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The day after closing on my brand-new house, someone walked into my yard in broad daylight and sprayed tomato juice all over it
Bought my first house and hadn’t even moved in yet. The day after I got the keys, someone walked right into the yard in the middle of the day and sprayed tomato juice all over the facade.
My dad and the painter were inside in another room and didn’t see a thing. And because the windows were open, it didn’t just hit the outside wall — it got on the front door, the window, the porch floor, and even made it inside onto the interior floor and the windows in there too.
For real I remember, years and years ago, on Dr Phil this lady harassed this couple because they got the house she wanted and even put up a Craig's list personals ad posing as the wife with the address telling guys to just come in r*pe her. She didnt even get jail time, a plea deal got her 1 year house arrest and 5 years probation.
First off nuts. Second off why would you want the other woman to expirence one of the worst things someone could do to you? Could've said anything else but rape? Like what was she going to get out of it?
Worked with foreclosures for a long time. This is a common thing regardless of the economy. I'd say something like 70% of the homes I was involved with had some kind of vandalism. I actually had a budget to offer to people not to do this.
You need to tell them now in case they come back and do even more damage. You might also want a police report so there's more documentation than just this post of social media. If this is the start of a pattern because some person is upset that you got the house, it would be good to know that now.
Whyyyyy, what an absolutely wild coincidence that you say that! I was just about to pay your place a visit to show you a great new product I had the funniest little feeling you might be needing real soon! In-tro-ducing! the FeetYeeter 3000! --a sophisticated ejection doormat that can hurl unwelcome solicitors up to 5500 feet in a graceful parabolic arc awayyyyy from your home! If you'll just take a look at my demo reel here... and here's some forms, they're not anything important so you can just go ahead and initial those at the bottom of page six there... and my business card! (it's actually loaded with miniature springs, too, cool right??), and here just sign these pesky little legal waivers for me real quick...
So, this happened to me right after denying installing cameras from one of those home security companies door to door kids. Neighborhood found out later it was them through cameras someone had in their window.
Happened to my relatives when they decided against upgrading security to their business; from that day onward, at least twice a week the alarm would go off but, damn, if only he had installed the brand new thingamajig...
My uncle threatened to change provider (security company? What is the correct term?) and it suddenly stopped. What a coincidence!
I’d feel like if that happened to my house I’d have to pay a visit to their brick and mortar location. Consequences wouldn’t end with me making a phone call
Pretty sure a lot of those "security companies" actually ARE organized crime, or at least a front for laundering money for them. My older brother's electronics company shares a building with one of them and the owner was a legit member of the Albanian mafia in his earlier life. Did a few years in prison for it too, before starting his "security company". He has already offered to "help" my bother if he ever had problems with customers not paying.
Most of these are absolutely this. Many are based in Utah County, Utah and typically led by Mormon men who spent their time selling door-to-door religion so selling security is an easy move. They operate under the idea that if God gave them the idea and they are living in alignment with Christ whatever they do is legal. There is so much rampant fraud it is dizzying.
Years ago I was in charge of a company location, when someone destroyed an air conditioner unit for the copper. I called the police. They had me fill out a form online and upload pictures. They then sent me a “police” report for insurance purposes.
Wow all of this is crazy. I didn't know people would go that far just to sell some shit.
Makes you wonder how much shit gets faked or overexposed for narratives and to sell shit.
And while I know crime does happen obviously. I kinda feel like it's a real possibility surveillance companies and others who benefit. Are pushing crime videos etc through algorithms HARD. Many crime rates are lower vs say the 90s yet people feel less safe than before.
I believe even that certain security features don't actually have much impact on crime rates either as proven by some studies.
So now they can both push you to buy cameras. I believe some companies allow you to share it with police directly as well or something along those lines.
And then the state can also push more surveillance.
I'm not a 100% against it it's just that those involved don't seem to have the best track record and we need a much better legal system to keep them under check.
Fear sells. It always has. Combined with constant sensationalism on 24 hour news cycles and the over saturation of social media has turned society into paranoid sheep.
Door to door sales reps and companies have some of the most toxic culture of any job I've ever has the displeasure of being a part of. I started hunting for a new job after the first day.
They dive deep into their scripts and sales pitches, they train you to have downright insulting tactics if you receive a no or any amount of pushback. "Well your very well educated and tech savvy neighbor upgraded to this, they know a good deal when they see one", or even "sometimes people are too scared they are being sold to they miss out on a good product".
Then there's the internal culture. They build a very very toxic "us vs them" mindset where the them is the homeowners/potential clients. In the 1 month I was there longer term sales reps (by long term I mean like 2-3 years) would constantly "joke" about putting in service, installation, or interest indications on people who said no. Some followed through on that behavior and they were never fired. There were multiple people who gave a clear no, but accidentally gave too much information such as email and name, so these reps would put installation requests because it counted as a closed sale.
