Robert,

Whenever I have had a situation where someone left a bunch of stuff behind in one of my rentals, I take a lot of photos and notations of the broken, damaged, filthy, and excessively worn aspects of abandoned property. I also sometimes include some measurements. Obviously, I want to justify as best I can that the value is less than $700 to avoid hassle of public auction or fraudulent claim by tenant. I have always been able to feel comfortable that I would prevail if the issue came to court.

Nevertheless, it is time consuming so I wanted to ask you if you were aware of anybody in L.A. area that has some type of business where they would take a look at abandoned property and offer an inexpensive service to provide a valuation since such a valuation would be from an independent third party. That would be useful to support my side if the issue ever went to court. I am guessing maybe someone that does estate sales but typically the situations they deal with are when there is real significant value so they might not be interested just to pick up a small fee to appraise some abandoned property.

Any ideas??

Good questions. Let me tell you a few stories. In West Hollywood I have some great tenants. So one of them works with "Out of the Closet" a gay charity group. My tenant came into a vacant unit and said, "This was the kind of stuff they can re-purpose and sale". So I made an appointment and took my F600 Ford Flat Bed truck, 16' x 8' and loaded up the "good" stuff.

I drove to the back alleyway and went inside the store to speak wit the manager. He took one look at my beat up contractors truck and thought the covered stuff was junk and told me he wouldn't touch my stuff with a 10 foot poll.

I began to unload the truck and he called the West Hollywood Sheriff. They showed up in their jeeps and told me I had to pack the stuff back up or else! I didn't listen because my tenant from another unit was on the so called "board" of Out of the Closet and had approved my so called "Junk". When the manager of Out of the Closet opened his eyes and looked, he saw my stuff was great and then accepted it.

So fast forward to three years ago. A tenant in North Hollywood died, who was a furniture master and artist. He would buy at thrift stores antique furniture and do a make over, stripping the paint and restoring the natural luster of the woods. All small pieces. Night stands, little tables, etc. I loaded the tenants stuff in my "trailer" 4' x 8' and headed to Good Will in Van Nuys. I got there and that manager said, "I don't want that junk". I had pulled off my tarp and everyone in the parking lot came over to look. EVERYONE loved my stuff. So I said to Good Wills customers, "You can have my stuff for free"! Then the manger of Good Will said, "This is our stuff and you have to pay us for it". I emptied my trailer and 5 guys working for Good Will took things inside.

So the moral of my story, I couldn't give my stuff away for free, but when someone else took an interests, then all of a sudden they wanted it.

Robert,

My question was whether you know of a business that would come to the apartment and for a reasonable fee do a written appraisal of abandoned property. Ideally the appraisal would always be for stuff that was worth a total of less than $700.

Robert & Ray,

O.K., thanks.

Sounds like 2 good ideas. I will check out both possibilities.

Although hopefully Block's lockout service will include an appraisal but I doubt it.