Foreclosure seems to bring out the worst in people.
The
St. Petersburg Times reports that landlords, about to lose their property in foreclosure, often strip the unit bare before the banks take over:
Welcome to a dark corner of the foreclosure business: People who
lose their homes to foreclosure and in a pique of revenge strip the
homes before the bank takes them back.
Local experts estimate
such borderline looting occurs in roughly 20 percent of bank
repossessions. But foreclosures are such an explosive growth industry
in the Tampa Bay area -- hundreds of properties enter the mortgage
default pipeline each month -- that home stripping affects scores of
properties.
The story says the law is vague on what stuff is personal property and what is considered part of the house. The landlords appear to want to take anything that is not nailed down -- and some stuff that is:
But
there's no denying that many strip jobs are deliberately destructive.
Witness this single-story beige stucco house in St. Petersburg's
Northeast Park neighborhood. The old owner bought the house near the
peak of the market in 2005 for $152,800 and couldn't make the payments.
Neighbors were shocked last month when, as the bank zeroed in on
the house, the former owner leased a Bobcat excavator and uprooted the
wooden privacy fence and five palm trees. Postholes still litter the
yard.
That wasn't the end of it. The ex-owner dismantled and
removed the garage door and the double French doors in the rear,
leaving the home exposed to the elements. A piece of plywood now covers
the gap in the back.
I think the emergence of squatters - homeless people who...
