What things have you found in foreclosed/abandoned houses?

What things have you found in foreclosed/abandoned houses?

Mechanicsburg, PA · Member since 2013 · 3k+ posts · 2k+ votes

In the thread about the TV show Property Wars, it was brought up about things found in and on foreclosed property.

1. In a recent one there was the last occupant's ashes. I called the relative to come get the ashes. I've found lots of dead or live bodies but all were critters, mice, squirrels, rats, snakes, all kinds of insects, ground hog, possum, skunk, and even found a dead cat. I never found any dogs but one person told me they found a dog chained in the yard and another told me that they found a live dog locked in the house. I didn't see that dog but did see all the evidence that the dog left.

2. I found major parts of cars and cycles, and a few whole cars but nothing of any value or nothing even running.

3. The most of the money that I ever found was change, some coins and there always seems to be lots of pennies on the floors for some reason.

4. A friend of mine says that there are always tires at these properties, and for the most part that seems to be true. This last one with the person's ashes did have the obligatory 1 car tire on a wheel, which the trash company won't take if it has the wheel attached.

5. I've never found any gold or silver, and very few currency, usually some cash in an envelope, or stuck in cards or books. I do lots of reading but I never use currency as a bookmark.

6. Often times there are some tools, but they usually are incomplete, inoperable, or abused. Recently I've found some cordless power tools but strangely enough they almost always are missing the batteries.

7. I friend recently bought a foreclosure and took out three 30 yard dumpsters of trash from the house. They only thing that he took home with him was one extension cord. He say that was lightest haul he ever had from a foreclosed house and he remarked at the irony of this house having so much tonnage, but so little usable stuff.

8. One house that I got was vacant for 15 years, and have everything still there, clothes, furniture, shoes, and all personal items and even a car in the garage. There was even food in the frig that had been there for 15 years with the electric turned off. There were pots in the frig with leftovers and all the food was black, unrecognizable blobs. The odor was one I'll never forget, I almost gag just thinking about it.

9. Usually the stuff left behind is mostly junk and trash, things that are broken, or missing parts.

10. Several house were so over grown with trees and shrubs that you could not see the house from the street. One house I couldn't find because the house was overgrown as well as the dirt driveway.

11. Another place was owned by an alcoholic who hadn't cut his grass in 5 years. The grass was about 4 feet high and looked like a hay field. The people mowing the grass kept hitting whiskey bottles and beer cans scattered all over the yard and hidden in the tall grass.

What kind of treasures have you found in foreclosed/abandoned houses?

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Wholesaler · Salt Lake City, UT · Member since 2009 · 1k+ posts · 401 votes
13y

Man are you guys making me relive past problems. My greatest find was in a foreclosure we bought to rehab and when we removed one wall we found it full of old time big bills, gold and silver coins, jewelry and other goodies. Now I had found out about California's treasure trove law years before, and finds like this were considered the property of the previous owner.

The age of the money made me think the previous owner was not the true owner so we started to research it and found out the owner had been born in that house and lived in it here whole life. She had no living relatives and had be dumped in a county contracted dying home that should have been condemned. Well it was a fortune and we handled everything after getting a guardianship, and she was able to be located into a fine convalescent home for her final years and to create a will to leave her estate to charity.

I felt very good about that but I have to confess my first thoughts were to hell with the previous owner, and how was I going to spend all that money but I could hear my mother's voice saying I will never be ashamed of you if you do what is right, advice given to me when I did something wrong and developed a ton of quilt and wanted to fix it.

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  • Real Estate Investor · Vancouver, WA · Member since 2012 · 78 posts · 22 votes
    13y

    I've found lots of trash, grow lights in attics and of course lots of paint it seams like every house I get has a paint collection and yard chemicals and I have a shelf in my office that is covered with little tokens I found over the years every thing from coins to old cast iron toys. still waiting to find the pot of gold :)

  • Lender · Los Angeles, CA · Member since 2009 · 1k+ posts · 2k+ votes
    13y

    Human feces in 7 -11 big gulp containers all over the house that belonged to a hoarder. She had garbage piled so high it blocked the bathrooms. I stepped in some and like K. Marie Poe, left my sneakers and socks in the driveway and drove home barefoot. I still gag thinking about this place and sometimes still smell it.

