Kitchen Held Hostage

Written by Jim the Realtor

August 16, 2009

Hat tip to Chris for sending this along:

LINK TO ACTUAL CRAIGSLIST AD

25 Comments

  1. UCGal

    Wow… That’s all I have to say…
    Wow!!!

  2. bubblenerd

    GOOD!, admission of theft ready to be printed. The buyer of the home can contact Craigslist for the IP address of the post, contact the corresponding ISP for the registered account. File a small claims suit for $7,500 (max for small claims), you don’t even need a lawyer, everyone represents themselves. If the guy doesn’t show up, you win by default, if he does, good luck trying to defend theft he just admitted to.

    http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp/smallclaims/

  3. Anonymous

    This is why banks need to get the deadbeats out and get paying (market price) owners in asap.

  4. George

    I saw an ad a few weeks back where someone in Blossom Valley(high end estate homes west of Alpine) was selling high-end commercial grade stainless steel appliances that supposedly cost over $20,000 two years ago for $6,000. It smelled like a foreclosure looming… A few days later, the ad was removed by the seller…

  5. arizonadude

    what a dirtbag.

  6. Genius

    L M A O. Thanks for making me choke on my margarita.

  7. 3rd generation

    Makes you Proud to be an American, doesn’t it?

    Sorta like keeping interest rates at 0…..

    America, Turd World Nation of Nothing and Serial Nobodies.

  8. 3rd generation

    “If the guy doesn’t show up, you win by default, if he does, good luck trying to defend theft he just admitted to.”

    Good Luck collecting your judgement, Genius.

    I see IDIOTS Everywhere….

  9. Anonymous

    Maybe the guy is a carpenter and did custom cabinet work for the previous homeowner who defaulted and walked away and the carpenter was never paid?

    Then, the bank repossessed the house and sold it to a third party.

    So, the carpenter went back to the house before it was closed upon by the third party and took back his cabinets.

    If that is what happened, how is the carpenter supposed to get paid for the cabinets by the new owner, when the original owner walked away?

  10. Local Boy

    Unethical? Yes. Illegal? Not if they took it out of their own house prior to forclosure. Either way, this as a 100% DEADBEAT move.

  11. Sol

    I’m only surprised it took this long for something like this to show up on Craigs.

  12. Big Fan of JTR

    Well maybe this kitchen for sale and kitchen hostage stuff is legit but I doubt it. Here’s another jewel from Craigslist offering a full kitchen for $5400….this is a new kitchen with new appliances……if I had any sense that the bank cared about this kind of stuff I’d track it down….

    http://sandiego.craigslist.org/ssd/hsh/1326938874.html

    KITCHEN FOR SALE 11’X14’-Cabinets, Granite counter tops, appliances: White wood cabinets, brushed silver colored handles, Kohler sink, faucet-brushed stainless euro-style, Refrigerator-GE Profile ice/water in door, Dishwasher-KitchenAid Whisper Quite Ultra, Range-Kenmore self clean oven, 4 burner gas, Kenmore Microwave, Compactor-KitchenAid , Countertops& bar-sand colored . $5400.00.
    You remove-you haul.

  13. Myriad

    Jim, is this the beginning of ala carte pricing of homes in san diego? Maybe the next listing will be for roof tiles…

  14. bubblenerd

    “Good Luck collecting your judgement, Genius.”

    You got a point, even though he has a picture of the stolen cabinets installed at his house, collecting the judgment should be outright impossible. The court system is pretty much voluntary anyway, sorta like the penny tray at your convenience store.

    http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp/smallclaims/collect.htm

  15. Former RB Resident

    Kind of a dick move. I’ve said before the removal of appliances is legal in the right cicumstances. Cabinets? Not so much. Any videos out there of what the kitchen looked like at the hand-over? But, I don’t what this guy is thinking if he thinks the buyers still want this stuff. If this guy took the stove and the fridge, what do you think the odds are that the new people still need them and didn’t have the moving van stop at Lowe’s on the way to unload? Think they are still cooking with a fire in the back or using a block of ice to keep things cold? Nope, neither do I.

  16. bubblenerd

    Does one even need to go to court? Just call the police and report it as stolen property. Show the police your missing cabinets and the Craigslist ad showing where they are and the guy admitting to taking them.

  17. Erica Douglass

    “If the guy doesn’t show up, you win by default”

    Winning is the easy part. Collecting the judgment is the hard part.

    My dad hammered this point home to hundreds of clients in his office regularly (he’s an attorney.)

    -Erica

  18. Recent Buyer

    If it was the cabinet maker that took the cabinets back, they could still be sued, go to jail etc. The proper course of action would have been to file a mechanics lien on the property which has priority over any loans. Therefore protecting the cabinet maker in the event of foreclosure.

  19. George

    Mechanic’s liens DO NOT have priority over the 1st trust deed – when the lender foreclosed, the lien would be wiped out. The lienholder needs to sue to enforce the mechanic’s lien through his own foreclosure PRIOR to the lender’s action. Then the 1st TD holder would foreclose on change of ownership if the cabinet guy could not first sell the house to payoff the lender.

  20. sdbri

    In Korea, if you win a judgement and they don’t pay, they will send officers to your apartment and put auction labels on all valuables in your house. It is a crime to remove said labels, and if you don’t pay the settlement they will come back and collect these items to auction and pay off the winner. The whole process from lawsuit to auction takes about a year, and most of the time they pay.

  21. Susie

    Thanks for your comment, George. A mystery might have just been solved for me–or at least some light on something that I’ve wondered about for years.

    My late husband, was a finish carpenter who put a lien on a guy’s million-dollar home as he wasn’t paid for his finish work on that owner’s home. The owner was a well-known developer in the city. Of all the subs who worked on that guy’s home, he was the only one who took legal action and had a lawyer who represented him.

    What I do remember is the guy had 18 liens on his home (including ex-wives’ liens against him) which we verified through public record. Somehow my husband’s name was put at the top of the list. The lawyer told my husband that if the owner didn’t pay by that Friday, he would own that million-dollar home in the city’s premiere subdivision.

    With 5 minutes to go ’till the deadline, and the clock ticking, the lawyer called us to say he had the check in hand for the amount of the work that was billed, but never paid to my husband. No other subs were paid.

    We really didn’t want the house, my husband just wanted to be paid for his work. I’m sure I’m not explaining it the best (it happened back in the ’90s up in Oregon), but I do appreciate your comments, George.

  22. BSinOside

    Some unnecessary drama placing that ad I think.

    Instead of subjecting this transaction to the scrutiny of the whole CL community, couldn’t he just have left an anonymous note on the door of the actual residence? Either way, he would have to eventually deal in person with the owners. Or would he actually place the cabinets at a secret location only revealed after receiving the ransom money? Wow.

  23. BSinOside

    … besides, why would anyone assume the owners would even be looking on CL for their cabinets?

    Not like he has a lot of time to get their attention before they write it off and just order a new kitchen and bathroom.

  24. JK

    What happens if no one pays? Do they start shooting the appliances until their demands are met?

  25. BSinOside

    “Do they start shooting the appliances until their demands are met?”

    Or maybe they’ll just send a bloody cabinet door handle in the mail to put the pressure on.

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