With
the foreclosure market what it has been in recent
years, we kept hearing horror stories about the insane things people do to
their homes when they face eviction.
So
we decided to ask: What are the craziest things people have done to destroy
their homes?
A
hint: Not even the kitchen sink is safe.
Rich
Urban of South Florida Investors buys damaged homes and flips them for a profit. He's seen some wacky stuff, and even offered a
tenant $500 to leave a property before completely destroying it. (The tenant,
who was living rent-free for more than two years after the landlord
defaulted on the mortgage, hired a handyman
to remove the kitchen cabinets and countertops so he could sell them, and sold
the home's appliances on Craigslist.... He saved a microwave so he could cook.)
Urban
recalls another disgruntled homeowner in a gated community in West Palm Beach
who threw his front door on the roof and hung a sign inviting squatters. The
neighbors were not amused.
But those aren't the craziest
things tenants and homeowners have done. Every real estate professional has a
horror story, some destructive way homes have been trashed. So we asked them:
"What is the worst thing you've seen done to a home?" From around the
country,
Realtors and investors weighed in
with their best -- or worst -- tales of homeowners gone wild:
1. Shower By Garden Hose
A homeowner in Northern Virginia
used a portable fire pit to cook on the hardwood floors and a neighbor's garden
hose for water through the window, says David Le, a Redfin real estate agent.
2. Booby-Trapped Doors
Alexis Moore, a broker in El
Dorado Hills, Calif., says she's seen unhinged interior doors that fall on
whoever touches them. Glass closet doors are rigged the same way so they break
when opened, spewing glass all over the room. Ceiling fans hang by wires and
are missing screws.
3. Not Even The Kitchen Sink Is
Safe
William Golightly of Live Oak,
Fla., is seeing granite and Corian countertops removed from upscale homes.
Homeowners and vandals also are ripping out kitchen cabinets, faucets and
copper plumbing.
4. Congealed Milk, Anyone?
New York associate broker Julie
Jacobs has seen refrigerators stocked with food, then turned off so it can rot.
The worst is dog poop, dirty diapers and trash left on purpose.
5. More Garden-Hose Tales
One homeowner put a garden hose
through the ceiling and left it running for days, says Karyn Anjali Glubis, a
broker associate in Tampa Bay.
6. Honey, Have You Seen The AC?
Broker Clarence Ford says vandals
usually steal HVAC units, furnaces and plumbing in high crime areas in Chicago,
leaving holes in the walls and gang graffiti to mark their territory. Candy
Miles-Croker says one of her Maryland properties was missing a furnace and when
her client inspected the electrical panel, he found cut wires. Another broker
reported air-conditioning compressors trashed or parts deliberately removed so
they're not operable.
7. Hey, Buddy, You Want To Buy A
Baseboard For Cheap?
The owner of a $5 million home in
Paradise Valley in Phoenix fell on hard times. After two years, the bank
foreclosed on him. A night or two before the foreclosure sale, he packed up the
house and took more than $1 million worth of items, including baseboards and
crown molding.
8. A New Twist On Stopped-Up
Plumbing
One Texas man was so mad at the
bank for foreclosing that he dumped concrete down the drains, punched holes in
the walls and pulled the porch down with his truck. The house was in such poor
condition, the city ripped it down, says Regina Stockwell of VIP Realty.
The Investing Answer: Get the
skinny via the inspection report before pouncing on a low-priced foreclosure.
Most badly damaged foreclosures are better left to investors who are used to
dealing with these properties.
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