Real Estate News & Market Insights:
- In 2014, Derek and Maria Broaddus were targeted by anonymous letters from The Watcher, prompting fear and a sale.
- Broaddus sued prior owners; suits were dismissed; police, FBI, and private investigators never identified the writer; female DNA appeared on envelopes.
- Barbosa lowered the price below $1 million and required buyers to sign nondisclosure agreements documenting every ominous incident.
- The house sold to a local buyer who ignored the hype; the case remains unsolved and the buyer still lives there.
David Barbosa is one of the most prestigious brokers in the idyllic suburb of Westfield, NJ, with regular listings valued in the multimillions.
But in 2019, he was handed the strangest listing he’d ever had: a gorgeous 1905 Dutch Colonial at 657 Boulevard that had been at the center of one of the town’s most chilling mysteries.
The trouble began in 2014 when Derek and Maria Broaddus bought the $1.35 million six-bedroom dream home, only to be targeted by a series of anonymous, blood-curdling letters from a stalker calling themselves “The Watcher.”
Eight months later, fearing for their safety, the couple put the house on the market for a modest 10% appreciation. But even after several price cuts, the home wouldn’t move.
The home languished on the market for five years, and by May 2019, it landed on Barbosa’s desk.
“We had to find a buyer who didn’t care about the story,” Barbosa tells Realtor.com® exclusively.
The struggle to offload ‘The Watcher’ house
The couple struggled for years to offload the home at close to its worth. Stymied, the couple finally sued the previous owners, claiming they had also received a note from The Watcher and failed to disclose it. The former owners denied that and filed a counterclaim for defamation.
Both lawsuits were dismissed in 2017. According to the judge in the case, the Broaddus couple thought the letters were being written by someone who was “mentally unbalanced.”
The couple resorted to renting out the property for $5,000 a month while periodically retesting the market. In May 2019, the troubled listing’s luck changed when it was given to Barbosa, owner of David Realty Group.
This time, within a few months, the house was sold for $959,000, a steep discount off the original sale price.
The buyer was a man already in town who was familiar with the sinister goings-on.
“He knew and didn’t care,” says Barbosa. “He thought it was a great deal.”
Property records show that the buyers were a married couple who have thus far declined to speak to the press.
The agent says the house “has never had a problem since,” in terms of strange letters.
The case has not been solved. Police, FBI, and even private investigators looked into several neighbors and other leads but could never discover the identity of The Watcher.
According to New York Magazine’s The Cut, female DNA was found on several of the envelopes, but that still did not lead to a suspect.
How to sell an infamous house
The subsequent Netflix series based on the case had not yet dropped when Barbosa took over the listing, but the bizarre mystery of “The Watcher” had already made international headlines.
In fact, the story had reaped so much media attention that it inspired a 2017 Australian horror film called “3rd Night,” starring Naomi Watts, who went on to star in the Ryan Murphy–directed Netflix series. (The series was filmed in Westchester County, NY, not in Westfield.)
“We have no idea why they targeted that family,” says Barbosa of the letter writer. The owners “rented out the house for a year, and the renter got nothing either.” (In 2017, NJ.com identified the renter as a man named Chris who appeared unfazed by the story of strange missives, saying, “That’s not my issue.”)
Asked whether he thinks the writer was targeting the family specifically and not the house, Barbosa says, “That’s the only conclusion you can come up with, really.”
While there was speculation that the owners were sending the letters to themselves as part of a hoax that would allow them to split the home’s land into two lots, there was nothing to back up those theories. The family did indeed once go before the planning council to get permission for the split, but did not receive it.
Barbosa says he was well aware of what was happening with the house when he agreed to take on the listing.
“The sellers had it listed with another brokerage,” he says. “The largest one in town. They couldn’t sell it.”
The first thing the new broker did was “massage the price,” bringing it a smidge below $1 million.
But taking on the house meant more than nice staging and a good price. Every potential buyer was also shuttled to a lawyer.
Interested parties had to read a nondisclosure agreement that catalogued every single ominous thing that had happened.
“If you still wanted to buy it after that, then you’re good,” says the broker.
Given that the sellers themselves had sued the former residents for not disclosing their supposed one run-in with The Watcher—having every potential buyer know ahead of time what had gone on was solid legal protection.
After reading the detailed elucidation of events, Barbosa says some would-be buyers were scared off.
“One guy went down [to the lawyer’s office] and said, ‘I’m not buying this house. This is crazy.'”
Barbosa says he himself was not allowed to read the documented rundown of happenings, but he suspects that more went on than the public knows about.
“Like I said, one guy walked out of there and was like, ‘Holy cow, no way am I buying this house.'”
However, the eventual buyer wasn’t perturbed.
“He looked at [the NDA], read everything, and just thought, ‘Wow, we’re getting a great house on a great street. I just don’t believe the hype.'”
The buyer still lives in the home to this day, despite occasional crime aficionados walking up and “knocking on the door,” says the agent.
Westfield, NJ: A red-hot market for million-dollar homes
As for Westfield in general, he says things have softened on the high end. However, it’s still a seller’s market in the $800,000 to $1.5 million range, where homes are snapped up quickly in bidding wars.
He says the town’s appeal comes down to its beautiful historic mansions, its convenient location with train service to New Jersey and New York, top schools, easy access to highways, and a bustling shopping district.
“Westfield fits all those boxes,” he says.
In retrospect, the buyer of The Watcher house seems like a low-key genius who scored a prime dwelling in a hot suburb for well under market value.
“He got an amazing deal,” says Barbosa. “He knew it. The guy was smart.
“Isn’t real estate about chances, anyway?” he concludes. “The ones who make the money in real estate are the ones who take a chance.”
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