San Francisco Mummy House Sold.

For many years I worked for a real estate broker who got listings fairly often on what are known in the business as ‘problem properties’, but nothing as strange as the Mummy House! Even though the sale of houses in San Francisco generate jaw-dropping commissions, I don’t envy the real estate agent who had the listing on this house. The Mummy House looked good on the outside, but inside it was another story. The house was occupied for decades by an eccentric old woman. The realtor who got the listing knew that he had a job on his hands as soon as he saw the place. The house was full of rats, mold, black widow spiders, and hundreds of bottles of the owner’s urine, which she chose to save for some reason. In addition, the mummified body of the owner herself was in the living room lying on a couch. The coroner estimated that she had been dead for at least 5 years. Even stranger – it appears that the woman’s daughter continued to live in the house for years after her mother’s death, making no effort to remove the corpse from the living room. Clearly, this was a ‘problem property.’

The Mummy House was listed for $928,000. There were multiple offers. It sold for $1,560,000; more than $500,000 over the list price. The mummy was removed from the property before the sale, but otherwise the house was delivered to the buyer AS-IS. The ad for this property said that the house was ‘unique’. I think that was a well-chosen word. ‘Unique’ means one-of-a-kind, and that does describe this listing. What are the odds of finding another house just like this one in San Francisco – or anywhere else for that matter? Mummy House.