As we entered, a badly torn and worn kitchen floor and scummy stove greeted us under a barely flickering fluorescent light. Above our heads a huge water damaged ceiling looked spongy. Nothing in the entire house had been cleaned upon move out, but then what would have been the point with the extent of the damage? Deep, dark and fuzzy mold sprang from every single window sill as though growing there for the entire ten years.
The front door jamb suffered from what appeared to be three separate break-in attempts. Stepping into the hallway we encountered a lake of squishy water saturating the entire hallway carpet and oozing into all bedrooms as well. The water heater has a bad leak!
Bedrooms suffered from holes in the walls, mold and dust bunnies growing willy-nilly up the walls and windows, and every door suffering sometimes multiple holes in its surface. The stench was overpowering—must, mold, and cat spray or urine to a suffocating degree. God, I wanted to be wearing a mask to even stand in there.
Moving along, the washer/dryer closet wasn’t an improvement and the solitary bath was the most horrifying of all. How someone ever felt they could get cleaned in a bathtub and shower so laden with filth I have no idea. Do people really live like this?
This is our next job? Ohhhhhhhh boy. The poor owner; I bet the conservative estimate on what this is going to cost him to fix and clean up is at least $10,000. A grand a year; that was a pretty expensive tenant.
