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Published on: 12/13/2008
Last Visited: 12/15/2008
"Every outlet, every interior door, the faucets, the garbage disposal, the water heater - all gone," said Mark Troth, the Lancaster real estate agent who will try to find a buyer for this foreclosed property, near Avenue J-10 and 61st Street West.
The thieves behind this job took closet shelves, closet doors, the garage-door opener and the doorbell.
They tried to get all three of the house's toilets, but they left them behind in the garage.
"Not counting paint and carpeting, it might take $10,000 to rebuild everything," Troth said.
At another property - a small, green, stuccoed ranch house in east Lancaster - someone took all the copper pipe running to and from the water heater, tearing up a fair amount of drywall in the process.
"Anything that can be taken out of a house, we've seen it," Troth said, saying he has even seen people steal massive central air conditioning units.
In the real-estate business for 30 years, Troth says this isn't the first time he has seen foreclosed homes become prime targets for opportunistic thieves.
"It's something that is not new - we saw this in the (foreclosure) market in the '80s and again in the '90s," he said.
"Probably we're seeing it start to build momentum now as the economy worsens," Troth said.
It's a problem that can accelerate, Troth said, because more foreclosed homes mean more targets and fewer watchful eyes.
"When the market started to go south, maybe only one house in a whole neighborhood might be empty," he said.
"Now, one in five might be empty.
There are fewer eyes watching, and there's less pride in the community.
, The odds of someone caring enough to call it in go down."
That makes foreclosure pirates more brazen: Troth said he once caught vandals in the act at 4 p.m. on a weekday.
At least five men have been arrested since September for stealing appliances and air conditioning units from vacant Valley homes.
...
No," Troth said.
"Is it uncommon?
No."
This kind of piracy doesn't just make Troth's job as a Realtor harder.
It can drive down property values in a neighborhood and it can lead to an overabundance of absentee landlords and rental housing.
"Only maybe a third of the time will a bank put a house like this back together," Troth said.
"Usually, they'll just discount it."
Take that house off Avenue J-10: If vandals did $10,000 worth of damage, then a $200,000 house suddenly becomes a $190,000 house.
But Troth said a bank will more likely cut the price by much more than the amount of damage, because no one wants to buy a house at market price, then put thousands of dollars into it.
"So the bank will have to take a $2 or $3 discount for every dollar of repair that needs to be done," he said.
"You could have a $45,000 discount for $15,000 in damage."
If that house on J-10 was worth $200,000, the bank might sell it for $180,000 or even $170,000, Troth said.
But that discount isn't a good thing, he said, because it sets a precedent for other houses in the neighborhood.
When appraisers look at recent home sales in an area, they don't see a $200,000 house selling for $170,000 because of damage done by vandals, Troth said: They only see a house selling for $170,000.
"In a buyer's market like this, a buyer never wants to pay more than what the last guy paid," he said.
"Buyers are very educated as to what the market is doing."
That means it will be harder to sell other, nonpirated homes in the area for their full market value, Troth said.
On top of that, Troth said, buying these discounted properties difficult for average home buyers.
Someone buying a home with an FHA loan might have a down payment of between 1% and 3%, he said.
After scraping together that down payment, many buyers don't have the money to install three new toilets, replace dozens of electrical outlets and replumb their water heaters.
"It becomes unfinanceable," he said, meaning the house can only be purchased by someone with enough cash on hand.
"We're seeing a lot of out-of-area buyers , and investor-type buyers."
In neighborhoods where thievery is more common, he said the balance in an area could go from 90% of the homes being occupied by the families that own them to perhaps 60%.
Troth said he doesn't want to demonize renters and said affordable rental homes are the first rung on the real estate ladder, but also noted that some landlords are less scrupulous than others.
"There are instances where you get out-of-town landlords who become the landlords the city of Lancaster is trying to corral."
Because foreclosure pirates can have such ill effects on neighborhoods, Troth said it has to be up to people who live near foreclosed properties to be vigilant.
"If it looks suspicious, it probably is," he said.
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