We’ve seen plenty of these kinds of articles and news reports about the foreclosure situation down in southern California, but I don’t think many people ever would have expected to see such a piece written about the Seattle area: Foreclosures mean work for “trash-out” specialists
Contractors who specialize in cleaning and maintaining the nation’s growing inventory of bank-owned properties are finding gold in the rising foreclosure rate.
They’re busy handling so-called “trash-out” projects to prepare these homes to sell for institutions often based far from the homes they’ve repossessed in foreclosure.
“It’s the busiest I’ve seen it in 25 years,” says Tim Rogers, owner of Tim Rogers Construction in Tacoma, which handles trash-out gigs in Pierce County and South King County. “There are so many jobs to deal with, I can hardly keep up.”
And on a related note, I thought this letter to the editor of the Tacoma News-Tribune was interesting:
Re: “Few in mood to buy a home” (TNT, 1-7).
My husband and I are fortunate enough to have the ability to buy a second home. What we have found is that all of the homes we looked into are short sales. This is a nightmare for buyers. You have to wait up to 60 days before you find out whether your offer is accepted.
We refuse to make a full-price offer on most of the homes we have seen. Most of these short sales are in major disrepair and would never sell at those prices in a normal market. The houses we have seen have been purposely destroyed by the owners taking out their anger at this whole mess.
…
We are very disenchanted with the whole house-buying market. The weather did not keep us from looking, but there is nothing new on the market, except short sales. This is why few are in the mood to buy a home, in my opinion.
Have those of you that are currently actively searching for a home noticed the same thing?
(Jane Hodges, Seattle Times, 01.17.2009)
(Sherri Rice, Tacoma News-Tribune, 01.18.2009)