Vacant House Safety

[David F.]

Hi Everyone,

I had a question. I recently came across a vacant house that I feel has tremendous potential. My question is: what are the safety issues, as in personal safety issues when dealing with vacant houses, ie. vagrants, or possible people in there that I may not know about.. It's a bit paranoid, but I am looking for some assurance from people with experience. Please let me know any good and not so good stories....

Thanks.

THE HUN.

[Ryan Webber]

My experience is that homeless people usually don't stay in a house during the day. They mainly use them for a place to sleep at night. Even after looking through hundreds of vacant houses, I've never actually come across anyone. I've only found stuff that they left there. If I get the feeling that someone might be there I'll be loud coming in and call out and ask if anyone's there as I'm walking through. I don't want to surprise anyone that might be there. Most homeless people have no desire to hurt anyone. They just want to be left alone. Its kind of the same approach I use with wild animals in the forest, be loud so they can leave before I get there. :D I'm not sure if its actually effective but so far I haven't had any issues.

I personally would not have much of an expectation to do an inspection on an abandoned property. Most of what an inspector inspects will not be able to done properly without the utilities turned on, and most abandoned houses don't have utilities on and will most likely need at least moderate amounts of work just to get the utilities turned on. I would recommend having some fluff room built into your repair estimates for unforseen issues like that.