How Fannie -- and You -- Bought a Hapless House

Jay Jack of Avery Hess Realtors stands in front of a Fannie Mae home that is for sale -- at a significantly lower figure than what the company paid for it. (By Leah L. Jones For The Washington Post)

"It's kind of an ugly duckling," he says. "That's why it hasn't sold. It's not the homiest of places to walk into. It doesn't make you feel warm inside."

It presents itself well enough, with a brick face on the lower floor and newly painted wood siding above. Inside, it is plain, rather old-fashioned. The kitchen is cramped, and there is a ground-floor half-bath barely bigger than a violin case. The back yard is tiny.

But Jones, the most recent owner, had the house repainted in the past couple of years and added a new gas heating system. She upgraded the doors and windows. The house feels solid -- it has good bones, as they say in the business.

It is not a dump -- and the price is spectacular.

"REDUCED, REDUCED, DID I MENTION REDUCED!" says the real estate handout on the kitchen counter.

Jack says most of the visitors have been investors, waving cash and offering "significantly" less than the asking price.

The townhouse was built in 1972 by a company owned by Cecil Don Hylton, the founder of Dale City. It proved immediately enticing to a young Marine Corps lawyer named Kenneth B. Satlin. Satlin's mother had recently passed away, and he used his inheritance to snap up 16 properties in and around Dale City, including 14746 Barksdale.

He paid $23,100 for it. He recalls that his monthly mortgage and taxes came to $160, and he could rent it out for $220.

"For a kid who grew up in the projects of Brooklyn, hey, this was nice," he said.

Satlin had to sell in 1983 after he went through a divorce. The townhouse traded hands a couple of more times before winding up in 1993 with Jones, then known as Phyllis High Leigh. She paid $75,000 for it.

She lived there for five years and, along the way, got married. Jones and her husband moved to a new house and rented the townhouse on Barksdale. It was her main investment, and it proved a good one for a while. On Jan. 1, 2004, the county reassessed the townhouse at $129,400, and then the number jumped in one year to $173,100. By Jan. 1, 2007, the assessment had spiked to $238,400.

In the meantime, her marriage ended and she found herself raising three young children as a single mother. One day she received a letter from Countrywide, she said. The company pitched the merits of refinancing, and she decided to make the leap. In June 2006, she took out a new mortgage for the Barksdale house. She put some of the money, she said, into sprucing up the property, and used about 15 to 20 percent of the loan to help her start a new home-care business in addition to her full-time job in information technology.