Distressed home owners who are unhappy about their home being sold in a short sale are trying to sabotage the sale by purposely damaging the home to make it less appealing and valuable, according to officials with CoreLogic. We touched on this last year, the trend known as “reverse staging”. This is exactly what it implies, the owner makes the home as unattractive as possible in an attempt to prolong the process and stay in it, some examples of what owners did really makes you wonder. Is this one of the reasons short sale lenders are so combative?

For example, home owners have reportedly poured cat urine on rugs to make the home less appealing to potential buyers. In the article we wrote last year, the urine of choice was opossum. Such vandalism can be reported to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and is considered fraud, Matthias Blume, senior director of analytics for CoreLogic, told HousingWire. 

The rate of suspicious activity surrounding short sales—including financial fraud and vandalism—has been rising for the last three years. Today, 3.7 percent of short sale transactions involve suspicious activity, according to CoreLogic data. The highest rates of such suspicious activity are centered in California, Florida, Arizona, and Nevada, according to CoreLogic.

We’ve seen a decrease in this sort of activity but these distressed home videos of actual disgusting homes that were listed can be fascinating to watch…..and activity like this is sill going on out there.