    A live llama in the City of Los Angeles that had to be 7 feet tall. It was in the garage and there was an open window. Our borrowers just closed on the place and were walking around unknowingly when this thing stuck its head out and started spitting. One guy jumped so high he almost landed on the roof next door. Actually, pretty funny.

    Pure white, wall-to-wall carpet left under the 4 feet of junk that a hoarder actually took with him after he moved. The purchase contract stated the buyers would pay to rent a 25 foot truck for him when he moved. No one believed he’d take anything but he did. The carpet turned out to be an inch of dog hair from huskies that he’d owned. Again, an unbearable stench I can still smell. Turns out, this guy was a nurse!

    Squatters moved into an immaculately rehabbed home just days before closing to an end buyer. I’ll make a very long and somewhat sad and scary story short. A number of Rastafarians had the nerve to move furniture in and said they’d only leave after an eviction. They knew the game. Rehabbers did a “self-eviction” with 15 guys from their construction crew who waited up the street for them to leave. They put everything into the garage, including a collection of waist high bongs and the same sex toys Michael Quarles mentioned above. The green stuff "somehow" disappeared. When the squatters returned, all they were concerned for were the bongs. They allowed them to take their belongings from the garage for a promise not to return (it was a lot more acrimonious than that). The whole house needed repainting and repairs but they closed on time to the unknowing buyers.

    A really nice mountain bike that I wanted but was probably taken by the demo crew.

    More pennies than you could imagine. I don’t understand this either.

    Jeff

  • Real Estate Agent · Milwaukee County, WI · Member since 2009 · 3k+ posts · 525 votes
    13y

    Mr Niles - closed gargage door immediately and contacted local animal control

    Of course at a fee

  • Lakewood, OH · Member since 2013 · 68 posts · 23 votes
    13y

    Bought a home from a deceased elderly woman's heirs. In one dresser drawer was her donation receipts and appreciation letters to multiple charities. In the drawer beneath was quite the collection of sex toys. Most of the toys appeared to be from the 50's in the old timey packaging. I have a lot of respect for that charitable old woman for staying so spry

  • Portland, ME · Member since 2012 · 616 posts · 550 votes
    13y

    My in-laws found a plaster cast the owner had made of his reproductive organs.

  • Commercial Landlord · Oshkosh, WI · Member since 2013 · 299 posts · 88 votes
    13y

    On the positive I found 265 dollars in cash in 1 dollars bills in a closet in a readers digest hard cover I almost threw out, but a dollar fell out and I stopped just in the nick of time before it hit the trash. I have recovered cars always junk. I got a 32 pistol= working I might add. I have gotten tons of good hand tools but anything power seems to go onto my metal pile for scrap. I generally can count on one load to scrap for metal that generates between 30 and 90 bucks old dryers and washers you know what I mean.
    Here is the negative. Usually I am getting a dumpster full of cat piss carpets or cockroach central. The abandoned tires I get too. I have also noticed batteries in the garage.
    Here is a one for humor. You ever notice they leave behind cleaning materials under the sink in the kitchen or in the basement or garage. I always think to myself why did they buy the cleaning crap when they knew they would not use it?

  • Mechanicsburg, PA · Member since 2013 · 3k+ posts · 2k+ votes
    13y

    OK, here's more tales...

    This week got another house, owner left a prosthetic leg, and a shotgun, don't know if there is a relation between the two.

    Grandma ashes

    Before I ever hear the term hoarder, got a house where the owner had passed away. The attorney for the estate had listed the real estate with two houses and a garage as been zero value for estate and inheritance tax purposes. That should have been a clue. The houses were packed to the gills. There were walkways where trash including things like plastic milk jugs were compacted by the owners feet. The rest of both houses were packed from floor to ceiling. I hired a husband and wife clean up team with his and hers pickup trucks. They worked one day and quit. Then I hired from an ad in the weekly free paper. He brought in 2 helpers and a 40 yard dumpster, and they filled it to the brim. Still more trash in the houses. I was told by a neighbor that the woman who lived there had an office job and went to work every day well dressed. However she dressed in her Cadillac and used the yard as her bathroom. Needless to say the neighbors were please that we cleaned up the place, so pleased, that one of the neighbors offered to buy it. He did. And he tore down the 2 houses, kept the garage and used the rest of the yard for his expanded yard.

