Down here in Lee Co, the cops just busted 10 adults and 7 kids that were partying it up in a foreclosed home. Why trash your own house with a party when you can do it eslewhere?
Last year I was helping a co-worker house hunt, and we came upon one of the most heartbreaking and infuriating things I’ve ever personally witnessed.
When the owners of one house on the prospective list got foreclosed upon and evicted, they left their two Labradors locked up in the house. The Phoenix area has had such a high number of foreclosures the past few years that the crews assigned to go in don’t always get there promptly, sometimes taking weeks to come out and do an actual assessment.
The dogs apparently went mad with hunger and turned on each other. Both died. The volume of blood was pretty massive, to the point that not just the carpet but the concrete under it had to be replaced.
Despite these efforts, the place still reeked of death and decomposition weeks after the repairs had been made.
Needless to say, she didn’t buy that one. I’d have given a year off my life for five minutes with the previous owner.
My wife and I (very) briefly considered a foreclosed home when we were in the market a few years back. We looked at one house that had several broken windows. A large chunk was missing out of the concrete steps going up to the front door. Half of the garage door had been replaced with unpainted plywood. The agent showing it said that it wouldn’t open. My favorite feature was the oddly shaped dark stain next to one of the second floor windows that looked exactly like someone had thrown a beer bottle.
Me too. I just don’t understand the human race.
We managed a house with the tenants from hell for seven years. It got to the point where I could not walk down the street without being harassed by the tenants and the cops routinely stopped every car they saw pull out of the driveway.
After the house was sold, the new owner decided to manage it himself. He called us up three months later asking if we would do it again because he couldn’t deal with the tenants. We refused, and he disappeared. The house went into foreclosure, the furnace fell apart and the tenants were ordered to leave.
The saddest part was one tenant had three dogs. She left them there because her new apartment wouldn’t take dogs. We got animal control in the apartment four days later, and the place was a wreck. Dog shit everywhere, holes punched in the walls, evidence of fires in the kitchen and the toilets were all gone.
A friend bought the house at auction and fixed it up. The tenants tried to rent the apartments again, but they failed.
We did never find out what happened to the new owner.
When my husband and I were house hunting, one of the houses we looked at was … odd.
We were told that the man that lived there had fallen behind on his mortgage payments, so he got his out-of-state friend to buy the house. The man continued to live there, and payed his friend rent. Eventually, the man stopped paying rent. After months and months of trying to reach the guy, the friend finally flew into town to visit in person. The man was gone. The friend did soem investigating, and found that the utilities had been turned off months ago for lack of payment. The house still had all of the guys stuff in it, but the guy had disappeared.
Friend who owned the house was pissed. He flew back home, put the house on the market, and didn’t touch it after that. He was selling the house “as-is”, and refused to have anything to do with it.
By the time we looked at the house, it had been vacant for at least a year and a half (no one knows for sure exactly when the guy disappeared). The house is full of the guy’s stuff, including a fridge full of moldy food, and a washer full of mildewed clothes. The second creepiest part was the mountain of printers and printer parts we found in the attic. The creepist part was the partially packed suitcase and pile of clothes on his bed.
Did the tenant ever turn up?
I don’t know. We decided to pass on the house (aside from the weirdness, it was absolutely tiny and had no yard) and we never thought to ask about it later.
We bought a townhome last July, and since then 5 of the units in our subdivision have gone into foreclosure, two of which required a deputies eviction (interesting to watch on a Saturday while cooking breakfast). I make a point of pestering real estate agents and anyone else who’s not a potential buyer when they come to the units so that I can get inside and take a look at them. I have a vested interest in knowing those units remain saleable at their highest price possible, so I just ask. So far all of them are in good shape except for the one that’s been vacant longest. That one had those strips of mirror on the wall thing going on , and two of them came unglued and shattered on the hardwood floors.
The house wasn’t anywhere near the Bermuda Triangle, was it? That reads like some descriptions I’ve read of ships like the Mary Celeste where everybody inexplicably vanished…
Along these lines I’ve heard of owners just leaving all the windows and doors open (that is if they didn’t take the windows and doors out all together) to let wildlife come in trash the place.
I’m kind of glad you didn’t look under the bed… :eek:
You know, I can’t remember if we looked under the bed or not. I know when we checked out the basement we were half-certain we’d find his dead body down there.
Well, tales of foreclosure.
Years ago two friends of mine went off on their vacation. They were spelunkers and they were both (at the time) teachers, so they planned a nice month-long vacation. It was summer so they had their plants set out so neighbors could water them.
So, about two weeks into their vacation, the neighbor smelled something bad. She decided from the smell that instead of going on vacation they had murdered each other. She called the cops.
The fire department smashed its way into the house only to find the following: The electricity had been turned off and most of the smell was emanating from the freezer, which held the remains of a deer along with a lot of other meat. There was nothing they could do and they couldn’t get hold of my friends. The neighbors did what they could to nail up the smashed-in glass door and left it.
My friends were totally out of pocket. They returned home only to find that the house smelled–it smelled from a block away. Despite the plywood someone had broken in and stolen various things like their stereo and TVs and even their phones. Had gone through their clothes. Most of what was left was a total loss–clothes, draperies, sheets, towels, all had that stink.
It took them awhile to figure this out because the smell was really intense. They stayed with us and some other friends. Nobody could stand to be in there very long, except the thieves, apparently.
And…the power had been turned off in error. They had paid their bill.
They got a settlement from the power company and one from their insurance company but the house was a total loss. They walked away from it. Foreclosure, yep. Eventually somebody bought it, and the only thing they could do was tear it down.
There’s an office building there now.