I’m estranged from my brother and sister, for reasons. My brother still lives in our parents’ house, but my parents have been gone for years.
Yesterday, I used Google street view to look at the family home. Up until yesterday, it only showed the blurry image taken in 2009. Now it’s updated to show the current situation.
Good lord, the place is a hoarder’s house. The driveway is piled high with trash. I then go into satellite view, and I can see that the entire backyard is crammed with junk and trash. He had hoarding tendencies back when I lived in that home, just like my depression-era mom. My brother is now 70, and I’m 65. If he goes before me, I suppose I’m going to have to deal with the house.
This nightmarish thought kept me awake almost all last night. Aren’t there services that buy the whole place, contents and all, and deal with it? I live rather far away from my hometown, and this would be my preferred way of handling it.
Gah. I have rather a phobia of hoarder homes and this is starting to make me shaky and anxious.
Look into Estate Sale companies near the house. “Estate Sale” is really just a fancy way of saying “selling all your loved one’s crap”. They take care of cleaning everything up, auctioning off anything of value and disposing of the rest… for a fee of course.
For hoarder homes not attractive to “estate sale” companies that actually want some profit from the estates there are “junk removal” companies. Again, there is a fee, but they are wiling and able to take care of the entire mess for you.
From the few hoarder shows I’ve seen, the hauling away part isn’t that difficult; it’s getting the owner to let it be hauled away that is the real pain in the ass.
Had a similar situation with my Dad. My Wife and I once hired a 20 yard roll off dumpster to get some crap out of his house. That helped for a while…
When he died, we contacted a place that specifically advertised that ‘They buy ugly houses’. They did, and IMHO was a good deal for all around. There was no way in hell that I and my brother had time to get the place back in decent shape. It took about a week for us to just go though his saved paper work and stuff.
Dog stained carpet, cigar stained walls and bad furniture just stayed behind. It was a relief.
Keep in mind that even if you clear out the junk, the house is likely going to be in bad shape. It’s going to take a lot more than just giving it a good cleaning. There are likely to be significant maintenance issues to deal with. After removing everything, selling the house as-is to an investor or flipper at a discount may be the best option.
I’d just like a service that bought the whole mess, house and contents, for a flat price. They can keep anything they find in there, even if it’s stashed cash or gold bars (which is a distinct possibility with my brother). I don’t want to have to go down and supervise the de-junking of an entire houseful, garageful and yardful of crap. Too many painful memories in a neighbrhood I was glad to get shot of forty years ago.
Then they can sell the emptied house for anything they can get for it.
Is this something that the “We Buy Ugly Houses” folks do?
There are people who will buy junk/hoarder/teardown houses and deal with the cleanup and fixup. Depending on the value of the land where the house is, you may or may not make any money by selling it to them. I think when it comes time, contact some local realtors in the area with a frank description of the issue and see what they suggest.
and teelabrown, the ‘We buy ugly houses’ is, I think more of a local thing to where the house was located (Denver). We, well ‘wanted’ to look through of some of his stuff before we turned it over. Old pictures, old business records and bullshit.
Nothing of any real value was found. I did get his computer out of there though, rebuilt it and used it. Along with any stored data on disk. I would make sure to do that.
Frankly it sucked to do, especially in a dog pee stained house in the middle of summer. The stench drove me out of there, but I was trying to organize boxes of stuff.
I only lived 100 miles away, so that made it a bit easier.
Someone in my neighborhood just sold a house to a “We buy ugly houses” place, here in NE Ohio. I was curious about the property so I did some digging and that’s how I figured it out. There was never a Realtor involved, the guy must have just called and made a deal. It sold for $90k.
The house didn’t have any outward signs of being a hoarder house, it is just run down (a 90yo man lived there, and it was owned by his 70yo son). Houses in this neighborhood are selling for about $200k.
From what I could tell from the “ugly house” company site, and the buyer’s info, the buyers are kinda like franchisers and they are all over the US. The website for the company is literally https://www.webuyuglyhouses.com/ Check to see if they serve your brother’s area.
The house will be yours only if the current owner leaves it to you in his/her will. Are you in your brother’s will??? Even if you are, don’t worry. You don’t have to accept it.
This is true but it’s very likely (not for sure, so do some diligence) that even a house full of junk and in significant disrepair is worth something, and can probably be disposed of without a ton of personally invested effort or presence.
Knowing my brother, there’s no will. He hated paying for things like legal advice, accounting advice, plumbers, mechanics, etc. and would always try to find a free or under the table way of doing any of those things.
If push comes to shove you can hire a demo company to just come in with a front loader and a hugeass dumpster, knock the whole thing down and shovel it all up and take it to the dump leaving nothing but a nice bare lot. If it’s in a decent area of whatever town it’s in, selling the lot should be enough to cover the demo costs and put a bit in your pocket. Portland is getting to the point where ANY bare lot is worth up to $250-350K depending on location–and demolition is surprisingly affordable when you don’t give a shit about any of the stuff in the house and yard.
Whose name or names are on the deed? Is it still in your parents names and he is just living there or did the deed transfer to him? If you don’t know, you can typically go to the website of the tax assessor for the county and lookup the house by address to find the owner info.
Then I fear this house will likely not be in the best of shape. It might well end up a money pit rather than any kind of asset. Unless it’s in coastal California or somewhere else where the land is worth far more than the property.
I looked at Los Angeles County’s assessor’s office records online. They don’t list the owner, but they showed a title change in 1983, and no change since. That’s the year my mom did her estate planning and formed a trust, and ownership of the house was changed to the name of the trust. So the house is still owned by her trust, with my brother still operating as trustee, I suppose. My mom died fifteen years ago.
Some of the replies here give me comfort. Also I found a website for a company located in Los Angeles County which specifically states that they buy hoarder houses and take care of everything. I’ve bookmarked it.
The house is in Los Angeles County? In that case, I agree that the house is probably desirable as a tear-down, meaning even if the house is in perfect condition but older, someone will buy it just to tear down and build a mcmansion. And full of crap, it’s almost certainly worth quite a bit for the land.