This one will be scary…
Looooong ago. I sold a house to a couple relocating to Central Ohio from Cleveland. They wanted a new or newer house in an area where they knew no industry or commercial developments could upset their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, American Dream, etc.
Schools they wanted smaller… Their kids were coming from a much smaller high school than the majority of Central Ohio school districts offer. They really liked the Olentangy School District because it was so small… (remember I said this was long, long ago., Olentangy was a dinky school district then, kinda rural. It did not have the breadth of programs of other schools in the area but that is what they liked. ) We looked at homes in the Westerville and Dublin school districts as well initially but they thought the high schools in Dublin and Westerville were too large for their kids.
They made an offer and went in-contract on a new construction home in Sawmill Woods, in Powell, a lovely neighborhood. Then within days they got cold feet and backed out of the contract. Is Sawmill Woods a scary neighborhood? Something spooked them.
I don’t remember all that much about what it was but I think it was just not knowing what the retail developments on the land west of Sawmill would be… this house was not right on Sawmill so the fear was not having a strip mall right in their backyard. Remember this was long, long ago… lots of open land with signs for commercial development. There are stores there now. There was a fight about a Walmart not far away… but that was years in the future. That’s kind of what happens when you buy in an area that is not developed. They had the option of looking at homes in Upper Arlington, Worthington, where the area is all built up, but they wanted new or newer. It would get boring if I told you the nitty gritty details and of course there’s confidentiality.. they backed out of an accepted contract with a builder on a drop dead gorgeous home backing to a reserve.
We looked at many more homes. I found them a home in Wedgewood, backing to a ravine. Privacy to the back. No possibility of anything being built behind them. It was an existing home a few years old.
Of course if an alligator or snake escapes from the Columbus Zoo… it would head straight to their house… but no that is not what was scary about the Wedgewood neighborhood.
I went to the courthouse in Delaware to get a copy of the plat to make sure the land behind the Wedgewood house was truly a reserve (we barely had computers at the time, did not have access to all the mapping we have today.) I went to the courthouse and got the plat which showed a reserve. The plat map also showed a small family burial plot on the lot behind the house. Not on the lot they were buying, the itty bitty cemetary was on the land behind.
Long story short… I gave them the plat, it showed the burial plot. Two to three months after closing all hell broke loose with relocation, I had done a bad job for this family because they were very specific how important the surrounding area was to them. They wrote a nasty review of me to the relocation department. I was called on the carpet for not looking out for their interests. I sent the relocation department a copy of the plat map the family had when they wrote the offer on the house, showing there was a historic burial plot on the lot behind.
A few months later he lost his job and they called me to list the home. They were still upset about the burial plot on the lot behind their lot so we had a little screaming match (thus ‘The Scream’ a famous painting from Munch, used here for illustration, thanks to GeekPhilosophercom.) …Not blood curdling screams… but we were using our “outside voices.” When the screaming stopped we went through the papers they had from when they bought the house, including a plat map with the land behind showing the burial plot on the reserve.
The family who bought their house closed just a few days before Halloween (long, long ago.) The buyers said at closing their kids were thrilled about the burial plot on the lot behind the house… and they all lived happily ever after. The end.
Did you know Columbus (Christopher, the Italian explorer in the employ of the Spanish government that Columbus Ohio is named after…) introduced cows to the New World. According to Matt on his Bag Wine Ruminations blog’s Columbus Day post “Land D’oh”:
