August 24, 2005
Real Estate Market in D.C. 'White Hot'
When we first received a press release from one David Jenneson, Canadian writer, stating that he had plans to put the deed to the White House up for sale on Ebay, we thought, gee, this guy must be crazy. But sure enough, there it is, with the bid as of 2:45 p.m. today at around $15,000. With the estimated value at $106 million, seems like a steal to us.
So what's the story? Jenneson claims that while researching his new book, "Night of the Realtors," he stumbled upon an interesting piece of D.C. arcana: The deed to the White House was never signed nor recorded, and may never have existed in the first place. And because District code states that when two competing deeds for the same property exist, legal status is given to the earliest recorded one of the two, Jenneson has laid claim to the landmark himself and has placed his "property" on the open market.
Somehow, DCist suspects that this Ebay sale will not stand up in court. But as far as brilliant publicity stunts go (the winning bid also receives a free copy of Jenneson's book), we'll give this guy a well-deserved nod.

When you click on the link, it takes you to a page that says the listing has been removed. I guess Ebay didn't want to help someone get scammed out of thousands of dollars.
It's funny how much this scheme resembles that old "sell the Brooklyn Bridge to the tourist" con. Sometimes the classics are the best.
I talked to a surveyor friend of mine, he said there's no deed because all federal land (White House, Mall, Capitol etc) was set aside as an appropriation for government use and signed by George Washington. A Quit Claim deed, which is what this guy was selling, means "I'll sell you any rights I have to this property" but it's up to you to figure out what rights the guy had. In this case, nuttin. If you go to dcgis.dc.gov and click "Real Property" map, you can zoom into the White House and click the star, which is the the owner point. It says it's owned by United States of America. Funny idea though.
And according to the aforementioned DC map site, the land and buildings are worth $459 million. Good thing they don't pay taxes on it.