Finding a property for $50,000 in Georgetown, Washington, where the median price is $1.6 million can be considered a major bargain, but what if that property is a crumbling wall?
Last month, a realtor at Keller Williams Capital Properties posted a listing for a property in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington D.C. for just $50,000. The photo featured in the listing showed what seemed to be a row house at the end of a block, but the price didn’t really make sense. Homes in the neighborhood sell for over $1.5 million, and this one was in a really nice area, just a 10-minute walk away from the riverfront and close to trendy shops and restaurants. A lot of people were excited to see a property they could actually afford to buy, but their hopes were crushed when they realized that the listing wasn’t for a home, but for the partial wall of one, and a crumbling wall at that…
Photo: Washington Post
“Own a piece of Georgetown,” the enticing listing read. “This wall located at 30 and M NW. The opportunities are limitless.”
Local man Allan Berger owns the now-famous Georgetown wall and claims the listing is no joke. He decided to put it on sale after getting into a dispute with the owner of the house that his wall is attached to. Apparently, their relationship started out cordially, but back in 2020, after the homeowner noticed that water was leaking into her home, things started going south. An engineer told her that a lack of upkeep of the south-side wall had caused the beams to become wet. After failing to convince Berger to fix his part of the wall, the owner of the house involved the D.C. Department of Buildings and Allan got fined $1,661 for improper upkeep, including peeling or chipping paint and holes or rotting materials.
“I can’t let the house fall down. I can’t let a dangerous wall go unabated,” Daniela Walls, the owner of the house, explained. “Everybody is working to resolve this, not because they have a vendetta against Allan. It’s because they want to solve a problem.”
Photo: The Washingtonian
That’s not how Allen Berger sees it, though. He accuses Walls of “stabbing him in the back,” and admits that the current situation is what prompted the sale of the property. Daniela actually offered to buy the section of the wall from him for its tax-assessed value of $600, but Berger decided he wanted more for it, so he went to a realtor to list it for $50,000 instead.
Walls can’t afford to pay that much for a part of her home’s wall that also requires about $25,000 in repairs, as well as thousands more to insure and maintain it. The only way to resolve the situation appears to be finding another buyer for the wall, but because if unusual circumstances and the ridiculously high price, that seems unlikely.
The real-estate agent told the Washington Post that about 12 people declared interest in Allan Berger’s wall, but after being told them they would need to get approval from the Old Georgetown Board for advertising or murals, they all decided it wasn’t worth it.
As for how Allan Berger ended up owning a wall attached to someone’s house, it turns out he inherited it from his father, who bought it many decades ago for pennies, just so he could say “Ah great, I own property in Georgetown”. When his father passed away, Allan inherited the bizarre property, and he kept it as a memory of his parent. Plus, it was cool to take a girl out on a date, show her the wall, and casually state that you own it.
