Capitol Hill Seattle Blog brings us this sign of the times this morning:
A soured development project to build a multi-million dollar home on 10th Ave E took an even worse turn when a real estate agent discovered earlier this month that the three-story residence had been stripped of “numerous items” including all appliances and fixtures — even the garage door was missing.
According to a Seattle Police Department report, the property was foreclosed on “after the builder could not sell it.” The home is now for sale from Columbia State Bank, the lender that foreclosed on the property, for $1.5 million. It was listed for between $2.2 and $3.3 million while it was on the market.
An agent of the Columbia State Bank inspected the property on January 21 and found the building to be intact, according to the SPD report. The real estate agent discovered the property had been stripped on February 9. According to the report, the bank employee believes the items removed from the 10th Ave E home may be worth more than $20,000.
The gutting of and/or theft from foreclosed homes has been a growing problem in other parts of the country for some time now. From what I have seen and heard, this issue has not been very common to date here in the Seattle area.
However, with still-elevated unemployment, especially in the construction industry (i.e. – those who would know what to take and how to take it efficiently), is the problem of theft from vacant bank-owned homes going to get worse here? It seems likely.
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We need to start a new “index”.
I propose we call it the “stainless index”.
Go to craigslist, click on appliances for sale.
Type “stainless” into the search box.
Laugh.
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This has been going on for years in Nevada and Arizona. You don’t have to look much further then the previous owner/builder. There were thousands of cases where foreclosed homeowners took interior doors, lighting, shelving, toilets, vanities, virtually everything and placing these items in storage units with nice little yellow sticky notes labelling each item and where it goes in the home.
Then when the NEW owner purchases the property @ Auction, a “deal” comes along from the prior owner (or a friend) which is hard to pass up. The ones I read about were 5000.00 for the owners to get everything back including water heater being installed “just as it was.”
The seller is happy because they get 1 Final paycheck and the Buyer is VERY happy because he just bought the home at auction and can now have the investment brought back to a much higher value by just replacing all the items that were there 90 days ago.
And you just thought sticky notes were for office work.
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Remember this $1 million dollar theft:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/us/08strip.html
And last month Jim the Realtor featured the home:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VPRihdM4aI
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Sounds Like Detroit in the Emerald City
The empty homes in Detroit get gutted of their copper wiring and pipes too…you can imagine how it completely trashes the home. The cheapest fix is a bull dozer and start over.
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RE: softwarengineer @ 4 –
That’ll take care of the shadow inventory problem. Banks will of course be made whole on the losses by taxpayers. No need to waste time investigating vandalism or fraud, there are still a few honest people who can be made to foot the bill. What a country.
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RE: CCG @ 5 –
CCG,
How would taxpayers be footing the bill for this theft/vandalism? If I was a buyer of such a house, I would demand an additional discount on the sale price. Either the bank would have to bring the house up to speed or make the sale at the lower price.
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RE: TheHulk @ 6 – In Wayne County, the taxpayers are paying for the razing of the homes, or, alternatively, the homes are sold at a county auction where the past taxes are waived, plus future taxes are greatly reduced if the home is repaired or rebuilt.
Wayne County recognizes that homes might not be worth the tax liability.
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I went through this first hand. My wife and I viewed a home during an open house, it was in our price range, in the neighbor hood we wanted with amazing views. The kitchen was well done with high end Viking, sub zero and the like…about 20 to 30K of appliances. We were thinking about making offer when it was taken by the bank weeks later. We called our agent for a viewing again. To our suprise we got to the property and it was gutted, no appliances, no countertops, no CARPET! The guy took everything, door knobs included. By my estimation he robbed that bank twice.
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Americans have gone crazy. First borrowing through their nose without think twice. Then realize that the can’t make payments and there are no greater fools to pay more than what they paid. Then they want the government/tax payer and the banks to take losses and bail them out. If that does not work, then steal whatever left of value in the house….
In the processes the banks and the government have made fools of the public and bailed out the banks, transferred wealth from foolish middle class to rich bankers and wall street operatives. The great American capitalism and free market economy goes on. In the meanwhile, the corporations are busy outsourcing jobs to third world countries to maximize profits. Who wins in the game? Whose favor is this model of capitalism?
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By reals @ 9:
Save the finger pointing Sparky…
Greece, Spain, Ireland, Dubai, England, Canada, Iceland… China sitting on more bubbles than Don Ho…
I could go on…
But I’m running out of ellipses…
No need to single out a nationality. Everyone bought the Kool Aid, buyers, sellers, investors. There are few who didn’t partake and profit, at least peripherally, from the nonesense.
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It is huge here in Florida. Our Home Owners Assoc. foreclosed on a duplex; but they had to dump it because the cost to fix it was outrageous. Our HOA takes care of our lawns, roofs and external paint; so the unit looks impeccable from the outside. We’ll recover the owed dues when the bank finally sells (give it away).
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reals, you can add to that denial and refusal to take responsibilities, and can be seen in Scotts’ response to your post.
All those countries that followed us in the crisis did so because they were invested in bogus US funds.
Before you attempt to solve a problem, you need to clearly identify its source. This has nothing to do with finger pointing and everything to do with honesty and responsibilities.
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RE: The Danza @ 8 –
The Danza,
My wife and I looked at REO’s for a while with our realtor and I noticed some commonality with the properties, namely they had no appliances. (i.e. washer, dryer, refrigerator, dishwasher gone etc.) I asked a few people about this including our realtor and they explained that the appliances are hard assests that can be seized when the homeowner goes bankrupt. So this is why most REO’s have no appliances. They’re technically by definition not a part of the property itself. They’re an asset of the former homeowner. And at 20-30k in appliances I’m betting that they seized them. That said if the owner knew that piece of info they could have beat the bank to the punch and take them out before foreclosure. Either way don’t be surprised if their aren’t any appliances in a REO house. Kary might be able to shed more light on this (or set me straight.)
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RE: Tim McB @ 13 – A dishwasher would most likely be considered part of the property, but free standing items like stoves, refrigerators, washers and driers are not. The bank technically doesn’t have a claim to them.
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Most people will not break the law, but these folks are very angry at the system that they feel tricked them into buying RE that later is destroying them, and they see the system bailing out the folks seen as the culprits. The really sad thing is that “we” as a society are not taking stock of what happened and making the changes necessary to stop it from happening again. The next bubble is just around the corner and this will play out again, to a larger or smaller degree. There is no enlightenment.
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By Andre @ 12:
The point is that this was done on a worldwide scale, not just the U.S., hence the finger pointing comment. To blame this only on Americans or Wall Street is to be in denial of the full scope of the problem. As you said, if this problem is going to get solved, the problem needs to be understood.
Sorry to go so far off topic…
I wonder what the impact of the looting of foreclosed homes will have on home values of non-foreclosed homes. If a house gets trashed before going up for sale, it’s going to fetch a lower price. If this is widespread enough, would that further depress overall prices?
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Not noted, but the the thieves apparently walked off with this homes street appeal as well as the appliances.
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By Scott is Rad @ 10:
Agreed. This isn’t a story about any one nationality. It is a story about the way all people will collectively hang themselves if you give them enough rope.. errr, credit. I still can’t believe investment banks were allowed to get away with the CDO/mortgage-backed security scam.
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