Sunday, March 23, 2008

Absentee landlords beware!

My wife stumbled across this listing (MLS #8024635) over the weekend, and liked how the house sat up high on the hill. So before we looked any further I decided to pop over to Zillow and get the scoop on the location, and what Zillow thought it was worth.

At first I was a little puzzled by the photos posted on Zillow (4804 N Borthwick), but then I realized they must have been posted by the tenants. We found this info an the subject of who can post photos to Zillow:

"Who Can Upload Photos?
Anyone can upload photos of a house — owners, agents, neighbors — anyone! Since Zillow is a community site, we want everyone to contribute — even your neighbors or someone who has lived in the house 20 years ago. Photos uploaded by owners and agents will show up first. Also, community-uploaded photos cannot be deleted, but if you see something that doesn't look right or is inappropriate, please click the "Flag content" link and Zillow Customer Support will review it."

This photo shows the rotting windowsill with the title "massive water going in", other photos show the moisture in the walls and other fun discoveries.This is not the first house I've seen in the Mississippi area that appears to have been bought by investors, never had any maintenance, and is now being unloaded for what they hope is a tidy profit.

To all the absentee landlords out there: be careful what you try to get away with, your tenants now have more and more tools at their disposal to let the rest of us know just what you're up to, or not up to.

Good luck trying to sell this one. We'll check back and see how much it gets marked down over the next few months.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh my, was that wood rot caused by water? Here in Portland? Can't be.

Seems to me that 40 to 50% of the houses currently on the market, older than 20 years, have some wood rot going on. Really doesn't matter if it's an absentee landlord or not.

Anonymous said...

And we would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for those meddling tenants!

Anonymous said...

I don't know how prevalent wood rot is on most houses (even in Portland), but I would suspect that it could be prevented if the maintence was kept up. The point is, that if I was a buyer, there would be no way that I would go look at this house now. There are too many other houses out there right now...

Anonymous said...

The Portland real estate blog is blocking people whose opinions Clint doesn't like. I'm not talking profanity or harrassment either, just not in line with his mindset. It's no secret he doesn't appreciate my posts. When I try to go there it takes me out.

Even Charles Turner doesn't do that.

Anonymous said...

Which of Clint's posts were you deleted from?

Anonymous said...

Not deleted but every time I try to go there it either takes me to Yahoo's home page or out of Blogger. Says the blog doesn't exist. It's odd.

I'm able to get in a back way and I asked why I was blocked. No answer yet.

PDX Outsider said...

jonnyk, i'm also not surprised by rot on the house. the point was that we were all set to go drive by this house, and thanks to the photos we called it off. those photos aren't going away, which is going to make selling the house tough for anybody who's used zillow.

anonymous 9:10, i'm not sure what the problem with clint's blog is, but i'm not sure who you are or why he'd be blocking you. but you're always welcome here.

Anonymous said...

Wow. GENIUS!

Anonymous said...

I guess I just look at the pictures, mls info, price, etc., and decide if a place is worth a visit. If there is wood rot, then a price reduction from the listing price is probably in order.

Homes that have been well maintained are definitely less likely to have wood rot, but it's not always visible from a picture.

Anonymous said...

Not deleted but every time I try to go there it either takes me to Yahoo's home page or out of Blogger. Says the blog doesn't exist. It's odd.

Ummm... so you're saying you can't even navigate to that web page? I don't think that has anything to do with anything Clint could be doing. He might possibly be able to block certain IPs from posting (I don't know Blogger.com's capabilities) and certainly he could remove certain offensive posts (which he appears to have done, but from what I can tell they weren't even close to being on topic and they were pornographic), but there's nothing he can do that could keep you from reaching the portland housing blog webpage - unless Clint is a really, really great hacker - which I doubt.