Regards, Ivan
Posted on 11/23/2002 3:57:30 PM PST by MadIvan
THE house at 8427 Timken Street is a brown, nondescript example of the 1940s American style known as “throw ’em ups”. Yet this weekend bidders were frantically offering more than £1m for the suburban Detroit house said to be a childhood refuge for the rap star Eminem.
The vendor, Sebastian Lucido, is a local lawyer who bought the house from Eminem’s uncle, Todd Nelson, for £28,000 earlier this year. He realises that some of the bids on eBay, the internet auction site, are from over-excited youngsters with no bank accounts, but he expects to make a substantial profit when the auction closes in three weeks’ time.
Lucido says he is making unspecified “improvements” to the property, which is close to three motorways and the infamous 8 Mile ghetto border of Detroit. He is the latest of a new breed of speculators who are using the internet to sell undistinguished homes brushed, however tenuously, with celebrity.
Eminem claims to have lived in 20 homes and attended nearly as many schools during his peripatetic youth and, irritated by the decision of his uncle to cash in on his fame, has claimed he spent only a short time at Timken Street in his early teens. Nelson, however, said it was a vital refuge for the fatherless white boy who was constantly bullied by his mainly black classmates.
“This is where it all started for him,” said Nelson. “Without this house, the boy would be in jail or back in Missouri where he was born. It’s like those British castles that always tell you that Queen Elizabeth slept there — it’s a bit of Detroit history.”
Internet auctions, which are also run by firms such as Sotheby’s and Christie’s, are popular with pop culture fans who feel excluded by traditional sales. Items ranging from clothing to ramshackle homes now reach startling prices.
The internet auctioneers are considering how to weed out pranksters without dampening the market. Jennifer McKee, a home decorator, bought an anonymous country house in Oregon without realising it was the childhood abode of Kurt Cobain, the late rock star, and marketed it on the internet.
Bids ran into the millions, but when the auction closed the bidders vanished. “I suspect they were protesters, objecting to us trading on Cobain’s name,” said McKee. She now hopes to sell for £60,000.
Yet many homes that would otherwise be hard to sell are rescued and restored because of their celebrity links. Modest early homes of President George W Bush, the actress Lucille Ball and the rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix have all sold through the net at premiums.
Yet fame can also deter a buyer: a Florida businessman was set to buy a Miami property until he heard it had been owned by Sylvester Stallone. He pulled out, saying: “I do not need that kind of fan waking me up at dawn.”
Regards, Ivan
Current bid is $10,000,100.03
Yeah - right....
Same state, same occupation, but no relation.
More like peri-pathetic youth!
May he go the way of Tupac, et al!
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