By Jennifer Grafiada
When real estate agent Ann Hartman entered the recently repossessed, vacated mansion on a tree-lined street in one of the most upscale neighborhoods in Henderson, she found a crime scene. Smashed floor tiles, lacerated walls and several missing fixtures. Even the oven door was inexplicably absent. (The bar, however, remained fully stocked—one would think the departing residents would have left the oven door and taken the alcohol.) In the bathrooms shattered mirrors reflected the homeowners’ bad luck, and unhinged bedroom doors leaned against the hallway. A pickax was stuck high in one wall.
It was yet another incident of foreclosure rage, in which evicted residents destroy their own house before they leave.
At the end of 2007, Clark County had the top seven hardest-hit foreclosure zip codes in the country. One real estate agent estimates that of the 4,000 homes currently in foreclosure, about 2,500 have resident-inflicted damage. They are found everywhere from Summerlin to North Las Vegas to Green Valley. The perpetrators are rarely, if ever, prosecuted. The damage is so prevalent that law enforcement and the legal system lack the time and resources to prosecute, and, as attorney David Winterton explains, “The people who trashed the house don’t have money anyway, so if someone were to sue them and get a judgment, they wouldn’t be able to collect.”
Severely damaged houses are the aftermath of what real estate agent Joe Kraemer calls “the perfect storm”: A couple of years ago, the too-familiar story goes, loans were easy to obtain, and the housing market was booming. Many people bought houses with subprime loans, which don’t require proof of sufficient income and offer a tempting but insidious 1 percent monthly rate instead of the standard 6 percent. But that extra 5 percent gets tacked on to the amount owed, and eventually the numbers don’t add up. Other people bought additional properties that they planned to resell for a profit. But the market sunk, and people were left with mounting payments, increasing interest rates and plummeting home values.
“In the past 25 years, I’ve never seen anything like this incredible depression we’re experiencing in the housing market. I’ve been seeing people you would have never thought would file for bankruptcy,” says attorney Bonnie Bryce, who has been practicing law in Nevada since 1985. “Dozens of people have called me crying, because their frustration with mortgage companies is so high. It doesn’t surprise me that with the level of emotions generated, people are capable of doing this.”
Some foreclosure-facing homeowners take on renters to help make ends meet. But instead of paying the bank, the utility companies and the HOA, they often cash and pocket the deposit and monthly checks. The tenants remain oblivious to the situation, until one day they get a letter from the bank or an eviction notice.
Owners and tenants (damage is estimated to be 75 percent owner-inflicted, 25 percent tenant-inflicted) punch holes in the walls, urinate on the floors, let their pets defecate in the dining rooms, dump paint and motor oil on the carpets and flood the houses by pouring cement down toilets and drain pipes.
“It’s analogous to pilferage: My employer doesn’t give me enough money, so I’m justified in stealing all the Post-it notes,” postulates Robert Parker, a UNLV sociology professor. Local lawyers and real estate agents believe the impetus is frustration, humiliation, a need for retribution and the spiteful mentality “If I can’t have it, no one can.”
They take everything they can carry or sell on eBay, which apparently includes toilets, water softeners, air-conditioning units, pool pumps, sinks, faucets, granite countertops, cabinets, banisters, baseboards, even the front door.
The bank takes possession of a property that is virtually unlivable and that can sell only at a loss. To prevent this, banks offer a “cash for keys” incentive: a couple grand if people get out quickly and leave the property clean and damage-free. But for many people, this isn’t enough to assuage their anger.
“In a broad sense, it’s a manifestation of the class struggle that we all know is going on, but no one talks about,” says Parker. “So many capitalistic forces—banks, mortgage companies, the government—are allied against the individual facing foreclosure. The American ethos is me against the system.”
Photographs by Jennifer Grafiada