Did anyone steal your copper piping today??

[Fred Shandler]

I attended a REIA meeting in the area I'm looking to invest in and one landlord stated "any vacant house in this area will have it's copper piping stolen. Groups mark their territory by leaving a brick in the middle of the floor so that other groups know the piping has been removed".

YIKES! Any experience with this/recommendations on what to do with a vacant property? Just how expensive is this stuff to replace, plus other necessary repairs resulting from it -floors, walls, etc?

Thanks
Fred

[Chad B.]

I had 2 brand new AC units stolen off the side of a house that was under construction for the copper I assumed. They had big balls to pull this one off. We had 6' chainlink fence around the whole property with a chained gate accross the driveway. We had those fake video camers (the one were you put batteries in them and they had a red blinking light) around the whole house. We had signs declaring that the property was being video taped. It was on a busy road in a very nice area in a smaller town that we have a good relationship with the police their so they regularly do drivebys for us and sometimes even sit in our driveways while they do their paperwork (nap). None of this detered these crooks as they cut the chains and drove the truck right up to the AC units sawzalled them off and took off with them. The next day when I met the cops on the site to fill out the report he couldn't believe it with all the precautions we took.

Whole thing cost about $5,000 to fix and we estimated the crooks made off with about $200-$300 in copper. Next time I'm just going to tape a couple of $100 bills to the units so hopefully they will leave the units and just take the money. I figure I can do this on about 25 houses before it becomes a break even point. LOL