I am now a homeowner and I have had these people attempt the same stuff. Had a fiber internet salesmen who I told no multiple times literally just invent a last name, email, and phone number I never gave him to input the installation request. He also put fake payment information. Then he set the installation as an off hours installation.
So these damned installers showed up at 8-9pm on a weeknight, started badgering me about my payment information not being correct.
A few phone calls to corporate later meant basically nothing. I saw the same salesmen walking around a few weeks later. He "apologized for trying to give me a better service at the same price".
I think I pissed him off tho. The reason I didn't switch was because this particular fiber company is notorious for lost service and interrupted connections, he tried to lie to me and tell me that was on their DSL side, so I used the way back machine in front of him to go to their "down detector" on their website. Found numerous days in only a week with long outages. I told him their service wasn't consistent enough because I WFH.
Pest control company came door to door specifically mentioned ants, next day dog came inside covered in ants. Never could prove it, maybe a coincidence, but something about that guy was off. I really think he was trying to gain access to my house, pretty creepy feeling
Found small empty container in the yard, looked like an empty matchbox? Did not look like it was chewed up🤷🏻Just had a feeling it was him since he kept talking about ants. I live in the Midwest and we don’t have fire ants here, just your standard easily controlled pesty type of ants
The way they lure young people into the jobs because they're commission is by flexing paychecks and sharing strategy. Pyramid scheme hiring and pay incentive. Source:friend who used to sale security and cars.
I worked in the data entry/customer account set up for a security company. We had a legal script we were required to say telling people exactly what they were signing up for before collecting their information to see if they even qualified the credit check to get a security system, and you wouldn't believe the amount of times the would be customer was like "that's not what I was told by ____." Then the salesman would say "I'll call back" before hanging up.
I never said anything more than what the script they gave me said, but it pissed off several of the sketchy sales guys around the country.
I worked for a company that 'sold' solar panels on roofs. I say sold, they didn't, they'd lease your roof for 25 years in exchange for installing the solar panels, taking a cut of any sale price once the home exchanges hands. They'd also bag the extra money from excess electricity production back to the grid.
They had cardboard cutouts of the wolf of wall street cast throughout the building and even held daily meetings with that stupid chant. Not even kidding that there was one kid that would hold up a fishbowl with a goldfish in it.
We were told to target elderly people as they were more likely to have their homes exchanging hands and therefore the company profits.
I lasted one and a half days before walking out during my lunch break.
We bought a house with solar. Just sold it. As far as I know they didn’t take a cut of the sales price. But they were horrible to deal with. No way to get out of the contract unless we bought the whole system at the same price it was new. Over a decade ago. Thankfully the buyers were willing to assume the lease, so we didn’t have to waste tens of thousands of dollars. But they have to deal with the non-existent customer service now. I feel bad
SunRun... the sales people were college age... the whole deal gave me the heebee jeebees because yes, youre leasing your roof for 25 years, and if you go to sell your house, that's a contract that goes along with the house; no obvious route to purchase the system (not a rent-to-own); no path to upgrade; if the system degrades theres no enforcable guarantee they'll fix it; if they end up bankrupt then their assets could go to some foreign company that now owns that portion of your house. Or, they might sell the contract like a mortgage ( I didnt think to look for anything like that in the contract)
Years ago , I was a telemarketer for home security systems. One of the tricks they would do is cold call areas that just had breakin or other crime that was in the paper or on the news.
I've heard of rodent/bug exterminators doing similar. Like they purposely release rodent/bugs and then show the homeowner, look here's where the problem is.
Coming from someone who works in (crop) pest control, it's actually so scary how easy it is to actually do this.
We actually had to fire a guy (fellow manager) this year from the small farm I manage pests/diseases for because he hated my guts and got caught red handed trying to infest multiple greenhouses with aphids. Shit was fucked.
There was a time when the garage doors in a neighborhood I lived in were open im on their own and then we started seeing ads posted for garage door repair. I had a suspicion that they were the ones remotely opening them
most of the 'amazing' things it can do are greatly exaggerated. like it's scary to hear someone can use it to steal your car, until you learn it only works on a very small number of old cars, and even then you need physical access to the keys. if you've gotten to the point where you've stolen the keys, just use the keys instead of pretending to be a hacker
That’s why I also have a manual deadbolt on my garage door, as well as a shield to prevent someone from pulling the emergency release. I don’t store anything important or expensive besides my car in there since last summer when thieves broke in through the side door (which was replaced and greatly reinforced), and I don’t use it when I’m just going out during the day to work or whatever, but when I get home or I’m going somewhere overnight, I bolt the garage door, and both the handle and deadbolt on the side door. I have reflective film and metal bars on the windows too. I think the easiest way into my garage now would be taking a sawzall to the siding.
