Publications
Partners
- For more financial news, go to the News24 Business front page.
Do you secretly dream of being Walter White, the chemistry teacher-turned-drug lord from "Breaking Bad"? Now's your chance to own a luxury California home complete with meth lab — for sale at $1.55 million (just under R30 million).
The six-bedroom house in tony San Jose offers a "great location" with easy access to the freeway, according to a realtor's listing, which notes it affords more than 250 square metres of living space.
That might appeal to anyone needing an easy commute into Silicon Valley, with Apple's Cupertino campus just 20 minutes' drive, and Google's Mountain View home less than half an hour away.
It's in a quiet neighbourhood, part of a good school catchment area and has a backyard planted with orange, apple and lemon trees.
There are three-and-a-half bathrooms, a swimming pool, a luxury spa, garage parking for one car, solar panels and air conditioning throughout.
It also has a big patio that is just perfect for entertaining.
Oh, and a place you can cook up deadly and addictive illegal drugs.
"Great opportunity to own a large home on a large 6 000sqft lot," says the listing on property website Redfin before sheepishly noting: "Home has inactive Meth lab and meth contamination."
"Home has not been cleared of contamination and will be transferred to the new buyer in its current state."
So, a "fixer-upper" then?
The San Jose home's previous owner was Peter Karasev, the Los Angeles Times reported, who was arrested in March on suspicion of attacking electricity transformers.
A separate listing for the same property can be viewed at Keller Williams Realty.
As well as the meth lab, police searching his house also found a weapons stockpile including guns and "homemade liquid explosive, multiple energetic homemade destructive devices," according to a police press conference at the time.
Karasev, who the paper said lived there with his wife and three young children, has been hit with a raft of charges, including possession of a destructive device, igniting a destructive device and child endangerment.
For those who don't mind taking on a bit of a project, the $1.55 million price tag makes the house good value by California's expensive real estate standards.
A nearby four-bedroom house sold in May for $1.725 million.
