Quick contract

20 Langhorne Lane, priced at $5.495 million, contract in 7 days.

The listing says the house was built in 2016 and it probably was, although the land it sits on once belonged to the legendary General Soy Sauce, or Jianhua Tsoi, a Hong Kong acupuncturist/aspiring artist/aspiring land developer who partially built and then lost to foreclosure something like a dozen houses during the glory days of 2003-2007.

Tsoi’s funding came from one particular (now former) loan officer at Patriot Bank; that gentleman also funneled money to a couple of other builders in town, including one who had only just resumed his contracting business after being released from Otisville Prison, where he’d done a mere 6-year stint for mortgage fraud. One can only admire a banker willing to give felons a second chance, even if that generosity afterwards raised undoubtedly unfair questions about how much of the loan money actually made it to the builders in question.

But let bygones be bygones: Patriot foreclosed on all of those builders’ projects and has long since sold them off: 20 Langhorne, for instance, which was purchased by Tsoi with the bank’s money for $1.9 million in 2006, was sold to these owners for $1.1 in 2012.

And the entertaining world of real estate marches on.