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    MissNormaDesmondKelly Conaboy
    11/22/14 1:26pm

    Am I a bad person because I'm a little bit glad that, if someone had to be dead, it was the man and not the kittens? I fear so.

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      SyngMissNormaDesmond
      11/22/14 1:32pm

      If that makes you a bad person, then so am I.

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      KittensAndUnicorns_v2_The UprisingMissNormaDesmond
      11/22/14 1:34pm

      missmorestuffingpleasedesmond for president 2016

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    HaighaKelly Conaboy
    11/22/14 1:06pm

    "I expected to profit on human misery at arms' length. We didn't actually expect to witness it!"

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      AckThpfftHaigha
      11/23/14 9:46am

      Ow, that stung. (Good for you.)

      I say that because we own 2 properties as a result of the crash. One we bought was a short sale, the other a foreclosure. No corpses in either.

      We had the same misgivings before picking them up: Were we profiting from other people's misery, and so on. But in the end, we realized that it just didn't matter. The houses would have gone on the block no matter what decision we made. (And you could argue that we helped the sellers to avoid foreclosure in one case.)

      It still feels a bit sleazy though, as we discovered evidence of the struggle by the owners of the short-sale home. We realized that they didn't run their air conditioning during at least two North Carolina summers; in fact, they didn't even bother to install air filters in the intakes. Also, half the light bulbs in the house weren't burnt out, but merely unscrewed - in a vain attempt to shave a few more pennies off the electric bills.

      Ironically, my parents had to deal with foreclosure 25 years earlier. Now I'm the vulture.

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      HaighaAckThpfft
      11/23/14 12:11pm

      Part of my objection in this case was the comments from the real estate agent. Estate agents were one of the things that lead to the crash, and both individually and as an industry, they got away pretty unscathed. They were just as responsible as the crooked mortgage brokers. And, honestly, I would have preferred something like a large-scale habitat for humanity program - perhaps with mortgages from credit unions - to deal with the property glut. It would have built real neighborhoods and dealt with a real housing need. If local and state governments had been in better shape, something really good could have come of it.

      So back in 2005 or 2006, I had a conversation with a banking executive at an alumni event. He was complaining that they'd had to start hiring their own appraisers because they'd been catching the appraisers that the real estate agents were hiring or recommending substantially overvaluing properties, to the point where the mortgage was instantly under water since the house never worth the appraisal amount when you actually looked at it vs. what was on paper.

      But the more the house sells for, the more money the real estate agent makes. So they've got an incentive. And the appraisers - if they want repeat business - have an incentive to give the agents what they want. Note that this was in 2005/2006 - at a point where housing values in the area were still shooting up. Even with that, a year or two later, the appreciated value still hadn't managed to catch up with the inflated appraisal. That's how big the gaps were.

      Combine that with some places where the real estate agents were working with crooked mortgage brokers who were lying on forms, and, well, we all know what happened. And the fact that investment banking (as opposed to the consumer side) was carving these junk mortgages up into top-rated securities was just the icing.

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    the actual bajmahalKelly Conaboy
    11/22/14 2:08pm

    From the linked article: http://www.kansascity.com/news/nation-wo…

    Upon release, he would stop taking the antipsychotic medications that could help him. The reason he shared with a psychologist might surprise you: "I'm so lonely, and sometimes the voices make me feel not as alone."

    Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

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      nomadnewyorkthe actual bajmahal
      11/22/14 2:13pm

      Sob. You just broke Thanksgiving.

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      the actual bajmahalnomadnewyork
      11/22/14 2:31pm

      No, see now we can be truly thankful that we still get to have dried out turkey with our annoying families. Also, it's weird, but I think I may have known this guy. I definitely know the neighborhood.

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    Citizen-of-UtopiaKelly Conaboy
    11/22/14 12:48pm

    You're burying the lede: What happened to the kittens?

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      cuntybawsCitizen-of-Utopia
      11/22/14 12:53pm

      I've read the links and see no further mention of the kittens. It's bothering me way more than it should, but handily distracting me from the sad, lonely end of the poor mentally ill guy who crawled into the closet and died.

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      JaneMeatCurtincuntybaws
      11/22/14 1:19pm

      I'm just going to imagine that the kittens were there to comfort him and keep him warm in his final hours, and then they went on their way to all find loving homes.

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    Meander061Kelly Conaboy
    11/22/14 12:47pm

    Well, you're not going to see this story on House Hunters.

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      Jerry-NetherlandMeander061
      11/22/14 12:55pm

      It would be a "Very Special Episode" indeed!

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      cuntybawsMeander061
      11/22/14 12:58pm

      The Property Brothers would have a nice computer animation showing before and after, with the dead guy made into a coffee table and the traumatized kittens living in the heating vents.

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    kolleenbeeKelly Conaboy
    11/22/14 1:06pm

    As someone who is currently house hunting, I can attest to the whirlwind excitement of finding horrible things about or within properties. The last house we looked at was next to a house that was the location to a murder suicide AND had a Jeep out front with the license plate 4CHAN. Looking for a house is scary! I hope I find a body or a kitten soon.

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      MailKimp?kolleenbee
      11/22/14 2:19pm

      I don't even want to think about what kind of person gets a 4chan license plate.

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      PrepaidVisakolleenbee
      11/22/14 2:43pm

      I was behind a Mini on the highway with licence plate IREDDIT :(

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    WhiskeytitsKelly Conaboy
    11/22/14 3:34pm

    Keith Frank Jr. said, "Needless to say, we're not very interested in that property anymore."

    I'm confused, why is it "needless to say" they are not interested anymore? Bodies can be removed, rooms remodeled. I'm not sure that no one has ever died in a home that i have lived in anyways.

    My sister had a neighbor in 2000 that committed suicide in his apt. (Next door to hers). When ma and pa kettle came to clean out their gay sons' DC apartment, they wanted to get back to Indiana asap afterwards. My sister chatted with them and scored a great deal on purchasing the apartment, including some furnishings to get her started. She burned some sage after moving in, the place promptly flooded soon after. FEMA got involved, long story short, she remodeled the entire place on the FEMA loan and has enjoyed the place ever since, not to mention it has quadrupled in value!


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      See HagWhiskeytits
      11/22/14 3:47pm

      Opportunism, ageism, regionalism, homophobia, tactlessness, and a dash of fraud – this story has everything!

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      areyouseriousrightnow?Whiskeytits
      11/22/14 4:30pm

      Finding him was probably an upsetting/traumatic experience that they would be reminded of in that house. There's a difference between knowing someone died in a house and actually discovering their dead body.

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    RussianistKelly Conaboy
    11/22/14 1:44pm

    The house in which he was found dead is one of more than 1,000 foreclosed homes owned by the city of Milwaukee.

    The 2008 crash is the gift that will keep on giving.

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      Still-Celia is NeverfuckingvotingforhillsxoRussianist
      11/22/14 5:33pm

      that is some real talk.

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    ManchuCandidateKelly Conaboy
    11/22/14 12:57pm

    Real Estate Agent: "Oh come on. All you need is a bit of Febreeze and some Oxiclean stain remover and you won't even notice it."

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      ld20ManchuCandidate
      11/22/14 1:37pm

      And maybe set some oxycontin traps, just in case.

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      donkeyteethManchuCandidate
      11/22/14 2:22pm

      See how much room there is in this closet?! You could easily fit 2 or 3 more corpses in there.

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    raincoasterKelly Conaboy
    11/23/14 3:43am

    I'm trying to wrap my head around the actions of the real estate agent. Did he think "I'm a ten percenter" was somehow the equivalent of a resurrection spell?

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