Saaaay, you don't suppose ...

422 N. Maple Avenue, which was built sideways in 2009 on a long, narrow lot, sat unloved and unwanted from April 2019, when it started at $4.750, and had dropped all the way down to $4.295 by this past September when a contract was announced. Today it was reported closed at $4.640. That’s still less than the $4.850 these sellers paid in 2013, but a price war kicking things up $345K over ask? Wild.

Was the sudden appearance of multiple buyers attributable to COVID panic? Probably. Without, of course, implying anything improper, I’ll just note that the sellers have Chinese surnames. It’s impossible to think that anyone would brew up a deadly virus in a laboratory all the way across the world and bring it over here just to get bailed out of an unfortunate property purchase. Impossible, I say.

But it’s an ironic coincidence, no?