Althouse: "Scenes from Surrendered Homes."

August 3, 2011

"Scenes from Surrendered Homes."

Link.

24 comments:

Anonymous said...: Is one of those surrendered homes the $750K house purchased with 100% financing by a non-English-speaking strawberry picker earning $14K a year?

[That was not something I made up. See The Big Short by Michael Lewis.]

Peter; 8/3/11, 9:25 PM
Patrick said...: Don't know whose fault that particular one was, but those stuffed toys - that was sad.; 8/3/11, 9:28 PM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Don't know whose fault that particular one was, but those stuffed toys - that was sad.

It was clearly the fault of the pink dinosaur with the yellow feet.; 8/3/11, 9:31 PM
Anonymous said...: Every one of those pictures represents a sadly abandoned vision of a life. Really awful.; 8/3/11, 9:32 PM
chickelit said...: Is one of those surrendered homes the $750K house purchased with 100% financing by a non-English-speaking strawberry picker earning $14K a year?

That was fairly typical towards the end of the mania out here. We had some neighbors like that. Nice people. Only the daughters spoke English. They babysat for us. When they left they burned shit in the fireplace all night long. I thought the sparks shooting ten feet out the chimney were going to catch the whole neighborhood on fire.; 8/3/11, 9:34 PM
edutcher said...: Agree with Patrick and Seven.

Very sad.

They can thank William Jefferson Blyth III and Slobbering Barney for those pictures.; 8/3/11, 9:35 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Someone who owned a house near us but lived out of the country accidentally rented it to drug dealers who subsequently destroyed it. Then the bank foreclosed. The new owner has turned it into one of the nicest houses in the neighborhood.

She said that the toughest part was removing the spray paint picture of Bart Simpson captioned "El Barto" from the fireplace in the living room.; 8/3/11, 9:45 PM
Lava said...: I saw these while surfing the 'net last night, and was struck at how sad the images made me. All of these houses had families in them at one time. We don't know the particular situations of each family, but the fact that all of them are now abandoned not only is bad for each family, but equally bad for each neighborhood and city in which they were located.

There's a cautionary tale here about how we do housing finance, but the fact that the houses were dreams unfulfilled...and the collateral damage done to each household is truly disheartening.; 8/3/11, 9:51 PM
Irene said...: The saddest scene from a surrendered home related to me was the story of a black lab left tied up in the garage.; 8/3/11, 10:04 PM
Bayoneteer said...: That invisible hand doing it's magic eh? Reagan is smiling wherever he is now.; 8/3/11, 10:17 PM
Patrick said...: Yeah, Ken, this is clearly the fault of a guy who's been dead for years, and out of office for decades. The housing bubble was due to the "free market" as much as the debt crisis was caused by politicians saying "no."; 8/3/11, 10:22 PM
traditionalguy said...: Son how's that recession working out for Americans?

The recession never stopped. It leveled off in a disaster, and now has resumed sinking fast into a permanent depression as the Obama Regulations and Obamacare have descended everywhere like a black cloud of economic poison.; 8/3/11, 10:31 PM
d-day said...: Lileks has a new series of photos on forcibly surrendered homes today.

Deadburb, USA; 8/3/11, 11:20 PM
d-day said...: It's not all bad. After being so overextended for so long, foreclosure can be a relief. Endings are necessarily beginnings, too.; 8/3/11, 11:25 PM
Patrick said...: d-day, thanks for that link. Stuff like that is why I read Lileks. All of those stories...; 8/3/11, 11:35 PM
Anonymous said...: Oh Jesus. Did Ken really blame Reagan? That's so sadly typical of exactly the kind of ass clown who would write such a thing..

I blame Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Karl Marx, Bill Clinton, and Ted Kennedy. Also Ken.; 8/3/11, 11:52 PM
SteveR said...: Its sad to me, I don't have the luxury of ignoring the process which creates those pictures; 8/4/11, 12:39 AM
MikeinAppalachia said...: Might let KenK explain his comment. May not mean what what it implies.; 8/4/11, 1:01 AM
MikeinAppalachia said...: Just one "what" obviously.
That picture of an old grist mill appears on sites with collections of similiar scenes. Anyone know where that one is located?; 8/4/11, 1:03 AM
Anonymous said...: "Blogger KenK said...

That invisible hand doing it's magic eh? Reagan is smiling wherever he is now."

Don't know about Reagan but Barney Frank's and Chris Dodd's smiles are ear-to-ear.; 8/4/11, 7:08 AM
paminwi said...: One family in my neighborhood were so pissed off about having their home foreclosed on they took quick setting cement and poured it into every drain and toilet in their home. They then took a sledge hammer and busted every interior door in the home.

Some of these homes at least look like you could do some clean-up and have it be a home someone could move into.; 8/4/11, 7:10 AM
gerry said...: Retronaut is cool, but you can really waste a lot of time at Shorpy.; 8/4/11, 8:05 AM
Steve Koch said...: I've bought a few foreclosed homes and looked at a bunch. Normally the foreclosed "owners" trash the house and rip off appliances from it before they split.; 8/4/11, 9:30 AM
Curious George said...: "Steve Koch said...
I've bought a few foreclosed homes and looked at a bunch. Normally the foreclosed "owners" trash the house and rip off appliances from it before they split."

Pikers. Here they rip out all the copper wiring and plumbing too.; 8/4/11, 9:54 AM