79. Buying This House Was His Biggest Mistake (Fatal Fixer Upper Enhanced Version)

Great Britain is covered with old houses.

That's just what happens when you have a country with a long, rich history, which was just as well for Alec Porter.

He was a businessman who had made his money from the restoration of old properties.

Old houses were his hobby when younger, but once he hit his 20s, he received some inheritance money.

This was not long after World War II, and so he used that money to start a home renovation business.

His plan was to scour Britain and buy a property to fix up.

He especially liked to buy old cottages that had good transport links nearby.

The old house would look quite beautiful by the time he was finished with it, and then he would sell it on for a much higher price than he bought it for.

By the 1960s, he was able to make a decent income from turning over such properties, but he'd always had a dream that one day he might discover the golden house, a place that was run down so badly that nobody wanted, that it was cheap enough to buy, but by the time he had finished with it, he could turn it into a goldmine.

That would be a wonderful boost because, for him, he was planning on taking early retirement in the year 1970.

Well, in 1969, he came across a property that took his breath away.

It was a very decent-sized farmhouse, which came with a staggering 26 acres of land, including woods and a small lake.

It would be like buying an estate.

There was something about this farmhouse that drew him in, and he knew that if he got the renovations right, this was the boost his retirement funds were crying out for.

So he made inquiries about the price and was shocked when the figure came back much lower than he expected.

This sent alarm bells going because this must mean there was a serious structural issue with the house, or perhaps the land itself was unsafe.

And so he asked the estate agent straight out, "Why the low price?" And they awkwardly admitted that, yes, there was a snag.

Many of the locals did not want to move into the house.

Why? They said it was haunted.

[eerie music] Now, you have to appreciate that Alec had worked for years in buying and selling homes, and so he had been told on quite a few occasions of buildings that were supposedly haunted, and he knew that, in his opinion, silly, superstitious ideas can genuinely influence some buyers.

I know this myself.

For a while, I worked at an estate agent showing people around houses, and I was always amazed at how many people brought their superstitious and magical thinking into choosing a house.

For example, once I was showing a house where the viewers were simply not keen on the house at all, and I thought, "Ah, crap, they're not gonna wanna buy this at all," until I opened the shed, and one of them looked in and said, I'm, I'm not joking, "Oh my goodness, look.

That's the exact same lawnmower as we have at home.

Dear, that's a sign this is the house for us." Since I was trying to sell the house, who was I to argue with their superstitious mindset? So Alec knew that people can be put off and on houses for all sorts of strange reasons.