Anyone who works in real estate can tell you that when it comes to short sales and bank owned properties, you get to see a lot of houses in very tough shape. I’ve been in houses with broken water pipes… with the water still turned on, with all of the electrical wiring pulled out, with all of the appliances having been stolen, and the list goes on and on. But the worst houses are often the ones that people are still living in. The sad thing is, that at least in some of these cases, if the owners would just clean up their homes a little, they might not have to do a short sale at all.

This is the junk in the yard near the house.

You never know what you will find when you go to a house that people are still living in. I’m betting that some of the agents who read this blog will have walked into a few homes where the junk is piled to the ceiling and there are pathways through the junk to walk on. Or worse, junk piled to the ceiling and no pathway through it.

Last week, I was showing a client a home and it was the worst that I’ve ever been in. And that is saying a lot. Fortunately, I had warned my client that the exterior of the home was in bad shape and there was some junk in the front yard. But it did have a very nice rose garden.

When I stepped through the front door though, I was completely unprepared for what I found. Not only were there pathways through the junk, but there were bird cages everywhere. Some of them were huge. And they were all full of very live, chirping and squawking birds.

They were in the dining room. The living room. The bedrooms. But that wasn’t the half of it. We then stepped out into a back yard that covered around 11,000 square feet. That’s where the real fun began.

About half of the yard was covered in junk. That’s what the first picture above is. The other half was covered in more bird cages. Actually, these cages were the size of a small house and there were three or four of them. There were pigeons, chickens and parrots. One cage was full of gray parrots. I don’t have any idea what these are worth, but I’m betting that it was a pretty penny.

Back yard of the same house. Large objects in the background are bird cages.

The sad thing about this is that the house itself wasn’t a bad layout. In fact, the interior wasn’t in horrible shape. Even the kitchen was large and functional. Clear out the junk, throw up some new paint and water the lawn and the owners may have been in the black on the house. Sell some of the birds, and they may have been able to pay down their loan enough to refinance.

When you see this sort of thing, it’s very sad.

Needless to say, my client decided to move on to another property.

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