REO Horror Story: War of the Roses

If you thought “The War of the Roses” was just a movie, think again. Apparently, a couple fighting over assets—namely a house—and doing so at the detriment of their own health, or the health of their real estate, is not fiction after all.

Just ask Reggie McMullin with Keller Williams Realty in Hurst, Texas. Reggie remembers one couple that let a divorce linger so long that it cost them the value on the very asset they were fighting for.

McMullin said the home in question had a flat roof and was built in a neighborhood that was considered posh in the 1960s.

Reggie received the call to do the BPO once the property hit foreclosure. Three years later, he still can't forget the rotting home he found.

Once he stepped in, he found the roofs rotting from all the water that had entered the property, mold on every wall board and a hole in the roof of a closet that was so deep you could see the blue sky above. Because of excessive water leaks, the home's electrical box was completely rusted, which is almost unheard of.

Reggie says what followed was a “nightmare.” The original goal was to re-sell the home, but with mold everywhere and roofing problems that needed serious care, the loan holder eventually realized it was time to just sell.

Reggie says the morale of the story is simple: “It's better to sell a home, as is, than to rehab it, and then deal with legal liabilities later on.”

The other morale may go something like this: It's better not to go to war like the Roses, or you'll end up losing the very thing you've been fighting for, and leaving a rather inconvenient mess behind.