Over 30 years ago, I appraised a house in South San Jose. When the owner opened the front door, I reeled back as if I had stuck my nose in an ammonia bottle. Inside were five Besenji dogs, and feces were everywhere. The dogs had chewed the corners off the walls and parts of the doors. The owner’s sheets looked like waxed paper. The owner’s son was cleaning while I was there and I saw him run over poop with the vacuum. The pool water looked like pea soup. Last year I was chatting with Dale, a fellow member of the church parking-lot team, and I asked him where he lived. It turned out to be that same house I had appraised, now 30 years later. The man had died and the house had gone into foreclosure, and Dale had purchased it at a very good price. We exchanged stories, it turns out the house had been under the same ownership for an additional 20 years after I appraised it. Dale was telling me that a recurring stain kept appearing on the family-room ceiling. He would prime and paint, and a few days later the stain would return. Dale thought a pipe was leaking, so he tore up the subfloor in the second-floor bathroom. Turns out the original owner’s dogs were using the floor as a toilet and their urine had soaked through the subfloor and all the way through a floor joist. When I asked Dale about the pea-soup pool, he said when he drained it, he found a refrigerator at the bottom.