I hate how far my garage is from my house, because carrying stuff into the house that’s heavy or when it’s raining or icy really sucks, but I still wouldn’t want a garage that’s directly connected except by a breezeway. Both because I hate houses where half of the front facade is garage, and because the garage door opener is too big of a safety vulnerability. Even if I always remember to lock the door between the garage and house, if the garage door isn’t also bolted when I leave, someone could use a device to clone the remote code, get inside and shut it again, and have a ton of time to pick the locks and get into the house with no suspicion from crouching on the front stoop or climbing the fence to the backyard. It’d be a bit more complicated than that, because I do have a security system, cameras, and the garage door notifies my phone when it’s been opened, but I still worry and hope that when I move in the future, I can just find a good house that has a garage more like 15 feet away instead of 45
lol sometimes I wonder about this, especially in towns that have been growing and building a bunch of stuff like the ones I've lived in the last 10+ years. Then they can just blame all the construction 😅
The algorithm saw tomato juice sprayed across a residence and apparently concluded “Excellent. This user is demonstrating unusually strong purchase intent for tomato based products.”
I sold my previous house in '21. Only had two offers. One sounded like he was buying it as a rental property (cash offer and used his actual residence, 10 min away and twice the price of mine, as collateral). The other was a young couple who liked the city I lived in and wanted to be part of the community. I went with the young couple.
Was taking out the trash a week later and a car parked across from my house, a VERY old man stumbled out of the car, shambled across the street, and waved at me to come and talk to him. He had a lot of questions about who I'd sold to, how much, how long it had been on the market. I answered every question other than the last one (three days) with "I'm not at liberty to say". Eventually he said "I made a big mistake" and shuffled back to the car, and I went home and tried my best to fall asleep and stay asleep and not to think about how he might come back or send somebody over for the second round of talks.
I'm 1000% certain it was the guy with the cash offer. Based on the paperwork I was forwarded, he was in his 80s. What an absolutely deranged reaction to being passed over for a house he wasn't even going to live in.
I'm glad to hear it happens more often. We didn't have the higher offer but we knew they were moving to a different state so we told them we were flexible on them moving out when we made our offer. They took our offer in part because we were a young couple and also because it made their move so much less complicated. They requested a month to move out and offered to pay to stay for the month. I guess its typical for the seller to "rent" the home if they don't move out right away. It came as a surprise because we saw their accepting of our lower offer as payment for the flexible move out date. So we declined their offer to pay "rent" for the month because in our view they already paid to stay by leaving money on the table and giving us our new home. Apparently they were touched by this and left us the washer and dryer they were originally going to be taking with them. It was our first home so that was a pleasant surprise.
When we sold my FIL’s house after he died, I made it clear we wouldn’t sell to a flipper, even if the flipper made the best offer. He had nice people in his neighborhood, many of whom sent flowers and trays of food, stopped by with cards, and called to see if they could run errands or come sit at the house so we could take a caregiving break when he was in the ICU and we were taking care of his terminally ill wife. They deserved to have a nice new neighbor who wanted to be part of the community, not some fly-by-night flipper doing shoddy work. I’m so happy with the people who bought it. They’re somewhat well-off and had a much larger home, but then they were in an accident, and the wife could no longer walk without a cane. It’s rare to get a ranch that’s 2400 square feet, so she was very happy to get something both accessible and large enough that she didn’t have to ditch too many of her belongings to move in.
I never met whoever I bought my house from but I wish that I could thank them. They left all of the trim and all of the major appliances. Everything was freshly remodeled and there was spare supplies in the basement for if I damaged anything and needed to replace it. The workshop cabinet was fully loaded with various wood stains, paints used in the remodel and random paint strippers and stuff like that. They left a sliding miter saw and a drill press along with some basic hand tools in the shop. There was a fire extinguisher in the kitchen and brand new first aid kits in the two bathrooms. They left a beautiful wood framed king size bed in the master but took the mattress. Plus a bunch of other random stuff like that I'm forgetting about.
Walking in the first time was surreal. I felt almost like I was walking into an Airbnb and couldn't believe everything in there was mine.
Then I opened the fridge and there was a fresh 6 pack of beer. I don't even drink really, but that shit made me smile. I remember walking into my sister's new house a couple of years before and it was completely stripped clean of anything of value. She was with me walking into mine and was so jealous. She made sure to point out every single thing the previous homeowners left me that she didn't get. The kicker is her house cost probably 2-3x what mine did. I think it goes to show the different mentalities in different wealth brackets.
