Cat Litter House: Flip # 653 and it could be the worst one yet. Look at the pics and you decide.

[Brian Burke]

Some flips are easy...paint, carpet, clean, and list.  Then there are the hard ones. 

I've never posted a diary of a flip before.  With over 600 flips under my belt I sometimes think that I've seen it all.  Then I see something I haven't seen before.  This time, It's so outrageous that I couldn't resist sharing.  I'll share the visuals, but fortunately for you I can't share the smells.  This is kind of a diary and kind of not...I bought it in January so you don't get the day-by-day play-by-play, but it's not done yet so this isn't old news either.

I came across this deal from a wholesaler who I met on BP (thanks yet again BP for making me money).  He hadn't seen the house in person but he had heard it was in bad shape.

I sent my acquisitions guy down there to look at the house. When he came back he said, "that's the worst house I've ever seen." At first I thought "Come on, really? You've looked at over a thousand houses for me!" Ultimately, I took his word for it. We threw a number at the rehab and ARV and made an offer. It was accepted.

Here are the numbers:

ARV $400,000 (probably a little more, I hope)

Rehab $175,000 (probably a little less, I hope)

Since there were some unknowns I had to make a conservative offer.  It would take a while to fix this place up, so I had to add some margin to cover the carrying costs. 

My offer: $125,000.

Closing was about a month later.  The seller agreed to move out and leave the key at the title company.  On move-out day, I went down to the house to see it for myself for the first time.  When I opened the front door, this is what I saw.

Ok, so now I knew that my acquisitions guy was right!  We were in for it!

Have you ever seen anything like it?  Wait, it gets worse.  More to follow!

[Shequann Burrwell]

trader joes best customer right here! I'd tear down and rebuild. good luck

[Steve Sanchez]

Awesome thread to watch! The craziness is sobering...

Kuddos to you!

-Steve

[Chris K.]

I'm speechless...can't wait to see how this turns out

[John E.]

@Benjamin Timmins I know right! That cat is suffering!

Hoarders can be monsters to their pets. We, cat owners, need to hug our cats tight tonight. LOL

[Terri Lewis]

I thought we had some bad ones where the crew wore masks through the removal of the debris and first cleaning. Look like yours will need to be almost gutted and everything left will have to be sealed. I bet it's looking a lot different after the debris is out. Thanks for sharing and keep the pictures coming.

[Mary B.]

My stomach started to churn by the 3rd photo... that's why i could never watch a full episode of hoarders. Unreal...GODspeed & more profit to you!

Kudos,

Mary

P.S. You gotta show us the finished product. Don't forget!

[Brian Burke]

Thanks for the great comments, everyone.  I hope y'all have had your showers and cleaned your houses because it's time for another update!

Twelve 40-yard dumpsters, about three weeks, and a ton of overweight dumpster charges and we finally have the house empty.

The final tally:

• Tons of trash
• Eight dead cats
• One dead dog
• One dead raccoon (in the heater duct)
• Two beehives
• A car
• Countless wheelbarrow loads of cat litter, in some cases over two feet high
• A partridge and a pear tree

But look!  The house looks totally different without all of the debris.  I said "different" not "good" or "clean".

This must be where the cat litter fiasco all began.  I suppose you could just vacuum and put it on the market, but I take pride in my flips and decided to go the extra mile.

[Brian Burke]

What do you all think I should do, paint, carpet, and sell?  Not to be on this one, by this point the smell is so bad that you can smell the cat pee from two houses away.  The cats got in the attic, between the first floor ceiling and second floor subfloor, and even in the void space around the curvature of the inside of the bathtub (between the wall and tub).

All of that is behind us now.  All we have to do is remove the sources of the smell.  Well, we have to find all of the sources, first.

The classic dilemma of every flip:  Paint the cabinets, reface them, or replace them.  The one nice thing about this house is the decision was easy.  No, NOT paint!

We were actually surprised to find this bathroom.  The debris pile in this half bath was so high it rose above the light fixture.  Our only clue that it might be a bathroom was the exhaust fan in the ceiling.  I don't think it's been used much.

[Shawn Thom]

i knew there had to be some dead animals in there somewhere.  My record is 3 dead cats, full skeletons.

[Brian Burke]

@Shawn Thom my previous record was two, the new record will probably never be broken...I hope!

[Wendell De Guzman]

If there's a BP World Record for the Worst Looking House Even After It's Cleaned, this house will get my vote. 

Good thing I saw the pics long after I ate dinner.

[Steve Babiak]

Originally posted by @Brian Burke:

@Steve Babiak that would have been an interesting idea. Where the heck were you in January??! ...

Well, you didn't post anything about this until June... Had this been posted back then, you might have gotten others to give some ideas too.

[Terri Lewis]

Wow, that is the worse I've ever heard of. Looks like it could be a really nice house. The transformation to this point is amazing. I can almost smell it here in IN.

[Terri Lewis]

What is your plan on disinfecting? I am curious as to the process you are going to do to find the origination of the smell, and how you are going to rectify. Are you going to spray the place down with a bleach mix before the cleaning begins?

