I'm not going to get into the whole socioeconomic reasoning behind why someone would foreclose, or whose fault it was, or all of that stuff (if you'd like to take the easy way out: blame Bush), but in the case of our neighbors... I have no idea. We're the "quiet people who keep to themselves" type who have yet to appear in a major news flash broadcast about some unspeakable horror (as all "quiet people who keep to themselves" are portrayed by the media), so I don't know what kind of woe or misfortune they had that caused them to foreclose... I just know that there were signs it was coming.
Now, before I get into the signs, you are probably thinking "gee, why didn't you reach out to help them if you saw signs, why didn't you offer your support and help to them?" Well, my, aren't we judgmental and all pompous, like you would do that, and you know you wouldn't, but to be fair, when they initially moved in, we did the neighborly thing and was all nice and offered to loan them lawn care tools and all that... and they were buttheads. So, screw em.
Now, on to the signs. They had a great pool. The old lady that lived there took such good care of that pool that it was beautiful, always clean. The lawn was well taken care of, and because of that, we overlooked the fact that her fat poodle would waddle into our front yard and take a crap. Plus she grew tomatoes and always gave us some, so it was a give and take neighbor-relationship.
When the new people moved in, they initially took ok care of the house, but you could tell the pool wasn't a major deal to them and slowly but surely, it went to hell after a few years. At one point they brought in dump trucks full of cheap fill dirt and seemed to try to fill it in... until the fill dirt company realized why they needed the fill dirt, and that just filling in an in ground swimming pool was illegal in the county and refused to bring more fill dirt. With a crappy in ground swimming pool now only 1/3 filled, they covered it with a tarp to hide the dirt... then proceeded to throw stuff they didn't want into the pool. Then they stopped mowing and cutting back trees and bushes, which encroached into our yard. It was at that point that I told Lobsterman that they were foreclosing. He didn't think so, I did.
Then the POD appeared in the driveway and I told Lobersterman that they were foreclosing. He thought that maybe they were doing some major renovations that required them to remove bits and pieces of their belonging a little at a time on the weekends. The POD stayed for a year and then they stopped coming by every weekend to get stuff, only showing up randomly. Lobsterman said that they weren't foreclosing because they left all of the windows up in the house... I laughed, especially when I saw them dragging out parts of the house that should be considered permanent... like copper plumbing.
Through blizzards, torrential downpours, heat, cold, and in between, the windows stayed up, finally the electricity got cut (because their motion sensor light wouldn't come on as the feral cats hunted in their back yard), and finally after two years, a sign appeared on the door and padlocks were put on all the doors... foreclosed.
In the next installment of "This Old Foreclosed House", we'll explain the joys of living next to a potential crack den.
POD?
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