In this video, Carter Banks walks through a mostly empty house:
This one wasn’t too hard to spot. He correctly conveyed it was in north Florida.
The main useful hints were in exterior images. At 0:19, you see that a row of fairly consistent houses is right across a striped, two-lane road:
At 0:06, we can see it’s on a long beach with three-story, multi-tenancy buildings just a few lots down, and in the very end of the view, a distance down a long and every-so-slightly-curved beach, are some taller structures:
At 0:15, we see that to the left and right of the home are a red and white roofs:
And at multiple points in the video, you can construct that the the roof will have a center section where it’s front-to-back depth is not as lenghty as the side sections.
It didn’t take much time to find it:
As usual, Carter gets his facts wrong. Let’s review his claims:
- The property is worth $6.6 million dollars: FAKE. The Walton County Appraiser’s market value for the house and land is $4.7 million, which seems generous given that it had a $3.7 million sale in 2017 and is in poor shape.
- Damaged in a 2014 storm: FAKE. He mentioned it was a tropical storm, so that implies a warm season storm with a deluge of rain and wind. The only major 2014 storm for this area was completely different, a January 2014 ice storm.
- Two lawyers lived there: TRUE. Yes, a lawyer couple from Birmingham resided there previously.
- The lawyer couple abandoned the house after the (phony) 2014 storm: FAKE. They sold it in 2017, and it was likely an ordinary sale. In a closet, you see a hanger with a cleaners name on it. It is not coincidental that this hanger is from a company in Birmingham. Also, a former owner’s name is on a mug. Finally, Google Maps Street View historic imagery suggests the house fell into disuse after 2017. The confluence of these facts suggests the home has not been used since its 2017 sale. The new (as of 2017) owners live in Kansas. I suspect that the new owners purchased the property mainly as an investment or for future use; they own two other properties in the same county under the same name.
- The lawyer couple died shortly after the (phony) 2014 storm: FAKE. The husband’s obituary says he died in October 2023. The wife appears to be enjoying a quiet life.
- The house is a mansion: FAKE. It’s only 3,764 square feet. That’s thousands of square feet less than a mansion.
- The house will be ripped down: POSSIBLY TRUE. It is true that signs in front of the house, which date back to at least August 2023, suggest major work will commence. Supporting the teardown hypothesis is the mold and interior damage, that a door facing the gulf was left open, that the house is in poor repair, and that the house is 40 years old.
Once again, Carter misrepresents the truth, dressing up what is simply a walkthrough of something super ordinary: a couple sold a house, moved out all the belongings they cared about, and an investor sat on it for a few years.