuber.
The story also wound up in a German magazine, prompting the man to e-mail Else, claiming the story “touched me somehow.”
So it all worked out.