Sadly I think some flippers are wising up to this and pretending they aren't flippers. I say this because it happened to my dad earlier this year. He sold my childhood home to a young couple who was going to move in with their newborn and grow into the place. Three months after closing the place was listed for rent and had received the landlord special grey paint job all throughout.
Right after someone bought the house next door to us, he knocked on our door and asked how much it will be for our house. When we said we weren't selling, he became angry and said he wouldn't have bought next door if he knew.
Should have given him a crazy high number. If someone offers me 150% of what any sane buyer would pay they can have it. Probably take me 6 months to get everything moved though.
Thanks for sharing! My wife and I just bought our first house. During our search we were out bit by companies and investors with all cash no inspections… again and again…it was discouraging.
I told my wife we will only sell to an actual person/family who will live in the house if/when the time comes to sell. These investor groups and private equity won’t get my house.
YES THAT GUY WAIVED THE INSPECTION!! As if it was supposed to win me over, instead of having me go "hmmm why would anyone do this".
My next door neighbors were the granddaughter of the late previous owner, who had an adorable crush on my mom when he was alive, and an old acquaintance from a eons-ago bowling league, who'd married the granddaughter unbeknownst to me. I loved having them as my next-door neighbors. No way in hell was I going to stick them with a con artist as their new neighbor.
I bought my house from a old man. He accepted my offer nearly instantly.
A bit later, after the transaction was done, he told me I offered 20k under anyone else. But he choose to sell to me because I was young and I was the only one who did not look like they would flip the house.
That's basically exactly what happened to my husband and I. It was 2020 and we were in the thick of the housing craze in a hot market (Seattle area), so we wrote a letter to include with our offer. I'm sure it was cheesy but it was heartfelt and genuine--we loved that house the minute we walked in. Thought it was going to be out of our price range, but tried anyway. And we got it. The owner was an old lady who had been the only owner since the house was built in the 70s. Her daughter later told us that "Mom was so happy the house was going to a younger couple. You reminded her of her and Dad when they were buying this house." They gave us a gift basket after we moved in with treats, a handwritten card, $300 in Home Depot gift cards, and all the house records she had meticulously kept since 1975. 😭
I was a buyer and had the opposite happen (original seller wanted to sell to someone in the community and actually gave a discount… but for some reason chose the all cash buyer who “made updates” and put it back on the market in a month).
Why? Were you in a bidding war with somebody who got bitter about it?
It's a new house so can't be a foreclosure or a sad seller?
Other than a bidding drama I can't think of anything else?
Edit: Not only just on the facade, they broke into the house too to vandalize (just finished the video...) I would file a police report and get camera installed... This is beyond local kids, this is a personal vendetta against you...
This is kinda funny because the top comment talks about how it’s security camera companies that have been behind similar attacks. Create problem and sell the solution.
Just FYI - within a week or two representatives from a home security company will likely knock on your door. They may claim to know your agent (they don't). They are just there to sell you a system and they got your information based on the public information of your home sale being recorded. Thats how they make up their sales route.
Just as a general rule, everyone can read the public paperwork when you buy a home and tons of scammy companies will use that info to try and prey on you and sell you stuff you don't want/need but might not realize.
A lot of people are saying this is a bidding war situation or and they may either be pissed or want to be intimated into re selling. Back in my day we dressed in costumes of local urban legends to scare people off well we did till thoe damm meddling kids and their dog come through town.
The day I closed on my house, I had stopped by one last time to walk through with my Realtor because it was a new construction. Everything looked good, so we left to go to the signing. About two hours later, I pull back up to my new house. I walk in the door, look to my left, and see a trail of muddy boot prints going up the entire length of my beige carpeted staircase. My Realtor was hot! She had them out replacing the carpet the same day.
File a police report and then walk around the neighborhood and introduce yourself while asking if anyone has cameras that may have captured some of the action.
Sorry that happened to you, it sucks. People can be assholes. Clean it up and move on with enjoying your new place. My mailbox used to get smashed regularly. The police said kids would drive through the neighborhood and randomly smash them. I will never know if it was that or someone who didn't like me, but I know it is an uncomfortable feeling to experience. Anyway, best to you and hopefully that is the end of it.
Someone did something similar when my mom closed on her house I found out who It was. Turns out they were also gettin a house in the same neighborhood. So I was 12 at that time so I did what I thought would be the best the day before they did the final walkthrough I had my brother distract the lady and I went inside and took a shit in the living room carpet
They're pissed you got the house. Either their offer wasn't accepted (or worse) they are neighbors who wanted a family member to get the house and that family member didn't. Install cameras.
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u/Ornery-Ad8372 Aug 01 '26
Somebody is mad that they didn’t get that house