  • Investor · Kennesaw, GA · Member since 2010 · 158 posts · 61 votes
    13y

    No horror stories yet, but here is mine:

  • Real Estate Investor · Audubon, PA · Member since 2009 · 13k+ posts · 8k+ votes
    13y
    Originally posted by William Bannister:
    ...
    Here is a one for humor. You ever notice they leave behind cleaning materials under the sink in the kitchen or in the basement or garage. I always think to myself why did they buy the cleaning crap when they knew they would not use it?

    That is SO TRUE!!! And it's always unopened or just lightly used cleaning products.

    Andy Bankston - I once had the "opportunity" to clean out similar magazine materials - except the former occupants were gay males, so the pictures were quite different ...

  • Investor · Southeast, MI · Member since 2012 · 2k+ posts · 1k+ votes
    13y

    I purchased a house from a widow. She called me after the closing because she hadn't checked the attic over the garage and didn't know what was there. I looked up there and saw that there were some boxes.

    She came by to get them and I had my friend in the attic handing the boxes to me so I could load them into her trunk for her. He started laughing when he handed one box to me. As soon as I set it down on the garage floor, I knew why. It was full of porn. Judging by the fact that they were VHS tapes and looking at the grooming (or lack thereof), I figured they were from the 80's.

    When the old lady saw this box full of porn on the garage floor, she had this horrible look on her face. She said, "What is this, pornography?" I said, "Apparantly".

    She was furious at her husband, but she took the box with her.

  • Investor · Little Rock, AR · Member since 2010 · 628 posts · 251 votes
    13y

    I read about a wild party that brought the police in the local community newspaper that sounded like at my duplex. Sure enough, it was mine. The story was about a week old and both sides were vacant. I had been harrassing them about the rent for a while. They left about 6 big trashbags full of hardcore (for the early 80's) magazines. These magazines could have paid me rent for a few months. The place was also so full of fleas even I could hardly stand to be there.

    A few years later, I was working for a managment company. We had 3 properties and over 1500 units. I was doing a walk through on a move out and found candel wax in a closet at least 4 feet high where somekind of ritual had been practiced. SPOOKY

    On a recent flip, I found an undeveloped roll of film hidden in an air duct along with a pocket knife. I tried to get it developed thinking I might be able to help solve a murder or something. We could see something on a few pictures. But, couldn't make anything out. I gave it to the police.

    My most recent rehab is for a house I will live in. The attick is full of college stuff and prints of properties in the county from the previous owner's attorney daughter. I think they also put the empty box that every little knickknack they ever bought up there too. Otherwise, the house was the cleanest I have ever started a rehab with.
    Don

  • Real Estate Investor · Rancho Mirage, CA · Member since 2013 · 2 posts · 0 votes
    13y

    As an auctioneer specializing in abandoned personal property auctions conducted under California laws, we have found everything.

    The best was a 7,000 square foot house that had over $1 million dollars worth of high end everything you can imagine.

    Gold, silver, coins & jewelry

    Shelby Cobra GT along with a couple of dirt bikes

    Large collection of Cuban Cigars valued at $25,0000 to $50,000

    Then there was a closet that rained Louis Vuitton Purses, the first one I picked up had a gift receipt from Nordstroms and had never been used.

    I must warn people in California to be careful, if the value is $700 or more then it MUST be sold at public auction by a licensed auctioneer.

    We provide appraisal & auction service here in California that acts as an insurance policy against pissed off evicted homeowners.

  • Real Estate Investor · Lafayette, CA · Member since 2010 · 179 posts · 71 votes
    13y

    last year i found 27 pot plants about 2ft tall in the crawl space under a house . The property was vacant and was vacant for a year. bought it as an REO. Being a new home purchaser in the neighborhood. i did the neighborly thing to do, i asked all the neighbors if they could remove there belongings under the house. no one claimed them. Police came and confiscated them.

