This wasn't a normal situation. The previous owner was not a nice neighbor. He (Kyle) would swear at his kids, liked a lot of beer, and liked loud rap music. You could hear this "playa" coming blocks away. I won't go into other things about him I've heard from other neighbors - let's just say everyone was glad when he left. In short, the owners got divorced in late 2008/early 2009 and she left the house. Kyle eventually walked away from the house at the start of last summer. The property sat vacant for a few months and then some shady characters moved in around August of last year. At first I wasn't sure if they were squatters. It turned out that they were friends of Kyle.
At this point things started to get weird. I noticed that lights were on the middle of the night, I wasn't sure they had the heat turned on, and they were piling all of their trash on the side of the house. What pushed me over the edge was the increase in unique traffic outside the house, usually for only a few minutes at a time. People would show up, be inside for a few minutes, and then leave empty handed. I assumed that he was dealing drugs - hopefully just weed and not cooking up meth or something else. At any rate, I didn't want to get directly involved if these really were shady characters. Eventually, the trash pile got so large that I was able to take some action and ding them on a "technicality" and to send a message. I typed up an anonymous letter asking them to move the trash "or else" and slipped it under their door mat. They didn't do anything about it so I contacted the city and a day or two later what looked like a policeman (code enforcement?) showed up, knocked on their door, and posted a notice. A week or two later they hauled away the trash. The trash wasn't so much an issue for me as letting them know they were being watched and that they couldn't just do whatever they wanted. For example, one morning I woke up and saw they had left a King Soopers shopping cart in their front yard. All this time, since the beginning of the year, I had been tracking license plate numbers and vehicle descriptions. Over the course of 3 months (December to February) I recorded about 25 different cars coming and going...about 2 a week from just what I saw. Of course, since I wasn't home all the time I'm sure a missed a lot of them. Later on I found out that other neighbors had noticed the same thing and had also suspected something going on.
The shady guys left a month or so after I reported them - around March. Since then, no one has been living there. I don't know what really happened, but I'd like to think it was because they knew they were being watched. In reality, it was probably that the house was pending foreclosure and that they needed to get out before that time. Well, at the beginning of August the house went up for auction and no one bought it (not surprisingly). Wells Fargo took possession of the house on August 11 (I have a realtor source) and today someone showed up to change the locks and start the clean up process. The curtains were taken down and I peeked inside after the guy left. In addition to a few items left behind, a big water bong had been left on the kitchen counter. I still think they were using other stuff too though. The good news is that the house looks in reasonably good shape. It's really true - from the time of the first missed payment the entire foreclosure process takes about a year to complete.
My hope is that someone decent ends up buying the house and moving in - ideally, a family. My wish is that it'll be someone who will keep their yard clean and green since it's what we have to look at. At the very least, for my and all the other families (many with small children) sake, we're just glad that we're finally rid of these shady characters.