Month: May 2024

Carter Banks (BigBankz) generally conveyed truthful information on a home he walked through:

Silent Hills Explorations entered this property a few days later:

I found it! The main clues were the light-colored circle drive, that the house has two 90-degree halves that rest on the circle drive, the position of a pool in the back, and a large lot.

A major clue that limited where it could be was this:

See “ALL TIME DETECTION, INC.”? That is an alarm-monitoring company in Port Chester, NY.

After spending a little time scanning neighborhoods that seem to fit the bill, peek-a-boo:

The home is indeed intended to be a teardown. It was purchased by owners who want to replace it with a different house. They applied for a demolition permit. After deliberation, the Scarsdale Committee for Historic Preservation in 2020 denied a demolition permit. Among the factors in denying demolition were that the home was designed by Julius Gregory, a noted architect for the Scarsdale, NY area.

The owners appealed to the local Board of Trustees and were again denied in 2021. They eventually won the right to demolish in a 2022 Westchester County Supreme Court. However, that board unanimously appealed the decision shortly afterwards. I do not have a read on the state of that appeal.

The story about the owner’s daughter committing suicide is true on its face, but it is not relevant to today. Also, the way Carter described it suggested that she mysteriously vanished. Rather, the New York Times conveys that she left the family’s New Hampshire vacation home one day at 10:30 AM, purchased a shotgun at 12:30 PM, and was found dead just inside the Maine border at 3 PM. Her father, the stockbroker, died of a heart attack at 54 the following year. Why this lacks much relevance: It happened over 80 years ago. The daughter died in 1941, and the father died in 1942.

Surprisingly, Carter understated the house’s value a bit! Zillow says it’s worth $8,385,600. (Check out that page! It has 2019 listing photos, showing when the house was occupied.)

What you just watched is a video of an intentionally neglected home that an owner wishes to tear down.

In this video, Carter Banks (BigBankz) walks through an empty house:

Yup, I found it. In various points in the video, you can see the street number, 3290:

Minimal Google searching uncovered it:

The back story is simple: Raymond H. Zimmerman lived here, and he died in 2021 at age 96. It appears he had a successful career with a defense contractor and then as an entrepreneur, was active in his church, married a person of good character, and had 4 children, 9 grandchildren, and 19 great grandchildren. Astoundingly, Carter characterizes this as a “crime family”!

A pervasive theme of Carter’s videos is to build intrigue by alleging a mysterious abandonment. This house is not abandoned. It was listed as a teardown in 2021, and it was sold just a few months after Raymond’s death. Its current owner likely hasn’t gotten around to doing the teardown.

While a company named Barbara’s Rescues and Boarding is associated with the property, this company may be fictitious. A Georgia corporation search does not turn up anything, there are scant references to it online, and Carter’s walkthrough video reveals no evidence of an animal-related operation.

The property is not worth even half of Carter’s alleged $2,000,000. Cobb County appraised it at $848,920, and Zillow pegs it at $767,200.

Finally, this place is hardly a mansion. At 6000-7000 square feet, it’s a very large house, but it’s at least 1,000 square feet too small to be considered a mansion.

You just watched a snoozer of a video: a 23-minute walkthrough of a cleared-out, teardown house.