  • Oceanside, CA · Member since 2013 · 5 posts · 1 vote
    13y

    Mountain bike (gaint) about 10 guns, sports collectables (dallas cowboy mainly) 2 quads with trailer, tool chest, camera......others about 500 whiskey bottles empty of course

  • SFR Investor · South Bend, IN · Member since 2013 · 342 posts · 56 votes
    13y

    Kid's toys and papers that looked like homework - on the big lined paper that very young kids normally use. This wasn't so strange in itself aside from where I found it - in the unfinished attic.

    Apparently the previous owners had 2 adults and 5 kids (and about a million cockroaches) living in this tiny house, and they had some of the kids living up in the attic. There were a few sheets of half inch plywood up there, that was it - no lights, not even insulation. I thought it was odd that there was a big hole someone had ripped in the middle of the ceiling (cut through the joists, left them unsupported) along with a makeshift staircase.

  • Lender · Houston, TX · Member since 2012 · 83 posts · 69 votes
    13y

    Things I found:

    - several large boxes of penis enlargement pills.

    (..The neighbor, Marvin, came by to visit when we were cleaning out the house. He took all of the penis enlargement pills with him.)

    - old laptop computers and cell phones

    - lamps for "growing" operations

    - beer cans ... thousands of them

    - garbage .. enough to fill five 40 cubic yard dumpsters (in one large house).

    - and finally... Jimmy Hoffa (don't tell anyone)

  • David NilesBusiness Member
    Property Manager · DeLand FL · Member since 2012 · 860 posts · 243 votes
    13y

    Bobby Gerry Boy you seemed to have cornered the market on "growing" there Bobby, between the pills and the lights. lol

  • Lender · Houston, TX · Member since 2012 · 83 posts · 69 votes
    13y

    David Niles .. Yes, that's right! :) Haha

    Regarding the growing operation.. The owner of the house dry-walled in the garage and ran the operation in there. He dry-walled over the inside of the garage door. It was incredible. The garage door was purely cosmetic on the outside.

    The next thing he did was install a full-on air conditioning system in the garage. I'm not sure why he did that other than perhaps wanting to work in comfort while he tended to his plants.

    And lastly he installed 20 wall outlets in the walls.

    Once we pulled the dry wall off the garage door and cleaned everything out, it soon became apparent that we were going to have to pull out about 18 wall sockets. .. How do you explain to a potential buyer why all of the wall sockets are in the garage? .. The only possible explanation is that something weird was going on in there. Anyway, we pulled them out, patched and floated the holes, and then painted the interior. At the end it finally looked like a normal clean garage. :)

  • Dawn AnastasiPro Member
    Rental Property Investor · Milwaukee, WI · Member since 2013 · 6k+ posts · 4k+ votes
    13y

    I just bought a property from an old woman, a hoarder, it was a short sale. Luckily the bank paid someone to clean out the place, but they missed a bunch of stuff and didn't do the garage. But what they got paid was much less than what I would have had to pay. And I got someone to come over and take a bunch of stuff out of the garage for free because they got to keep the good stuff. (Metal for scrap, tons of cans.)

    Luckily, nothing too gross except for the refrigerator and stove. It took me an hour to clean the freezer out. There was stuff in there from 2004. Probably 2 hours to clean out the refrigerator, but the appliances are relatively new and were included in the sale. Washer and dryer are dirty on the outside but they do work.

    I have found probably about 40 pennies, they are everywhere.

    I did get some usable stuff before the guys from the bank cleaned it out (this was after closing when they finally finished): a hammer, 3 lace curtains, a set of cloth napkins, Tupperware, kitchen scissors (the kitchen stuff was sealed up thankfully).

    I haven't gone into the attic area yet but I do know there is some junk in there, not too much though.

    As far as filth, no feces other than a ton of mouse turds. What's funny is that I had someone helping me paint the master bedroom and I went into the closet and tipped the shelf and a ton of mouse turds came raining down (not on me!). She looked at me in disgust. She hasn't helped me since!

