A Sydney property which housed a mummified corpse for at least ten years has sold at auction for a staggering $2.07 million, proving that not even a literal rotting corpse can keep house prices down. Around 200 people showed up to the auction over the weekend, either to place their own bids or simply to observe the insanity of Sydney’s housing market for themselves. In the end, the three-bedroom property sold for $270,000 above the $1.8 million reserve.
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Located in the suburb of Greenwich, the house was home to a hoarder named Bruce Roberts who died of a heart attack last year. A year later, the skeletal remains of Shane Snellman were found rolled up in a carpet in one of the property’s bedrooms by a cleaning crew. Police suspect Snellman was trying to rob the house, but Roberts took matters into his own hands and killed the intruder.
Local builder, Rob West, won the auction on behalf of an expat family living in Singapore and is weirdly chill about the whole thing. “Lots of people die in old houses … every house has a history and this one is just a bit more interesting,” he told News.com.au. That place is absolutely haunted.
People are covering their mouths as they walk through the property, asking “I wonder where the mummified body was?” pic.twitter.com/LfEtj6ZsLC
— Tawar Razaghi (@TawarRazaghi) August 25, 2018
While the long-term plan is to rip the property down and build a new one, it’s understood the client will likely ask West to renovate the home to rent it out in the interim.
One neighbour described Roberts as “a few sandwiches short of a picnic”. Do with that information what you will.
So if you were somehow planning to decrease the value of a property using an old dead body, you probably shouldn’t do that. Also, as you now see, it absolutely does not work.
