Dirt alley San Francisco couple unknowingly bought resells to artist
By Andrea Nakano
A San Francisco couple thought they got a deal of a lifetime when they placed a bid on a property right next to their home. They bid $25,000 on a roughly $1 million home at a tax collector’s auction and won. They didn’t realize what they actually bought was a dirt alley.
JJ Hollingsworth and her husband were not the proud owners of an alley behind their home. They thought they were buying the duplex next door, but it just ended up being the strip of dirt between the two homes.
They had been trying to get the city to rescind the deal and get their money back with no luck. Then she heard from a potential buyer.
“He wrote me a letter and said I’m interested in buying this parcel,” Hollingsworth said. “I’m an artist.”
She didn’t take the letter seriously at first, but then the buyer called, asking for a meeting.
“When he explained that he was going to paint a quilt in the alley, that’s when I melted,” she said.
Hollingsworth then got an attorney to help her through the process. She had the buyers checked out, knowing they had a checkered past.
“They were tech bro pranksters and that kind of raised a little question mark, too,” she said. “Oh gosh, is this another prank?”
So far, it appears to be the real deal.
Hollingsworth paid $25,000 for the alley and she sold it for $26,000. She also had the attorney put in provisions to make sure she and her neighbors still had access to the alley. After months of agony and regret, they were elated to get rid of the property.
“It’s a great relief, you know,” Alemayehu Mergia said. “We were counting the days.”
“We got up out of our chairs and screamed and shouted,” Hollingsworth said. “Opened a bottle of champagne and I don’t remember much after that.”
The property was even listed on Zillow as sold. A one-bed, one-bathroom, 850-square-foot property for $26,000. Hollingsworth knows she should’ve read the fine print, but says it was misleading to put the address of the duplex on the documents for the sale.
“I think the city needs to learn a lesson,” she said. “I learned mine. The city needs to learn a lesson. You can’t put something up for sale with the wrong address on it. That’s wrong. That’s wrong. I don’t care how you describe it, you can’t put the wrong address.”