[Nicole A.]

@Brian Burke I can't help but wonder if all that sand was also the toilet for the humans...not just the cats. 

[William Avery]

You could go in there with a hose and wash it all down. I don't think water damage would be much of a concern. But, you might create an EPA violation. ;-) I had a house once with a smell problem. I removed the carpet and the smell got better. I removed the linoleum that was under the carpet and the smell got better. I removed the ceilings (with no insulation but with about a half inch of dust and the smell got better. I removed the interior walls and the smell got better. I bleached everything that was left but still had a smell. Then I vacuumed the space between the exterior walls and where the interior walls used to be. It turns out that the dust and dirt in this space was very aromatic. This last step finally got rid of the smell.

[Andy Robison]

O.o there is only one thing to do. Insure the place set it on fire and rebuild. Looks like way to many spiders live in that house.

[John E.]

@Andy Robison Wouldn't it be such a same if the house just... "disappeared" some how?

Haha! 

Disclaimer: I'm just kidding and not promoting arson at all!! 

[Cory Mickler]

Would it be cheaper to demolish the building and rebuild or can this building still be refurbished?

[Rolanda Eldridge]

Really!!!...it will probably make you some $$ after it's said and done....but it's a BEAST!!

[Account Closed]

I found this thread to be disturbingly restimulating, in a bad way.  I bought hoarder houses before I knew what hoarding was.  I just thought there was a lot of stuff.  Or that people were using vacant properties for dumping.  They were unoccupied, though, and it was usually just a matter of clean out.  Out in the Central Valley, everything is pretty dry, so vacant houses only smell bad from cats or rats. Any rotting trash had usually dried up long ago. 

4 years ago I bought one from owner occupants.  When we finally got in there, there was no heat as the furnace was toast (and all at the floor vents covered anyway), no hot water as the heater as had gone out years before.  Not one sink nor the tubs would drain.  One tub was full of black water with scum growing on it.  But, amazingly, the toilet was working.  Working with the young adult daughter to get her and mother out of there was one of the more traumatic experiences of my RE career.  Since then I've encountered one even worse, that looks exactly like Brian's house. But it's the smell that will get you.  

I'll be curious to see if Brian is able to save the subfloor on the 2nd story.  It's one thing to ruin a slab that can be sealed.  But that amount moisture and cat urine had to have damaged the joists.  Looking forward to more posts on this one!

[Account Closed]

Originally posted by @Steve Babiak:

@Brian Burke as far as the sand removal, did your team consider doing it some other way? Maybe a chute like the roofers or concrete guys use. Or maybe what they do when digging Phila row home basements deeper; they fill 5 gal buckets and get those to the window. Of course being upstairs a pulley system / block and tackle would be useful for moving such buckets once at the window. I would guess one of those would beat getting wheelbarrows up and down stairs.

Your question made me laugh.  I have one landscaping and hauling guy that loves really hard jobs.  Seriously, the harder, hotter, dirtier, heavier the job, the more energized het gets. He has a core crew of 4 guys and tons of part-timers, and is usually managing multiple job sites on any given day. On the 2nd floor he would have abandoned the wheelbarrow and used as many guys as needed to do a bucket brigade of cat sand out window.  And he would have joined in, for fun.  

As Brian said, though, his guys were probably in denial and thought it couldn't be as bad as it was.  Can't blame them as it's beyond imagination how bad that house is.  

[Bahman Ghashghaei]

@Brian Burke I am very eager to see what the house looked like when you were done with it.

Also, you have to disclose to the buyer what it looked like when you bought it. Yes/no? You sure it was a good idea to share the pictures online?

I am only asking to learn the legality of it.

[Brian Burke]

@Account Closed on a human level these types of houses are tragic.  These homes need people with thick skin like you and I, to not only look past the human tragedy but see the potential and have a willingness to turn the situation around.  As the housing stock ages, I expect we will see more homes like this.  I'm proud to be part of the solution.  I'm sure you felt the same way after it was all said and done.  Thanks for telling your story, I knew I couldn't be the only one to do a house like this!

Stay tuned for an update on the smell removal, and I'll reveal what happens to the floor joists!!  By the way...the first floor isn't slab, it's joist/subfloor too.

[Brian Burke]

@Bahman Ghashghaei Rehab isn't done yet, but we're on the punchlist!  I should have full completion by the weekend and I'll have after pics next week.  Hoping to have it on the market Friday, but it might not hit until Monday.

Yes, I'll have to disclose what the house looked like, what we did to it, how it smelled, etc.  The law says I must disclose all known defects, and while there will be little to no known "defects" when I sell this house, California disclosure forms ask the question "were there any defects in the past that have been corrected".  I'd rather tell everything up front, even show the buyer the pictures, and let the chips fall where they may.  If the buyer backs out, I'd rather have that happen than keep a secret that will surely be discovered later and result in a dispute.  Work like an open book, always tell the truth, and save yourself a lot of grief...that's my operating principle.