Todd: Hello! Welcome to Todd Miller TV. Joined here today with Oana. There are some interesting thing that happened after close of escrow and I wanna go over those and have Oana sort of share with you some tips if you are a home purchaser, with what you should be doing as soon as you own the property. So here’s an example: You close escrow on a property, on let’s just say on Friday. You closed escrow, records, you own that property. And then you wait ’til you know maybe you’re out of town, maybe after the weekend you show up with the property and you find somebody living in the property. Okay? Like somebody just decided to move in over the weekend. What are your options? Like what can you do?

Oana: Okay! First of all, as soon as you close escrow on the property, take possession of the property. It’s yours.

Todd: Okay.

Oana: Okay? Take possession of it. Take control of the property. That’s why you bought it so you would control it.

Todd: Okay.

Oana: So take possession and control the property. And it happens. You know, sometimes people take over a property. They squat on the property. So if that’s the case, your first re-course is to call the police. Here’s a situation: These people do not have a lease agreement so they have no right to be there. They’re trespassing.

Todd: Okay.

Oana: So the police department will generally come out and they’ll assess the situation depending on what’s going on. They may go ahead and literally escort these people off your property.

Todd: Okay.

Oana: If the police department does not want to escort the people off the property, then you’re going to have to go through an eviction process. I always recommend that you hire an eviction service rather than do the eviction yourself. That way you don’t actually lengthen the process by missing a step and somehow violating the rights of the person, actually trespassing against him.

Todd: Okay.

Oana: That’s just adding, you know, that’s just adding insult to your injury at that point.

Todd: So what do you do? I mean you get to the house, your truck is there. You’ve got all your furniture and some guy is standing there and going “A friend of mine says he owned it and I can move in, Spend a couple months here.”

Oana: That’s very unfortunate. That’s when you call metro you hope that they’re gonna get them out of there.

Todd: But you know, here’s the thing, you cannot you know, obviously physically touch these people or their property. That’s gonna get you into trouble. So don’t go down that road. Definitely have the police come out and sort this out for you. Hopefully they’ll just remove the people. A lot of times like I said, they will just remove the people.

Todd: Okay. Same scenario. You closed Escrow on Friday. You own the house. Let’s say you didn’t do a walk through. Or you did it a week before, and on Wednesday there was a big storm. Thunderstorms in the area. And you got to the house on say Tuesday, which is 4 days after close of Escrow when you loaned the house. And you now find out that the storm. The thunderstorm caused hale damage to the house. Broken windows. A tree fell on the house, and there’s chips on the stucco and paint now, and you go back and try to say “well, the storm was before the close of Escrow so the seller has to pay for all this ’cause you know, right. So how do you handle that?

Oana: Oh, you earn the world of hurts of that point because the problem is, the seller’s gonna say “Well, I’m so sorry but we closed Escrow so we’re no longer on the property, we’re no longer have a responsibility.

Todd: Okay.

Oana: And then the really awful part is that you’re home owners insurance’s gonna say, “well yeah but this happened before you owned the property so we’re not gonna cover you either.

Todd: Okay.

Oana: So it’s just a bad situation and that’s one of the reasons why you always wanna make sure that you go to the property before you close and right after you close and take control of the property and make sure that everything is at it should be.

Todd: Okay. I like that. I tel; people, the walk through should be done closed to close of escrow as possible. So you can ensure the property is the way you want it. You can’t go and change locks and do all those crazy things. Start making repairs until you on it ’cause it’s possible that the loan will fall through at the last minute or they’ll lease someone an issue, title issue. And if you’ve done that, then you’re pretty much out. And that’s a whole other video we’re gonna do on that subject.

Oana: And you know, the other things that happens to property is, besides acts of nature and people moving in to them. Yoy know we have pool equipment stolen, we have airconditioner stolen.

Todd: Okay.

Oana: So you know, things like that do happen.

Todd: Okay.

Oana: So that’s why it’s super important that you go check out the property,one let me if you did a walk through, you know 3 days, 5 days before close of Escrow. That’s fine. You know just do a quick drive by. Make sure the house is still standing. Okay? Make sure that things are okay. And as then as soon as you get a confirmation recorded, take control of your property. It is yours. Control your property.

Todd: There was actually a true story, a guy drove a property, the day before the trustee sale, they bid on it the next day, they went after the sale back to the house that they just bought at the trustee sale, and it burned out the night before.

Oana: Yeah!

Todd: So the owner previous/well they suspect the previous owner burned the house down before the bank foreclosed. It got foreclosed the next day. They bought a house that didn’t exist it was just an empty lot basically. They gone like the trucks had already been there and the house was burned.

Oana: Right. And you know, these are very rare scenarios. Very rare.

Todd: But they do happen.

Oana: They do happen and they…

Todd: Sometimes they happen on days like today.

Oana: Yes and you know, they make great stories.

Todd: Okay. Anyway I thought I would share that with you. That is my update for today and hope to see you on another video. Thanks!