My husband is a home inspector, and he says that as the economy gets worse that it’s amazing how much he finds stolen from homes that have been vacant on the market but are now ready for inspection.  We’ve all heard on the news that people were going around cutting and stealing copper pipe from warehouse sites, but now its spread to private homes.

For instance, he’s been into crawl spaces only to find that all the piping has been cut and taken away from underneath the house!  He says it used to be just copper pipe, but now it’s everything including galvanized pipe.  He says he’s been in bank-owned houses where people have broken in and even sawn into the drywall to get to the water and gas pipes.  They do this because they know that the banks have turned everything off, plus these houses typically get less traffic. 

But no house is immune:  he’s finding water heaters and furnaces stolen, air conditioning units and even outdoor appliances.  If the house has a drop in grills or an outdoor sink, that’s a target for theft as well.  And it’s getting worse and worse:  I saw on the news that a fully occupied house had the tubing leading up to the air conditioning unit stolen in the night!

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