Todd: Hello! Welcome to Todd Miller TV. I’m joined today with Oana who is our lovely corporate broker and REO super agent. And there’s a new law that’s getting ready to be voted on here in Nevada, super interesting and I wanted to talk to you about that, share with everybody, sort of your thoughts and if you have any feedback on this. So what this law is is it deals with Foreclosures and the person who is living the foreclosure before it happens. So, this is a summary of the bill and it’s the summary is that prohibits the willful destruction of Real property that is subject to foreclosure or repossession. Now you’re probably saying “I don’t know what that means!” So, what it actually means is that if you live in a house, and you know it’ s going to be foreclosed, and you’re either the tenant or the owner, and the you do something intentional to damage the properties so that it reduces the value of it for the bank. Meaning you put holes on the wall, you just take appliances out of it, you take flooring, landscaping, or just do something intentional like clog up all the drains, turn the water on because you’re mad. What this bill does is it makes it a felony under Nevada law to do that. So Oana, what do you think, first of all, has this happened? Have you seen somebody intentionally damaging the house before moving out?
Oana: You know, we see it happen all the time. And what’s interesting about it is that, not only does it happen in the lower priced homes, but it happens in luxury homes. So this is happening across the board and the damage is extensive. We’re talking about anywhere from a few thousand dollar to tens of thousands of dollars. You know I had a house where previous owner took the landscaping. All the way down to the sprinkler system. He dug up the sprinkler system. He took that. I’ve had it to where they’ve taken everything out of the house. The kitchen cabinets, the sinks, the plumbing all the way down to the floor to where they actually cut the pipes all the way down to the concrete floor. They’ve taken the tile, the ceramic tile, they’ve ripped it up out of the home. So the damage is really extensive. It’s you knwo when you walk into a home like that, it just breaks your heart. It really does that someone can inflict that sort of damage to the home. Because a lot of times you have to keep in mind, it’s not that they’re oh well they’re taking what belongs to them. They’re doing more than that. They’re actually destroying the property.
Todd: So, I mean obviously their thought presence has got to be “well it’s not my fault that I didn’t make my mortgage payment, it’s the banks’ fault for giving me the loan for the first place, they never should have given me the loan.” And which I always wonder if they believe that the bank never should have loan them the money, why they applied? You know that’s like their saying “Please I need the money” and then they go “You should never have given it to me.” And then when the bank takes the house back because they haven’t made the payments they get mad at the bank.
Oana: You know, whatever their frustrations are, it still boils down to destroying the property. You know we walk into properties a lot of times and there are what I called “Love notes” on the wall. “Dear so and so bank, expletive, expletive.” You know, when I always take pictures of those and sent it to the bank and say “Okay, can I re-paint the house now so I can get rid of the Love note?” One most amusing thing to me is when they write love notes like that at the bank and they’re mispellings.
Todd: Yeah! That’s pretty funny. Okay! So anyway, I just want to give you an update. What we’ll do is we’ll follow this and then if bill passes we’ll just do another update and tell you about it specifically. But if you go on the Nevada state website you can find it. This is brand new, it’s called the “Assembly Bill 373” We’ll see where it goes but, in any case if you’re in a property that’s been foreclosed, just be very careful because if this bill passes and you don’t know about it. And then you go and damage the property, as soon as the bill passes it becomes a felony to do that. So,
Oana: The thing that the people have to realize is that when a property gets damage like this, then the bank has to go in and make repairs,those repairs in a lot of ways, comes out of tax payer’s pockets because then the bank is spending money on the repairs. The property will be sold and the total loss for the bank at some point circles down to you and I because they take it as a loss in their taxes and that makes it for a less revenue in the federal coffers and higher taxes for the rest of us.
Todd: Alright. Okay. Well that’s the update for today and Thanks for tuning in. Bye!
Oana: Thank you.