After a home has been foreclosed, I work with banks to sell them.  Typically, I am the one who informs the previous homeowner that he/she no longer owns the property and must vacate.  Different people respond to this in different ways of course.

What I am seeing though, is a very dangerous trend.  It is a trend that must be stopped in its tracks, or it will have very serious complications for us all.  This trend is the previous homeowner destroying the property.

One recent case really boils my blood.  All the more so since I went out of my way to work with the guy.  While the bank was rekeying his home, he called me crying that his stuff was still in the house.  I spoke to the vendor who was changing the locks and told him to stop so the previous owner could reclaim his things.  Instead of retrieving the few belongings left at the house, he trashed it.

The electrical panel was ripped out and the water heater was torn out of its place and left in the front yard.  When I stepped inside the house I could hear the buzzing of live wires and thank god I did not step into the flooded utility room which due to the live wires could have been a death trap.

He even left the door wide open and I shudder at thinking what could have happened had a neighborhood child happened to walk in.  The neighbors were so dismayed at seeing the carnage that they called the police.  When the police officer arrived he called for backup and upon finding the owner - who admitted to doing all of this damage - they told him to leave and never come back.

 Why was he upset?  He was upset because he could no longer pay back money he had borrowed because his store had less business.  He had also stretched himself too thin by buying more properties than he could afford.  And this is the bank's fault?!

What we don't realize is when these people do these things to houses, it affects not just the bank.  The bank will obviously sell the house for less, which affects the property values of the neighbors.  This in turn affects taxes and the economy in general.  The money lost when the house is damaged does not come out of thin air - it is paid for by the rest of us.

There are also the safety aspects.  Someone could have been killed fixing the electrical issues in this home.  The home could have caught fire and spread to neighbors' homes.  This is an extremely dangerous issue.

Sadly, I only see this trend increasing.  The sympathy out there right now is for the homeowners - who find nothing wrong with the fact that many of them chose not to make house payments for a year or more and the bank had the 'nerve' to take the house back.