Yankee Ingenuity

[don]

Nice Home. Where’s the Rest of It?

that's right, the tree is still available. Remember, you have to dig it out, not me.

By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/bu...l?ref=business

The author of the Craigslist posting in Las Vegas made no effort to disguise his or her intentions.,

“Stripping House — Before Foreclosure,” the ad declared, offering potential buyers the cabinets and countertops, the sinks and toilets, the doors, the appliances, the sprinklers. Even the palm and citrus trees in the yard were for sale.

In Nevada and other states hit hard by the housing crisis, stripping fixtures and appliances from homes in foreclosure has become commonplace.
Craigslist, the Web site for classified ads, functions as a bazaar where stripped items are sold openly. Often, the stripping is not done by strangers. It is done by the owner, just before the bank forecloses on the mortgage and takes the property back.

If that seems like a situation tailor-made for the police, it is — at least in Arizona, where the Federal Bureau of Investigation has used Craigslist to arrest a handful of people for stripping homes and trying to sell the goods, charging them with felonies under a state fraud statute.

In other parts of the country, however, the police are stymied. As it turns out, several troubled states, like Nevada, have no specific criminal prohibition against stripping fixtures from a property before foreclosure.
Mortgage contracts do prohibit such behavior, requiring that homes be kept in good order. But violating those provisions is a civil matter, not a criminal offense.

“If the homeowner sells the components to the house while they still own the house, that’s not a crime,” said Officer Bill Cassell, a spokesman for the Las Vegas police.

So too in Florida, another state swamped by foreclosures. Several prosecutors and police agencies there said that unless laws were modified, such behavior would have to be sorted out between borrower and lender in civil court.

Even in Arizona, which has an applicable law and where thousands of homes have been stripped, convictions are rare. There, to make a charge stick, law enforcement basically has to catch people in the act, said Julie Halferty, a special agent with the F.B.I. in Phoenix and head of a mortgage fraud task force.

“This window of time can be quite short,” Ms. Halferty said in an e-mail message. “Once homes are abandoned, arguably any number of people can get access and strip the fixtures.”


The key to reducing the number of homes being stripped, experts suggest, lies not with the law but with lenders.


Only the Bankster's Shadow knows for sure...;)

[audrey_girl]

Re: Yankee Ingenuity

as usual don - your post stuns me

[rabot10]

Re: Yankee Ingenuity

I would have to agree with that Girl

[don]

Re: Yankee Ingenuity

Air Conditioning? Of Course it has A/C


And a Breakfast Bar, for family eating before work and school






You Would have Loved the Front Doors. The Previous Owners Did.


The House Does have Some Electrical Upgrades



And the Master Bath Comes Prepped For A Jacuzzi



Now Remember, I Told You the Kitchen Needs Some TLC!



And Some of the Rooms seem to need Electrical Wiring. I'm not sure where it went.

[stetts]

Wonder why...

...they left the faucets and spout in the jacuzzi? Odd.
Merry Christmas. Stetts

[pianodoctor]

Re: Yankee Ingenuity

Check out this house stripping fiasco. This is very close to where I live:

http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/en...d8b5c42a1.html


"Former 'Monster House" Owner Charged With Theft

By SARAH GORDON - sgordon@nctimes.com | Posted: Tuesday, November 10, 2009 7:00 pm


ENCINITAS ---- The former owner of a 16,000-square-foot Olivenhain mansion that neighbors called the "monster house" has been charged with stealing $1 million worth of fixtures, appliances and doors from the bank-foreclosed home.
The District Attorney's office on Monday sent Suzy Brown, 45, a letter informing her she has been charged with felony grand theft and felony vandalism, Deputy District Attorney Robert Eacret said.
Brown was not arrested, Eacret said. She is scheduled to be arraigned on the charges Dec. 1 at the Vista courthouse. Bail could be ordered at that hearing, the prosecutor said.
Chevy Chase Bank, which owns the home at 3225 Fortuna Ranch Road, reported March 26 that someone had taken about $250,000 in fixtures, appliances, doors, toilets and equipment from the home, but the loss was later estimated at closer to $1 million, Encinitas sheriff's Detective Steven Ashkar said earlier this year. Brown had moved out around March 22, and the theft was not noticed until several days later, Ashkar said.
Missing from the house were expensive fixtures, including toilets, doors and windows, many of them imported antiques from as far away as Egypt.
On Tuesday, both the prosecutor and Ashkar declined to discuss the evidence pointing to Brown. But Ashkar said that Brown had returned most of the items removed from the house to the bank and kept in contact with detectives throughout their inquiry.
An attorney who represented Brown during the investigation, Bob Grimes, also said Brown had returned property.
"I am aware that she had the ability to return certain items to the bank and to the house, and to the best of my understanding, she returned everything that was in her power to return," Grimes said.
In an April interview, Brown said she had no idea who ransacked the vacant home, but she was not surprised thieves had visited.
"I warned (neighbors) that if they chased me out of town, the house was going to stay," Brown said. "I warned them that it will go derelict, and it will become the monster house you always feared."
Brown's neighbors created that moniker years ago when the 15-bedroom, 17-bathroom, single-story villa began to take shape in an upscale, but semi-rural neighborhood in the city's eastern Olivenhain neighborhood.
Brown, who built the house in 2004, had planned to turn it into an upscale recovery house for patients looking to recover from drug and alcohol addictions.
The city killed that idea after neighbors complained that a residential treatment home could have no more than six occupants, far fewer than the 41 originally planned for the site.
Neighbors also fought subsequent attempts by Brown, a retired electrical engineer, to pay the mortgage by hosting other events such as business retreats and weddings.
The home slid into foreclosure Feb. 13. An auction with a starting bid of $2.3 million attracted no bids, despite the fact that building the home cost an estimated $13 million.
Brown said the posh recovery center had been her dream for years and was funded through her own savings and private investors.
She said the project's failure had left her bankrupt."