Taking it Out on the House
With the rise in home foreclosures we find stories of the financially-strapped trashing the homes they can no longer afford:
Cruising the wreckage of the Las Vegas property market every day in his silver Cadillac Escalade, the 38-year-old Mr. Carver has developed a connoisseur’s eye for pointless destruction. Vandals who break into empty houses often smash windows and paint graffiti on the walls, he says. But it takes an enraged, delinquent mortgagor to indulge in a frenzy of destruction, such as the one that took place recently in a three-bedroom, 1,949-square-foot house in a residential and industrial area northeast of the casinos on the Strip.
Light switches, outlet covers and thermostats were smashed. There was what looked to be crowbar damage along the staircase. A large pool of paint had hardened on the living-room carpet. It appeared that someone had dripped motor oil in a trail that wound its way through every carpeted room. The appliances were gone, as were most light fixtures. A cabinet door had been removed and left soaking in a full tub of water. Not a wall was left without a hole the diameter of a closet rod, including the pink child’s room once carefully decorated with a floral wallpaper stripe. It’s damage that Mr. Carver described as “a vengeance-type thing.”
“Some people have issues, and need to do what they have to do, I guess,” he said.
Meghan McArdle doesn’t get it:
It’s hardly the bank’s fault that you can’t make your mortgage payment. I mean, I understand the rage at fate that has pushed you out of your home and left your credit record in shreds–yea, even if you had a hand in that fate yourself. But I don’t get pointless destruction.
One of her commenters is onto something:
Most people are quite reluctant to admit personal fault in these matters. It’s so much easier to blame an external entity and then unleash rage as deemed appropriate.
If they wreck the home, that’ll teach all the evil external entities that made it happen (big business, big government, greedy CEOs, international trade).
Remember, we’re all victims.
One part victimization along with one part personal embarrassment equals real ugliness.
“Real estate rage:” not pretty. We’ll hear more about this add the housing market continues to shake itself out.
“Buyers’ Revenge: Trash the House After Foreclosure”
