Ode to the Dirnberger House
15 Years of Observations from Across the Street

I live across from a house that I presume was one bank's "toxic asset."

These often are properties that a bank or mortgage company helped someone purchase during the booming real estate market of the last few years. When the boom soured, those individuals then defaulted on their obligations and the bank took possession of the property only to find out that it wasn't worth nearly the amount that had been loaned.

This is apparently one of those houses.

It's a big two-story brick four-square which sits on more than a half-acre property in the middle of Cape.

It's an old house. It was built over 100 years ago and has seen better days. We've always known it as the Dirnberger house although no Dirnberger's have lived there since we've been on the block.

When my wife and I moved into the neighborhood 15 years ago, it was home to a widow and her teenage children. She told us it had suffered a fire a couple years prior, but had been fixed back up. She kept it maintained as best as she could, but she was a widow with teenagers and it was a large property.

About a year later she moved away to California. One or two of her older children stayed behind living in the house. The upkeep, which hadn't been great while she was there, started to slip.

The house was put up for sale. I think she wanted around $130,000 in the mid-1990s. We don't know what it actually sold for. It was for sale for quite a while, so most likely not that.

We never actually met the family that eventually moved in. We heard he was a truck driver. We didn't know what she did, if anything. Someone who knew their name, told us to be wary of their teenage boys, but they never bothered us. They also didn't do much to help maintain the property. Its condition kept sliding.

We heard the family fell on hard times. A divorce was mentioned. Junk cluttered the dilapidated 2-car garage. You saw less and less of the boys who were now men. A gutter fell off and was left dangling on the side of the house for a month. Gravity finally finished the job. We saw fewer and fewer people at the house. A window was broken and stayed that way. The roof was starting to show serious problems. Water had to be getting into the house. That was not a good thing.

About a year went by, the house decaying faster and faster. A guy in an old pickup truck started hanging around. He put boxes of stuff in the house and piled junk in the back yard. He told neighbors he was watching the place. He would stay the night sometimes, but you never saw any lights on. The garage started leaning. An old truck showed up from somewhere and was parked strategically to prop it up.

A big construction Dumpster showed up one day and a small crew of workmen. They seemed to tolerate the guy who claimed he was the caretaker. The house got a new roof. Plaster and lathe and other assorted debris caused by the leaky roof was hauled out. The Dumpster was emptied once then brought back where it sat for months.

Signs of work on the house ceased. The caretaker did keep the lawn mowed better than the teenagers from the years before. His assortment of junk in the back yard grew. The garage seemed to lean a little more even with the truck as a crutch. Another window got broken and stayed broken.

One day the caretaker started cleaning up the yard. A neighbor said the police had been by. The garage got emptied and someone tore it down and put its remains in the Dumpster. The truck that had been holding it up was towed off. The Dumpster disappeared for good.

We saw the caretaker less and less, although his collection of boxes was still visible in the front window. Then one day they were gone.

Last fall a crew arrived and hauled off a couple truckloads of junk. We heard through the grapevine that the property had been foreclosed. A couple with four boys showed up and moved in. They seemed nice enough. The man said his uncle had bought it and was letting them have it if they fixed it up.

They were there for two or three weeks before they moved out one day. A neighbor said that the man's uncle wound up not buying the property.

The bank that owned the house quietly listed it with a realtor this past November. I figured this out in January when a sign appeared in the yard for a couple hours one weekend afternoon. And then it was gone.

I checked on the property. The listing price was amazing. $29,900. Had anyone from the bank that now owned it ever actually looked at the property? It made me wonder. The land alone was worth the price even in a depressed economy.

I started talking up the property with anyone who cared. Selfish reasons really. The house needed serious work and not to be just lived in as many of the previous owners had done. Some people like the idea of owning an old house, but not the reality. Old houses need care and feeding. I speak from experience.

A couple from Perryville who had renovated a house and were wanting to move to Cape were very interested.

But it was too late.

The property was already under contract and was "Sold in Office" on Feb 12. I've been told this wording often means a realtor has bought a property, knowing a good buy when they saw one. They knew it wasn't a "toxic asset."

The selling price was shown as a dollar. I've also been told that you see a dollar listed as the selling price of a building when the buyer wants to hide the true amount they paid. Usually they are planning on reselling the property.

I hope this is the case and that someone who respects old houses buys it and restores it.

The house deserves and needs some TLC.

The "Dirnberger" House on William Street in 1973.