Hat tip to SM who sent this along from Marilyn at the ocregister.com:
A two-story house on the Seacliff Golf Course in Huntington Beach is the worst example of “malicious vandalism” of a foreclosed home that a top Realtor for bank-owned properties says he’s ever seen in Orange County.
The home, at 6581 Racliffe Circle in the guard-gated The Peninsula at Seacliff community, went back to the bank at $1,782,214 at a foreclosure auction last August after no one bid on it.
The roughly 3,000-square foot house now is undergoing about $250,000 in repairs, says broker Tom Moon of Pacific Moon Real Estate, who has the listing.
Among the destruction: Chemicals and cement were poured down drains, a Jacuzzi was left running for what may have been months, with most walls in the house splattered in mold, and a floor caved in from the weight of a huge pile of wet clothes and other junk.
The day I went by, workers in special bodysuits and masks doing mold remediation would not allow us into the house for safety reasons. As is typical with some foreclosed homes that are found stripped and trashed, the Realtor and the bank cannot prove who did the damage. And with a lack of eyewitness accounts in these cases, police rarely get involved.
Poor banks… Scammed by scammers.
Not really a scam. A scam infers that one person was ripping somebody else off and taking the profit (basically, stealing, but the amount of value is stable). This was simply vandalism (that is, a net loss of value with nobody gaining).
Frankly, these people should be sent to jail. Problem is, proving they did it and not somebody else is neigh impossible without an eyewitness, even though it’s pretty damned obvious.
Another new low in this already sad state of lack of humanity. I hope no one is condoning this behavior as justified retribution. Whatever one thinks of the financial industry, stooping as low as these ‘homeowners’ did is simply criminal.
It would probably be a waste of police resources but with damages totaling a couple thousand dollars the owners did more damage to the bank then committing 10 bank robberies.
I think they’d probably deserve to be put through the interrogation inconvenience even if it doesn’t result in anything. There’s probably at least enough evidence to question the owners about this incident and they might just slip up in the interrogation. I don’t really want to live in a society where people start believing they can do whatever they want, laws be damned.
Obviously I’d rather see a thousand banking executives being prosecuted for various frauds, but taking justice into your own hands is a much bigger problem for society.
If the previous owners declare bankruptcy, can the bank sue them after the bankruptcy is complete, so they are on the hook for the $250,000? If the bankruptcy goes through before the time limitation for suing runs out of course.
For some reason when you mentioned the full on body suits, two things came to my mind:
1. They were extracting ET from the house
2. Homer Simpson was there
Whomever did all that to this house has some serious issues. I have the feeling the neighbors are probably glad to see them go. I’ve looked at many foreclosure homes with malicious damage, but nothing as severe as this.
P.S. Thanks for this blog, and all the articles and comments from the readers. Everything on this site was helpful to me as I just closed on my first home last December.
What seems to be missing from this is when the vandalism occurred. Did the bank get it from the former owners in this condition and try to auction it for $1.78M, or did this happen after the failed auction?
Wow,just wow! And I thought the foreclosed home JtR showed a couple months ago was bad. That was the house where the husband was a cop & the wife was a real estate agent, and they were arrested after they were foreclosed.
Well, whomever those people were, they sure knew what to do to destroy a house. This wasn’t a random act of violence, it was clearly calculated to do as much damage as possible. Especially when you bring water into the picture and know that insurance companies won’t touch mold claims.
And at this price point, the owners weren’t overextended subprime just out of the trailer park who never should have been given a loan in the first place.
These were people who got themselves into a 2 million dollar house and wanted to hurt their lender – badly. I wonder what the story is? (I’m sure nothing that justifies their behavior, but this is a lot of damage done in a high priced house which is somewhat unusual.)
That fake plant looks very healthy on the last picture. 🙂
Who ever done this to the house should be in jail.
OMG! That’s all I can say. What sick minded people who did this