The Moat Next Door

More in the continuing saga of the empty house flipping next door.

I haven't written about our "neighbors" since January 14th (two entries) http://atresfreq.blogspot.com/2008/01/house-next-door-unplugged.html. Before that you can check out my earlier posts: http://atresfreq.blogspot.com/2007/07/house-3.html, http://atresfreq.blogspot.com/2007/07/house-next-door-2.html, and http://atresfreq.blogspot.com/2007/04/our-neighbors-house-in-middle-of.html.

Things don't seem to be improving for our poor hapless "investors" that purchased the house next door and thought they would hang some baubbles, double the price, and skip along down to the bank with their check. Fools. Dreamers and Fools is what this business attracts.

The house has sat idle for quite a while, with the realtor sign finally coming down at some point and no work activity. Some time in March, a new sign appeared in the front window that stated that the bank had moved to winterize the piping to "protect their investment". Seems that action was a little late. You generally do that at the beginning of winter, not at the end. The scary thing is that the house burst all its pipes last winter and the owner didn't even try to drain or prep the house for winter this year.

A couple of weekends ago, the son of the owner came out and was loading something into the back of a pickup with another guy. A couple of days after that, my wife called and told me that some workers showed up and came to our house and asked if they could use our electricity. Andrea told them no, and I was ready to go home and re-emphasize that if necessary. By the time I got home they had 6 pickup trucks in the yard with a generator chugging away somewhere. I left to go jogging about an hour later and I looked over and noticed that there was a trailer filled with cabinets, all bungied down. As I started running, it occurred to me that they were taking things out of the house, rather than fixing it up for sale. When I got back from my run, all the trucks were gone. I peeked in the windows and discovered that they had indeed taken all the cabinetry and sinks out of the kitchen and first floor.

A few days later, more trucks came and started removing carpet. Someone got stuck in the waterlogged front yard, and another neighbor helped pull them out. We have some nice new pretty ruts to look at, now.

A few weeks ago, while looking for a cat, I noticed that their pool equipment room had a foot or so of water in it. This little basementlike foundation had its little pool house on top that was removed and then a deck was put on top of it (which is not sealed to rain, I don't think). However, the stairs have always been open to rain and the foundation has a floor drain. That must be clogged with leaves. The last time I checked, this little room (after our 3" of rain this week) has 3' of water in it. I'm sure the heaters, filters, and pumps are ruined after spending 3 months underwater.

The pool is filling with leaves and looks like a giant glass of iced tea. I recently spotted a 12" across (the shell) snapping turtle in the pond. I'm guessing that the turtle fell in full-grown as opposed to getting this large by living his whole life in the pool.

There are some pretty daffodils still, missed by the "landscapers" whose main function seemed to have been to tear things out rather than planting anything. The grass looks surprisingly lush and I can't tell that there has been much damage from leaves choking anything out. The other side of the house away from us has deep ruts and big low spots from the construction over there, and there is still a lot of construction debris laying around. The "breezeway" that they installed from the house to the "guest house" or studio (whatever that box they built near the pool) has a large opening that would allow animals as big as a cat to get inside of the house. I wonder if anything has taken up residence in there.

We know they bought the house for a lot more than the person before, and we know that they were able to get a loan for even more than they paid for the house, probably to finance the improvements. After the freeze damage and the other problems, I'm sure they are thoroughly upside down on the house. They not only haven't paid any of their utility bills, but they also did not pay the last notorious contractors (the guys with the tricycle mower). So if the house happens to have any leins on it, it's in even worse shape than just trying to sell it.

The house wasn't ready for someone to buy and move in before this latest trend of tearing it up. Now it's in even worse shape. I don't expect to have new neighbors any time soon. I do wonder how long it will be before the house goes up for auction.

The House Next Door 2

House flippers are on crack.

The house next door was purchased for $225,000 in 1990 by the last person to live there more than a couple of years. They sold it for $380,000 in 2001 to the previous crazy owner, who moved in 6 months later, that summer.

This is a continuation of the story that I first wrote about in the posting "Flip That House" on April 29th. Here we are on July 7th and the situation isn't much different.

That big pile of trash outside the house, remember that? They started dumping bags of trash over it. The bags had dirty diapers in them and burst open. Imagine living next to a house where they thought it was OK to dump bag after bag of dirty diapers out on the driveway.

I finally got pissed off and called them. There was this strange little game of cat and mouse trying to contact the guy. The number that the "owner" had given me was a loan & real estate office. The guy I talked to didn't answer the phone and the guy that did insisted I tell him what I wanted to tell the other guy. The guy asked me if I wanted to sign a contract. What the hell does that even mean? I wouldn't tell him anything, and he kept explaining that he was this guy's partner and I could talk to him. Finally, after some frustration that I would not get to talk to the owner, I started telling his "partner" about the pile of poopy diapers. You never heard anybody backpedal so fast. Suddenly, he had nothing to do with that property and he was all about getting off the phone and stopping our fruitless discussion.

Last week or so, a new For Sale sign went up.

They had not finished this little breezeway connection between the master bedroom and the "Photography Studio" that the crazy Cuban had built. They paved the area below the causeway and ran water to the building. This was the infamous $20,000 work that would increase the value of the house to $1.1 million dollars! It's not done yet. The yard is about 2' tall, completely overgrown, and the dirty diapers are still there, rotting in the hot summer sun.

The realty company is one I've ever heard of before. I spoke to my friend that used to live in the house yesterday. He called the realtors to ask them what was going on. They told him that they wanted $1.2 million for the house (remember, they only paid $605,000 for it 6 months ago, and it's in worse shape than it was). He went "WHAT! You've got to be kidding!" and the realtor immediately said, "Well, we'd be willing to negotiate... we'd be willing to take off a lot." So my friend asked, "A million?"

He was told that the entire house would be redone and ready for sale by the 24th of July and asked if he wanted to see it and if he wanted to sign a contract. He told them he'd be willing to look at it after they finished the work.

Like I said, house flippers are on crack.