I have a home next door to my house in Atlanta that has been abandoned for a year now. The bank which owns it is probably Bank of America, and they have literally done nothing to it. I have been mowing the lawn and trimming the hedges, but that house is just deteriorating before my eyes.

Those neighbors ought to consider that *any* owner is better than no owner. And even if he gets the house for free, that at least means he’ll be able to pay for electricity and water and afford to keep the place up, which is more than I can say for my non-existent neighbors.

I’m a little confused as to the motives of the neighbors, because it’s not like his $16 is going to be factored into the neighborhood property value statistics, and LIKE FUN he’s going to live there for long. For better or for worse, this guy is way too smart to pass up the many opportunities he’ll have to sell or settle this for pennies on the dollar (but, more importantly, dollars to his pennies). And that “complicated lawsuit” he says he thinks the bank won’t file? I’m guessing he’s calculated exactly how many thousands of dollars the hassle is worth to the bank, and will take any offer that’s a dollar higher. (Probably not too high, either.)

Now if it really is straight up racism (or really, really sour grapes) that’s getting the neighbors antsy, okay, that sucks. But if it’s a question of the neighbors feeling like the original owner, pre-foreclosure, is getting the shaft, well, that’s a lot more understandable (if legally meaningless).

Racist vibe? Being as she didn’t say anything racist, is that vibe implicit every time someone has a complaint against a person or color, or was she actually…vibrating? Or was it something in her eyebrows? Please–tell me more! (Right now, I have to depend on more explicit clues to detect prejudice… like, for instance, when people make vague comments about people’s “vibes”.)

While I understand the historical basis for adverse possession laws, I think don’t serve a counterproductive function in modern society.

$16 was not the purchase price, it was legal fees. He is not purchasing the house. The most recent purchase price would still be whatever the forecloseees had paid for it.

Don’t you get it? Everyone white in the south is a racist. Especially Texas.

People see what they want to see. Some see an upper-middle-class white woman in a southern state complaining about what she thinks is a squatter, and they assume she must hate minorities. Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong. Who cares? Arguing with people’s biases is like arguing with a wall, a waste of effort. If they want to question their prejudices, they’re already doing so. If not, no amount of debate will sway them. Human beings don’t like accepting what they don’t know about each other, and many deal with it by filling in the variables with their own cultural preconceptions.

Maybe the neighbors are pissed they trapped themselves under a mountain of debt while someone more clever got a similar house next door for $16. Again, who cares? Natural selection. They can suck it.

Maybe a neighbor acquiring a house for essentially zilch will affect their equity and thus ability to refinance as interest rates become more favorable. If so, too friggin bad.

Of course – if the same person had used a loophole to take possession of a copyright or used eminent domain to take someone’s property, we would be calling for justice.

After all, it’s only the bank this fellow is really hurting, and I think few Americans have much sympathy for the bank at this point.

Note: He doesn’t really get the house for nothing because he does have to do a certain amount of work for it (legal research, occupation, etc.), and take on some risk (ie. arrest). Though it does sound like a pretty good deal.

Maybe more people will try it, and maybe that will provide an incentive not to have homes sitting empty and unused.

This may not be so relevant for most, but my family and friends still live in Denton.

Even if the person who was smart enough to figure out a way to grab this $300k home for $16 is content after investing three years of their life on, say, tripling their initial investment and selling for $48 (which is hardly likely) you still wouldn’t have an argument because no other home in the area would be selling for such a paltry amount. If a potential buyer came into my home that was for sale for $300k and told me I should lower my price because the house next door sold for $48, my response would be, “You just keep looking for another $48 house and let me know when you find one.”

I can’t read minds either, but I think sour grapes and/or racism as reasons for the neighbors’ anger is worth a second look.

… then you get to shovel the driveway from october until may

1) Laws that may serve justice in one circumstances may be perverted in another.

2) Retired politicians and judges have friends in high places.

As to the lady’s ‘vibe’ in this piece, she does certainly seem to be holding something back. And very few things seem logical to hold back in an interview for local news. Among those I would think racism, class-ism, and possibly sour grapes but sour grapes while tacky and crass in this situation is still a fairly reasonable response from a person under the mantle of crushing debt seeing their new neighbor win big while they trudge on.

I’m not waiting for people like this guy. I’,m lobbying to get my town to start seizing empty houses by eminent domain and find residents for them.

I’m in Wisconsin… I wonder if there are any houses like that around here?

It’s not really a loophole. The law makes perfect sense. No community wants abandoned property with no owners making claim to it.

in the same exact what that gay marriage ruins straight marriage. It’s only value is that you can feel superior by keeping others from getting what you got. Christ, I’ve never seen a 300K house that was worth 300 actual K. People pay to be near their people… in this case I suspect its the “afraid of home invasion soccer-mom / viagra popping lawn-care dad” set.

AS for the enterprising man, I would put him in touch with Habitat for Humanity http://www.habitat.org/how/historytext.aspx

It seems to me Augustus Gladstone:
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/07/18/video-tour-by-a-guy.html has slightly more integrity

There are governments that orchestrate misfortune for home owners and reward ne’r-do-wells

I know we were over taxed off our Ancestral land in 2005 by 150%

I am pretty sure my neighbor’s fence is a few inches on my side of the property line. At least once a year, in front of other witnesses, I explain that it’s OK for him to have his fence on my property should that be the case. This is the “permission” clause, which mitigates adverse possession. He won’t be able to claim that is the new property line as long as I keep doing this.

I like that there’s a law in place so that genuinely abandoned properties can come back into use, but there needs to be a much stricter criteria for being able to claim them and a better way of assuring they’re reintegrated into the community appropriately. Letting a guy just camp there with no utilities, paying no property taxes, no way to enforce upkeep of the house and lawn, is not doing the community any favors. There needs to be a way for the squatter to prove that they’re doing something good with the property and the community. They need to be able to revitalize the property and be able to take care of it and have utilities and participate in the economy and pay taxes and such. As it is, the squatters are only allowed to be a liability to a neighborhood, rather than an asset. It’s no wonder they don’t welcome him.

I’m thinking squatters should have to prove that they’ve maintained and made improvements to the house, paid up property taxes,become involved in the community, etc., in order to be able to gain legal rights to the property. They should have to be able to prove that them occupying is doing more for the greater good than the building sitting empty.

I doubt that house would pull in $300K if it was sold at market value. a 2 story house down the street from it is currently listed at $325.

Also, he’s going to probably have trouble with the HOA long before his 3 years are up unless he can hookup water for his lawn.

“If he wants the house, buy the house like everyone else had to,” Lowrie said. “Get the money, buy the house.”

Hey, if he wants to live in a white neighborhood, be white like everybody else. Get the white parents, get born white.

It’s all so easy you see!

There’s a “thorn” character in my reCaptcha, for chrissakes.

Good gawd. I love how people loooovveee to throw racism around when they have *NO* evidence of it – just making asinine assumptions. It cheapens the word and makes people numb to it.

LOL

Because everyone else in the neighborhood could afford their homes? I think the fact that this was a foreclosure tells a different story.

Also, 3 years without power or water, and terrible neighbors trying to get you kicked out? It sounds to me like he’s really earning the $300K.