Ugly Houses

In addition to our traditional real estate and property management business, our company has a sister company that has been buying and selling ugly houses for years. Often these ugly houses are rehabbed and sold to investors who use our company for property management services. In fact, this is how Hodge was birthed.

One of the best and sometimes the saddest part of the business is all of the homes you get to see. I wish I had the foresight to have written a daily blog about all the houses I have seen over the past 8-9 years. It might have turned into something as brilliant as the Julie/Julia blog.

Recently we got a call from a gentleman who wanted to sell his "mothers" home and to come see it up in North Dallas. From the outside the house looked to be in some minor disrepair with some peeling paint, overgrowth in the yard, lots of junk but for the most part fairly typical. But that is where it ends.

The owner did not answer the door and we had to call to reach him and he told us he would come over to the house and meet us in a few minutes. A couple of minutes later the door opened to a shirtless, scraggly, barefooted gentlemen. Immediately you could smell the pet urine and then a couple of dogs ran out the door and starting barking and jumping. The man invited us in and told us that he was trying to sell the house for his Mom because his brother had been living in the back room and was a meth addict.

As we walked through the maze of crap stacked to the ceiling and along all walls leaving a 2 foot path throughout the house we had to dodge dog doo and urine constantly. There was one bedroom with incense burning to cover up the obvious odor of pot while Judge Judy played on the TV. The bed was covered in books, papers, dishes, artwork, yard tools and probably more.

The back room that looked absolutely no different than any other part of the house was the infamous room that the brother had been living in and treating so poorly.

Now I am not exaggerating when I say that this 2000+ square foot home would need about 40-50 dumpsters at a minimum to clear out. As we discussed purchasing (or not) the home, he told us that he decided he wanted to wait because he had recently been courted by the A&E television series Hoarders.

The man never called us back and I'm not sure if he was on Hoarders but what I do know is that I'm sure glad he wasn't one of our tenants.

Got any other stories?