Real LI

It was a very sad story: Police rescued a 64-year-old man who was buried for days under a four-foot pile of debris inside his Centerport house. Neighbors thought the owner was a nice man but were annoyed about the condition of the house with its "dilapidated siding, boarded windows and junk-filled lawn," as Newsday reported last December. The man had owned the house since 1974.

The house is now under contract. Public records show Nesconset-based Casaga Building Corp. bought the East Main Street house in March for $60,000. Totally renovated, the split level is listed on the Daniel Gale Sotheby's International Realty Web site for $499,000. For that, the buyers gets three bedrooms, 2-1/2 baths and everything from a tumbled marble bathroom to granite countertops in the kitchen to central air conditioning.