PUYALLUP, Wash. - Imagine falling behind on your house payment and winding up in foreclosure only to see strangers move in and claim they can live there! It's happening all over the country - people moving in to vacant homes claiming they're abandoned.
But it's the first time we've reported on it in Western Washington. It's advertised as a way to get real estate for pennies on the dollar, or even free.
But the real question: Is it legal?
Eric and Ashlei Bogue say they were shocked when they drove by their house in Puyallup last weekend and saw someone else moving in.
The Bogues say they had fallen behind on their payments, and moved out a year ago. Unable to sell, the house slipped into foreclosure.
They say they were forced to break into their own home. The locks had been changed. They pried open the garage door. Inside they found living room and bedroom furniture, pictures of strangers and food in the fridge.
“Someone else's decorations, someone else's pictures of their kids on my fridge… blows me away," said Ashlei.
They say some drywall and carpet had been damage.
The new occupants told them they were making a claim to the house because it had been abandoned.
"They told us they were renting it, and that they were doing adverse possession on the property," said Bogue.
Adverse possession is a quirky provision under an old state law that allows people to stake a claim to abandoned property if they openly use it for seven to ten years.
We showed the adverse possession claims filed on the Bogues' home to a real estate attorney.
"What they amount to is some stranger coming in and recording something that looks legal and using that to claim the property. These are not functionally any different than a forged deed," said Gerald Robison.
Robison says "adverse possession" claims are being made all over the country and are even promoted on the Internet and in books as perfectly legal.
"It's taking someone else's property and trying to make money off of it," he explained.
For the Bogues, seeing their house slip into foreclosure was bad enough, but now this.
Eric Bogue says it won’t end tonight
“We’re coming back tomorrow, and we’ll let them take their stuff out of the house," he said.
And he says, he’ll have some words to say to the woman they say who moved in: “Tell her nice try.”
The woman living in the house with her children wouldn't talk to us on camera, but on the phone she said she is paying rent to a property management company that she works for and that they are trying to obtain the property under adverse possession. She says she feels they are actually helping the community by living in a house that was an abandoned eyesore and they feel they're not doing anything wrong.
