[quote=FlyerInHi]ucodegen, one of my friends grew messy and alcoholic. horrible turn to a very good life. And this guy doesn’t believe in depression and “bullshit crap” that people use to avoid personal responsibility.
I always keep my window shades open to keep the place nice and bright. I find dark places depressing.
Lot of studies on dark, messy, unhealthy environments. That matters a lot in northern climates where’s there not a lot of sunshine in the winter. In 1930s when urban planning took shape, architects wrote about the need for air and light.
I asked this question of a realtor friend. He said that 80% of the occupied homes he visits are below standards; and people know it because they apologize for the mess.
I once bought a hoarder’s home (built early 80s). It was empty when I got it, but you would not believe…. Everything had to be ripped out. When the kitchen cabinets were removed, you could see that roaches were living behind the cabinets. The walls were covered in roach shit. There were tons of mice droppings under the cabinets. If you leave food around, the bugs will come in[/quote]FIH, we bought houses like that in SD back in the ’80’s. Except in our case, the floors/carpets were covered in trash and junk to the point where one could barely make their way through the house on foot, the house had often been used by squatters for a period of time and the utilities were always turned off. We always had to make multiple trips to the dump upon COE because back then, the “seller” (HUD/VA) did absolutely nothing to the property. For example, if there was a plate of food and a glass of milk left on the counter or a 20+ lb turkey left in the (later) turned-off frig at the time of the (hurried) eviction of the occupants, it was often still there 6-12 months later, when the “winning” bidder took possession.
There were no laws back then to “protect” tenants from being evicted when a foreclosure was purchased at a trustee’s sale or reverted back to the beneficiary at the time of the sale. But the tenants were always noticed and fully expected they would have to move out due to the NOD and one or more DATED NOS’s hung on the front door over a period of months. 3+1 days after the trustee’s sale, any holdover tenants in the property were at the mercy of the new owner and the gubment (HUD/VA local “property mgrs”) always evicted them prior to placing the property on the sealed bid roster.
Luckily we had our own 1.5 ton full-size stepside pickup, ladders, scaffolding, a slew of power tools and garden tools, air mattresses and a “ghetto blaster” to listen to while we worked :=0
WE did end up purchasing these homes for a song and resold them for a profit after a lot of hard work in our “spare” time. They were all 4 bdrm, 2+ bath except one, which was 3/1.75.
However, in recent years, defaulting trustors in CA have been coddled and allowed to squat into oblivion by their defaulted-upon lenders as well as HUD/Frannie/VHA and their tenants now have “holdover rights” for a specified period of time AFTER the property has successfully been foreclosed upon. It appears that the (temporary) CA Civil Code section 2924.10 (as it applies to mod applications “in the works” at the time of an NOD filing) has been continued for yet another four years (now until 1/1/18).
For the life of me, I don’t understand why we have to coddle these folks for another four years while most of them owe back interest equivalent to $100K or more and are now paying on 40 yr (trial or “perm”) loan mods in which they will never be able to pay off even their back interest, much less any principle they “stole” out of it! I find it ridiculous that this section had to be extended by the Legislature when, by 1/1/14, the lenders could have gotten most or all their money out of the properties had they elected to timely foreclose at that point. Since these deadbeat underwater homedebtors are still so financially strapped, they can’t possibly maintain their property in any way, shape or form, causing it to slowly go to waste while their sorry a$$e$ pile up judgment and tax liens in their names because they now have “nothing to lose” :=0
Why can’t we go back to the ’90’s and prior and just make a clean sweep of timely foreclosures on everyone who is still behind on their payments (ummm … cuz they bought way too much house for themselves and/or turned their residence into their own personal ATM)? There are quite a few SS listings still around here and the vast majority of them are beyond filthy and haven’t been maintained in many years. Most of them are occupied by tenants who are paying “owners” who aren’t paying anything to keep the property …. not even their taxes in several years! Even when a SS listing is owner-occupied, it is typically full of trash and in horrible condition. These people don’t deserve to “own” real property … at all! They deserve to put down a humongous security deposit IF they can find a LL willing to give them a try and then LOSE IT ALL when they are timely evicted for nonpayment of rent. When they can’t find a willing LL anymore, they deserve to go find a well-used mobile home or RV which has been “donated” and find a place to park it and pay space rent for it. If that place is not in a CA coastal county, so be it. If they get evicted from their park due to nonpayment of space rent and not following the rules because they’re slovenly, so be it. They can find a homeless shelter to take them in (but will undoubtedly be “put to work” after checking in and getting their cots assigned, lol). Every non-disabled adult should be required to take personal responsibility for themselves but instead they’re treated like babies by their lenders (with a wink and a nod by the gubment).
I don’t feel this group needs to be given ~10 years worth of chances to get their sh!t together. They’re dragging down their neighborhoods at this very late date. G@d, I know of houses that have repeated city-fine liens for weeds/trash and every time the city pays to have it removed (at least from the front yard) the occupant just starts to pile up junk again and let the weeds grow. Why haven’t these properties been condemned by now? Vacating and boarding up these properties until they can be razed would be preferable to the sh!t we’re still looking at from the grossly incompetent mishandling of the aftermath of the “great recession.” These lots (unimproved, with nothing on them and utils brought to the curb) are worth $150K – $400K so I don’t know why we still need to play games with all these deadbeats. In LA County, in the cities of La Puente, El Monte and East LA, I noticed these same filthy longtime SS listings among an extraordinary dearth of SFR listings (way worse than SD County). Two of these listings had been “contingent” for 2 years or more! The ones in East LA had large lots, which, if unimproved (with utils at the curb), would have been worth over $650K due to their being zoned for multiple uses (incl comm’l). It’s absolutely unbelievable to me why this crap is still going on when many of these lots are worth MORE unimproved!
The above is all very unfair to the property owners surrounding these dilapidated eyesores … the ones who actually pay their bills on time and maintain their properties and there is no excuse for any of it at this (very) late date. Even the homeowners who want to have “pride” can’t because their property is only as good to a prospective buyer as the “lowest common denominator” on the block. Yes, I’m going to sit in judgment of these lazy opportunists because this BS has gone on much too long and is affecting everyone … including SFR inventory in a lot of zip codes. SD and LA Counties aren’t Detroit and never will be. As such, SoCal coastal county dwellers shouldn’t have to put up with this sh!t any longer. When are we going to be done??
