I have bought a property that turned out to be more like a landfill.

There was an obvious amount of junk on the property when looking to buy it. There were car bumpers, pool parts, pipes, glass, ect.....

The lot is just over one acre and was overgrown. There was a section that was mowed but the rest was nature taking over. One of the forested areas was an old dog lot.

I wanted to clear the property line and clean it up and clear the property except for the large trees as this seems important to me. There were several "brush piles" on the property. I decided that it was going to take too long for me to do this by myself and that I really needed to get some help. I also need to start working on the house, or at least get a better idea if I am going to fix it or just clean it up a bit and resale it as is.

I hired a crew to come out and clear the brush pies, property line, dog lot, and overgrowth. There was what looked to be a large brush pile in the one corner of the property. I started off trying to burn as much stuff as I could from another pile before hiring the crew. I pulled some more dead leafy stuff from the large pile in the corner and I noticed that it was mostly still green, so hadn't been there too long. Now remember, I knew that there were a lot of junk car bumpers and other care parts, pool parts and trash in the brush behind and around the buildings. I knew it was going to be a pain to get all of that out, and it was. I found trash of all kinds all over the property when starting to clear the property line and other areas.

When the crew I hired starting chipping up the large "brush pile" in the corner, it turned out to be some brush on top of a large trash pile. Not just trash, but an ungodly amount of shingles and some vinyl siding. There are car parts, 5 tv's, so far, other metal parts, plastic parts, toys, you name it. I have found 25 gallons or more of paint as well. Anything that you can think of is all over this property and the piles are this type of stuff. The more you dig to try and clean it up, the more you find. I have bought a landfill and I don't know how to handle it. I am so irritated over this situation. Obviously the crew I hired does not want to deal with the trash piles as they are a tree service. When they took their skid steer and dug into the smaller pile, it was an overwhelming amount of shingles. I decided to rent a dumpster and get my tractor towed over there. Problems are that the tractor has a standard bucket without teeth and is not really heavy enough or strong enough to do real well with the shingles. I am not supposed to have yard waste in the dumpster either, but they know that there will be dirt on the shingles. I have been putting the shingles in the bucket by hand to try and separate things out and not end up with a lot of dirt in the dumpster. I can't get out of the dirt and trash long enough to deal with the house.

I bought this property as is. It is obvious though that this guy purposefully hid this trash pile right before selling. It looked like a large pile of brush. Who would have thought to dig through a brush pile to see if it was actually a pile of trash.

How would you handle this?

Can this guy be sued even though I bought the property as is?

Buyer beware, especially in TN.

Reply:

Subject: RE: Tenant Goes to Jail

Your Name:

Dee Ann

Your State:

WI

6X6: Oh the joys of buying something "as is"

Years ago we bought a house at auction "as is". We were fortunate enough to be able to view the house before auction, or so we thought. We felt we could fix it up so we bought it. After we got the house, we didn't get a key, had to pay a locksmith to get us in. Once in, the house was nothing like what we had seen. Since our viewing, the previous owners had taken open cans of paint and hoisted them at the ceilings, walls, hardwood floors, and oak china cabinets.

As is, buyer beware...

When I lived in Calif I knew someone who bought a big old house at auction, sight unseen. When they went to look it over they found someone had piled used tires in all the rooms up to the ceilings rather than pay the fees to get rid of them. I recommend you always look.

Is there a reason you did not poke around in every pile before you closed?

6man,

Don’t let this get you down. Hopefully you got a good deal and just do the cleanup. My guess is the roofer dumped rather than paying the landfill fee.

Do you NEED to clean these piles? Are they blocking the use? Do they hurt anything if you just leave them?

We cleaned a huge house with huge barn and big shed - hoarder. My technique is to call the metal scrapper and let him have any metal. Free labor.

I cut a deal on the barn - you can have ALL the metal (he started drooling) if you also load the junk in the dumpster and sweep it clean. DONE!

#22 taught me a fantastic idea - fan out a bunch of $20 bills, take a pic of them on the pile and post it on Craigslist. Maybe throw in an old power tool. “This is yours if you take away this pile.(or load it in the dumpster)

Hire an excavator to scrape up the piles.

Rent a bigger tractor.

BRAD

PS do NOT try to scrap the metal yourself. Locally it’s worth a penny a pound. I ton 2,000 pounds gets $20 for a day of labor.