    I am going to be showing off the home for rent next week and would like to send her an invitation saying "House for rent, now with less mouse turds!" :)

  • Castle Rock, CO · Member since 2013 · 1 post · 0 votes
    13y

    Love this site, first time posting. We've purchased 5 houses and counting and converted all to rentals. Each house has a story. In our first, I found a jar with close to 100 keys. Had no idea where these keys went until I found a secret room above the garage filled wall to wall with lockable cabinets. Very weird but all empty.
    In another, after tearing out the upper cabinets above the kitchen sink I discovered a hole in the ceiling. In there I found several, close to 200, receipts of probably everything the past owner had ever bought. They dated back from 1956 for a water heater (couldnt read the price, mice got to it) to 1988 telephone bill. Odd filing system.
    In our latest, we had heard the previous owner was a drug addict and a heavy drinker and was often found in his driveway by his neighbors passed out. We also heard he had passed away last January. Well, after purchasing it in May I started cleaning up the back bedroom wondering what the splatter marks all over the wall was. Yeah you guessed it..I come to find out he ended it all unceremoniously in that bedroom. Fun, fun...
    Can't wait to see what I find in the next one, closing in late March.

  • Specialist · Cleveland, OH · Member since 2011 · 1k+ posts · 852 votes
    13y

    I let my guys keep what they find. They have grabbed a few hundred in cash.
    One house they auctioned contents of a border house and grabbed about 6k.
    The worst is cremated remains of loved ones. that has happened twice! LOL!
    My guys take them home and keep them on their mantel.

  • Real Estate Investor · chicago, IL · Member since 2012 · 1k+ posts · 231 votes
    13y

    4 mattress beds in the crawlspace. we called it the whorehouse.

    about 10 lights down there; we called it the mary jane house.

    they took a small closet upstairs and made it into a full bath. you had to turn sideways to get in between the pedastal & the jacuzzi tub. the toilet was facing the sink (you couldn't sit on the pot if it faced the tub). it was all very nicely done but there was minimal clearance in there.

    you could clean your hands & wash you butt @ the same time.

  • Ned CareyPro Member
    Moderator
    Investor · Baltimore, MD · Member since 2008 · 17k+ posts · 13k+ votes
    13y

    Usually just junk. I just took some properties via tax sale foreclosure and I have been paying more attention to anything that might have value. I haven't found much but did find the following.

    1) I found a Schwinn Sting Ray bicycle in Good Condition
    2) A sewing machine in good condition. It's kind of cool but I don't know if it has any value. Who uses a sewing machine any more?
    3) A cool old art deco liquor cabinet.

    hopefully I can move them on Ebay or Craig's list.

  • Wholesaler · Salt Lake City, UT · Member since 2009 · 1k+ posts · 401 votes
    13y

    Man are you guys making me relive past problems. My greatest find was in a foreclosure we bought to rehab and when we removed one wall we found it full of old time big bills, gold and silver coins, jewelry and other goodies. Now I had found out about California's treasure trove law years before, and finds like this were considered the property of the previous owner.

    The age of the money made me think the previous owner was not the true owner so we started to research it and found out the owner had been born in that house and lived in it here whole life. She had no living relatives and had be dumped in a county contracted dying home that should have been condemned. Well it was a fortune and we handled everything after getting a guardianship, and she was able to be located into a fine convalescent home for her final years and to create a will to leave her estate to charity.

    I felt very good about that but I have to confess my first thoughts were to hell with the previous owner, and how was I going to spend all that money but I could hear my mother's voice saying I will never be ashamed of you if you do what is right, advice given to me when I did something wrong and developed a ton of quilt and wanted to fix it.

  • Dawn AnastasiPro Member
    Rental Property Investor · Milwaukee, WI · Member since 2013 · 6k+ posts · 4k+ votes
    13y

    Here's a small one -- I was replacing a light switch in one of the rooms and inside the box was the original receipt for the light switch from JC Penney from September 1975 all folded up and faded. I guess they kept the receipt in case the light switch ever went bad. (It still worked; was just switching it out for a different color.)

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