The former child actress was gone. The felines too. The house had been aired out and de-scented with $200 worth of “Dumb Cat.” So where, Wallace Weisser wondered, were the bidders?
In retrospect, Weisser realized, he might have put too much faith in the whole “sell a house in five days by yourself” bit.
He arranged an unconventional auction of a house in Westville Sunday night. It sounded like a good idea at the time. As with the house itself, plans for the auction went off track.
Weisser (pictured eating a Stop & Shop take-out salad while awaiting bidders) is known in town as Wally The Flower Guy. He has sold roses from trucks and carts for decades. These days he has also been trying to help out a California friend with a loser investment.
In 2006 his friend bought an attractive three-story, four-bedroom wood-frame circa 1921 Colonial on middle-class Alden Avenue — a purchase that turned into, if not a nightmare, one heck of a headache.
The friend, Donald G. Malcolm Jr. of Santa Monica, California, didn’t exactly follow the teachings of Real Estate Speculation 101 when he bought 296 Alden for $310,000 in September of 2006.
According to Wiser, Malcolm had been corresponding with a New Haven woman on a movie website chat room. The woman, who as born in 1947, was a well-known child actress in the 1960s. (It’s true.) She appeared beside Peter Sellers (a leading part) and Robert DeNiro in major releases. She also had parts on Peyton Place and four episodes of Doctor Kildare, according to her Wikipedia entry.
The woman’s Hollywood career ended in 1972. She moved to New Haven in the 1980s, ran an art gallery for a while. She has been involved in local political activism.
According to Weisser, his California friend Malcolm was taken with the woman’s story, and he fell for her. He urged her to write a memoir. He bought the Alden Avenue house so she could live there to do the writing.
Malcolm did not return an email message seeking comment for this story. Weisser said his friend wants to save the story to write himself. The ex-child actress’s listed phone number is out of service; she couldn’t be reached for comment, either. (Her name is being withheld to protect her privacy.)
Weisser gives this account of what happened with the house: The woman moved in. She didn’t write the memoir. She brought in an ever-growing roster of stray cats — as well as people she knew who live on the margins. Soon the house was filled with junk brought in from the street, as well as some pungent odors and crawling beings.
The house became something of a drop-in center. Its condition deteriorated somewhat. Weisser eventually took the woman to court to evict her and everyone else from the premises. An eviction proceeding filed last December listed not just the woman but seven other people allegedly living there; the case was disposed of this May, according to the court record.
At that point Weisser had crews spend weeks cleaning the place. They cleared out all the furniture. Everything else, too. They touched up the paint. And they aired it out, for quite a while.
It took work. He spent $7,000 of Malcolm’s dough overall.
“It wasn’t just the cat filth” by any means, Weisser said. But there was quite a bit of cat odors to deal with.
“I spent $200 on this enzyme stuff,” Weisser said, pointing to a bottle of Dumb Cat spray. “This stuff is $20 a quart. And it’s guaranteed.”
Last weekend Weisser opened the cleansed beauty of a house (which sits on a double lot) to the public. He and Malcolm had an idea: Rather than hire a Realtor or list the property, they’d sell the house themselves. A friend pointed Weisser to a book about how to sell a house on your own in less than a week.
Weisser put up some flyers at Edge of the Woods and area houses of worship. He put signs by the sidewalk in front of the property announcing open inspection hours all day Saturday and Sunday, leading up to a public auction Sunday evening.
Visitors walked through the premises unaccompanied. It was in great shape, ready to be filled again with new people and new dreams.
Weisser was disappointed to hear one visitor (this reporter) remark on a lingering cat odor.
“It didn’t work?” he asked, referring to the Dumb Cat spray. “I was told by everyone else the smell gone. It actually eats whatever is left in the urine.”
Odor or not, few visitors expressed interest. One filled out a form offering $80,000. Weisser said Malcolm can’t accept less than $275,000. “I don’t think you could buy a house in the heart of the worst city in America for less than [$80,000],” he claimed. “I don’t think that you’d want to be walking your dog in that neighborhood.”
One potential bidder did show up Sunday night: Donald Frawley (pictured with Weisser), who lives on nearby Cleveland Road.
Weisser said he and Malcolm are looking for someone to live in the house, not flip it. Frawley said he was looking for an investment property to flip. Weisser kept the conversation going anyway. He mentioned the $275,000 bottom price, then suggested it might be flexible with enough cash up front.
After looking around, Frawley chose not to make an offer. He concluded the property still needs expensive work.
“I didn’t want to insult you guys by putting a number down there that’s not” anywhere near the requested $275,000 minimum, Frawley said.
He also said he’d prefer a more “legitimate” transaction process.
Frawley left. The auction was over.
“This auction was more like an experiment,” Weisser said. He concluded that he should have made more of an effort to follow all the suggestions in the advice book, put up more flyers, for instance. Plus, the book was more geared to rural communities, he said.
Next step? Weisser’s going the conventional route, he said, beginning with a traditional listing service.