Woebegone Town Wins Bid for Survival on EBay

Is it a California dream or a buyer’s nightmare?

A Southland businessman offered the high bid of $1.77 million Friday for Bridgeville, a hard-luck hamlet deep in the foggy forests of Humboldt County, marking the first time an entire town has gone for sale on EBay.

The seller and mystery buyer -- who has asked to remain anonymous for now -- must still enter into a contract, leaving both parties plenty of chances to back out.

“He wants to renovate the entire town,” said a delighted Elizabeth Lapple, who owns Bridgeville with her brother, Edward. “Can he still back out? Sure. Is it likely? No way.”

Whatever happens, the novel online auction triggered plenty of buzz: Offers flew in from around the globe. So did harebrained schemes, like the one from the Texan to turn the town into a brothel. Local real estate agents scoffed as bids on the 82 acres spiraled to more than double the asking price. NBC’s “Today” show went live at 4:30 a.m. from the little town’s pale-blue post office -- its only going concern. And in a driving rain, the 20 or so residents left in this has-been timber town started dreaming of better days.

There is no grocery store, no restaurant, no saloon, no library and no gas station. Houses, some utterly wrecked, others badly battered, are lined up in sad formation on muddy hillsides, while others lie boarded up alongside the burbling Van Duzen River.

Pitched on EBay as a promising would-be resort, escape or tax shelter, the town also includes a cemetery, historic bridge and backhoe -- for all the many fix-it tasks that lie ahead.

“If they want to make it a town again or a trailer park, people here will be jumping up and down to help,” said Jessie Wheeler, 59, whose grandparents George Henry and Jessie Helen Cox bought the town in 1912. “This used to be a Norman Rockwell town. We have hit bottom, and there is nowhere to go but up.”

Wheeler’s one hope is that the townspeople at least be considered for a spot in the “new” Bridgeville, but even she concedes that “if they tore down the houses and ran cattle in here, it would be better.”

Wanda Adams, 52, who wandered into the post office Friday to get her mail, agreed: “Bridgeville needs some new money, some new infusion of energy .... Things can’t get any worse.”

Located 260 miles north of San Francisco on a narrow highway that winds through the redwoods, the picturesque enclave is so hard-up that few residents have jobs. The property stagnated for four years on the conventional real estate market before the Lapple family turned to cyberspace.

So who would offer a small fortune for this, sight unseen? Plenty of people. The Lapple family received 240 online bids, from as far away as Iceland and Germany. Some bidders are wealthy urbanites eager to paint the blank canvas of Bridgeville with the broad brush of their own escapist fantasies.

“The baby boomers have had to live in that rat race, and they’re getting ready to retire,” said Realtor Denise Stuart, who will earn a 6% commission. “They can sell their homes” in Los Angeles or New York City, “come up here and almost buy a whole town for that.”

True to the Internet, there were also plenty of jokers and flakes among senders of the several thousand e-mails. Besides the proposed Town of Ill Repute, there was the woman who proposed a trade -- for a crystal necklace. And the smart aleck who asked, “How much for shipping?”

EBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove said it appears the town is the first ever sold on the site. If the deal goes through, it could also set a record for the priciest real estate transaction on EBay. (A Kentucky resort sold for $1.3 million two years ago.) The auction began Nov. 27 but the bidding frenzy only started in earnest Christmas Day, after media accounts lured thousands of hits.

Unlike other auctions on EBay, real estate transactions do not bind the seller and buyer to complete their deal. The Web site merely serves as a matchmaking service.

Under California law, the hard work of inspections and escrow has just begun. That means that, when the mystery mogul shows up in town to kick its proverbial tires, as he plans to do within the next two weeks, the deal could quickly fall apart.

And plenty of people around here think it might.

“Boy, they’re going to have buyer’s remorse,” said Eureka Realtor Karen Wasson, who had a client drive out to examine the Bridgeville property Tuesday.

Wasson’s clients had seen the town on the Multiple Listing Service -- or MLS -- the traditional outlet for real estate sales. The asking price: $775,000. But they told Wasson they wouldn’t pay a cent more than $500,000.

“All the roofs need to be replaced. There’s fungus and dry-rot everywhere they could see,” said Wasson.

George Rolff, a broker with Country Real Estate in Garberville who has sold Humboldt County real estate for three decades, called the bid “ridiculous.”

“It’s a quaint, picturesque, tumbling-down town on the edge of a river that’s eroding” in a region whose economy is “extremely depressed,” he said. “I’m sure it’s somebody’s imagination that’s running away with them.”

Towns, he added, are a tough sell.

The Lapples bought unincorporated Bridgeville in 1972 for $160,000. The early years were happy ones. Edward and his brother created a pirate radio station in a trailer where they played their own rock ‘n’ roll for their own makeshift hippie haven. But his brother died and his mother found caring for the town draining. When she died too, the task largely fell to Elizabeth, who lacked the resources and time to really fix things up.

The family owns the roads, the water system, the street lights and the town’s cluster of rentals. That translates into a fat bundle of disclosures that any buyer will have to review.

“It’s a Realtor’s nightmare,” Rolff said.

Even more prosperous towns in this part of the state have found buyers hard to come by. Take Myers Flat, south of Bridgeville. Situated on U.S. 101, it boasts a functioning saloon, inn and restaurant.

Bill Meagher, 77, owns all that -- more than half the town. But when he put it up for sale a decade ago, he got no serious takers. He also did his own survey of Bridgeville for his attorney in the 1970s, when the Lapples first tried to sell. “I told him the best thing you can do with Bridgeville is stay out of it,” he said.

Still, real estate values are largely defined by the amount a buyer will fork over, and in the go-go California market, that means out-of-towners often set the pace.

“It’s not the local people that make things go here,” said Meagher, a retired merchant seaman who moved north from Lomita three decades ago. “They bad-mouth everything. Then someone comes in from Los Angeles or San Francisco and grabs something and turns it into something real nice.”

Although such deals are rare, other towns have sold in their entirety or are on the block. Amboy, on historic Route 66 in the Mojave Desert, was recently listed at $1.9 million, down from an unofficial price of $5 million last year.

It boasts a working gas station, motel and cafe, where Harrison Ford sometimes flies in for hamburgers, as well as a church, a cluster of one-room bungalows and 690 acres -- eight times the size of Bridgeville.

Ads in the Wall Street Journal and the exclusive real estate magazine Christie’s Great Estates have generated plenty of interest, but the agent for the property, Rob McManus of San Marino, said a lightbulb went off when he heard about Bridgeville’s crazy bidding war.

“I’m toying with the idea,” he said. “It’s just whacked enough, and Amboy has enough going for it.... It might be worth examining.”