The Bible teaches to leave the grain that falls and the corners for the GLEANERS. Let the grunt helpers make a few bucks on the little treasures.

My housekeeper has a perpetual yard sale so she LOVES to snatch up anything she can sell for a quarter. She cleans out a ton of stuff at no labor cost to me.

A partner purchased a duplex in Silverlake, CA (Los Angeles) that was on a hill but over the years someone leveled the slope, but the earth was still settling in. So we (I'm the contractor) dug the fill up, only to find an old 1920's car burrier in the back yard. My partner then hired labors and they dug it out. They sold it for a mint.

6x6,

Can you use your tractor and dig a big hole for the shingles and such?

You said you had bought a landfill, so use it as one. Shingles buried deep will be there forever and not rot out to leave a dip in the yard.

6x6,

Don't let this trash problem get you down. I have bought and cleaned numerous ones that are identical to yours. People here always want to know how I buy houses for $5K and your post explains how,...they are hoarder houses or debris fields, whatever you choose to call them. Just keep working each day on getting that debris out of there and keep thinking about the end result of why you bought the property in the first place.

Buying "as is" means you've essentially signed off on anything and everything you find. That's why the deal has to be SCREAMING good: the incentive for someone to dump on you is massive.

I bought an old "trash" house once that was full of junk. Probably a couple of 40 yard dumpsters worth. No worries: I budgeted for it.

Ah, but I neglected to look in the shed out back...which was piled floor to ceiling with trash. No small shed either. Think 2 car garage extra deep!

What did I do? Flipped it in 2 weeks to a rehabber, made $8,000, and went off wiser and a little bit richer. There are some messes I'm not prepared to deal with, and this was one of them. That buy must have no looked in the shed either. He sold it a few months later to someone else who did end up fixing the place up very nicely.

Live and learn.

Could you dump a few truckloads of soil on the lot, smooth it out, seed it and move forward? Maybe plant some inexpensive, fast-growing, hardy hedges around the trash pile?

What's your plan for it: rental, resale/flip, etc?

Bought one at auction ... neighbor comes over and says the house was built on the old landfill. Sure enough you dig down 2 or 3 feet you hit garbage. So don't dig.

Glad you bought a property! Focus on getting the house to rentable condition, and tell tenant ( put in writing) you'll be coming over once a week, once a month, on Tuesday evenings ( pick a day/time, frequency) to work on the extended yard. My point is, I'm urging you to get the house to cash flowing first. These piles can wait, though a tidy yard is more appealing. Could even fence off with metal posts and garden wire fencing. ( being a scrounger, with a large yard and two sheds, I always have some of that already on hand. )

Craigslist is your friend. Even brush piles have been known to go, as Hugelkultur gardening is all the rage.

Correction to my advice:

I'm with Busy - clean up around the house an area for a nice sized yard for the house. Perhaps clean up the property lines/perimeters to give you an idea of what you're working with. Get the house rented.

Then, if you want to do the cleanup yourself, rent an excavator that can pick up big piles of stuff and put it in a dumpster. You cannot sort through all this by hand or you will never get it done. Do this for most of the piles and big junk so you can "see the light at the end of the tunnel". If you don't make a rather large dent at one time, this will grate at you forever. Massive removal of junk across the board and then deal with what should be normal clean up headcaches which will also be time consuming.

I personally would find a group of 3 or 4 guys (not separate individuals but a crew) to do the hand clean up. That way, if someone doesn't show up, the others do. It may cost more than it seems worth it for grunt labor but hard workers will make a big difference in just a short time period. I would not hire the kind of guys you can hire for $50 and some beer. I actually haven't hired anyone like that for years as it's just not worth it.

Perhaps offer it to scrap people but I doubt it ... this is garbage with very little metal or 1) it wouldn't be there and/or 2) others have picked through everything as it gets dumped.

Wow, what a nasty surprise. No advice here, just sympathy.

My folks bought a "farmette" in 1974, 4 acres with a house and barn, chicken coop. Out back was the ubiquitous dump pile common to every rural property. Dad had almost certainly added to it between then and 2005, when they sold the place and moved to FL. But I hadn't been back to the dump except once, right after they bought the place.

In the spring, the year after they sold, I got a call from the realtor (we had bought through her ourselves), asking if I knew anything about a trash pile. The realtor didn't want to call my folks, who were in ill health. The new owners had called, hopping mad about the trash pile - that they'd discovered only just then, maybe 9 months later.

The realtor said that the buyers had been given the option to completely walk the property before committing to the purchase, and that they had declined at the time. It was really a case of the fact that the buyer didn't "beware", and nothing could be done (formal real estate disclosures were much less specific at that time). The realtor just wanted to know how long the pile had been there, and could I remember how high it was when my folks bought the place?

All that I said is that it had been there when they bought, and that it was a little taller than me at that time. My answers must have convinced them that it was a very old pile, as we never heard from them again. Phew.

Anyway, I hope that you get this sorted out soon, and that this becomes a success story. Maybe some treasure in all that trash?

Thank you everyone for the replies and encouragement.

I definitely paid way too much for the place. I was in a hurry to buy a project and work with my hands. Careful what you ask for 6x6, you silly rabbit!

I can actually prove the seller knew about it and that it was his trash by the length of time he owned the property, the age of the trash, and looking at historical maps.

I knew of the obvious trash, which was a lot, but I didn't really think that I would need to dig in brush piles to see if there was trash under them. I will next time.

I am undecided on what I am going to do with it for sure. I was thinking of doing like Ken, I already messed that up, and flipping without fixing up the house up too much. I have considered renting, but I really don't like dealing with tenants. I have also considered moving there because the location is great. It is a beautiful country setting surrounded by farm land and woods, yet it is very convenient and close to everything as it is within the city limits as far as the address. Not quiet the suburbs, but very close. It is very quiet and peaceful there and I get to hear my furry farm animal friends and see them. I came close to petting one of the cows, but couldn't quiet convince it.

The biggest reason that I bought this property is because this type of setting just appeals to me. I like my house but I hate the noisy city. When I see a place like this it just draws my attention and I dream of living in such a place. I really want a simple life, but I have to stop buying for that reason. If I end up moving there though, then maybe it was really worth it. If not, I think I would still like to keep it for the fact that I would hate to sell a property that I am so fond of. Do any of you ever feel like that about certain properties? How do you not get attached to them like that?

I was trying to do as Busy is saying and had hired a tree service to clear the property line and brush so that I could get started on the house as I had already hauled off the obvious trash, but when they ran into the trash piles that ended that. I will hopefully have that resolved this weekend and start looking closer at things on the house.

The neighbors have commented on how much better the place is looking. Maybe I will feel better abought it when I get the time to pet the farm animals, grins...

my new advice. Make the house livable and get living there as soon as possible.... whether that means make it perfect before moving in or move in and work on it as time (and money) permits. Sell or rent your current residence. Then, work on the outside as you can. Make certain you have a portion near the house where you and your wife can sit and relax, even if it means putting privacy fence up to shield part of your land.

Others here will say never become "fond" or emotionally attached to a property. I say that is total bull$h!t. Anyone who has never loved a piece of property cannot understand it ... and you cannot describe it to someone. But when you meet another person who loves their land, you bond instantly. I own land and there is no price someone could pay me for it. Yes, several millions would do it but no one would ever realistically pay that. When you lay on the land and put your ear down you can just feel and hear the earth. Of course, getting up at my age may not be as graceful as it used to be.

As Nicole said.

That sounds like a perfect setting. I'm excited for ya! An acre is enough space for a market garden, if you are so inclined.

And the cows will come around, when they get to know ya! Oh, and farmers like having a helping hand, especially on days when they have a wedding to go to, or some other event..... ( but learn how to do the chores before the event, or it slows them down.) A couple of my brothers do that in retirement.

I like my house but I hate the noisy city. I completely understand.

I live on a 60 acre farm 5 miles outside of a small town about 5K people. At night or late in the evening - NO Noise. No dogs barking. No vehicle noise. I am 1000 feet off the road. I love it. I lived in the city for 3 years back in the 80s never got use to the Noise.

FIX THE PLACE - MOVE THERE - YOU WILL LIKE IT - AND THE NEIGHBORS WILL THANK YOU AND MAY EVEN HELP YOU WITH THE CLEANUP.

May be a Diamond in the Rough.

6x6,

I wonder if you can leave it for now, and offer a tenant some money off their rent if they clean it up over time. For example "If tenant completely legally removes all trash from southwest corner of lot by April 15th, 2023, they are entitled to one month's rent free of charge"....something like that.

Thank you again for the advice.

I like that idea, Hoosier. I may try that next time, if there is one. I will need to look closer next time.

I have gotten it cleaned up as much as reasonably possible and have seeded and strawed the nice area now.