Saturday, February 28, 2009

Foreclosure Pools

One of my favorite time wasting hobbies is to search online real estate sites for homes for sale. This is a great way to kill an afternoon when I have a house to clean or a paper to write.
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Looking at these sites gives me some insight on local architecture. It's also a fun, harmless way to snoop inside peoples' houses. More times than not, my housekeeping skills are greatly validated.
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This has never been more apparent than lately as many homes around here fall in to foreclosure. In my most recent searches, I have seen houses with stained carpet, missing appliances, and overgrown yards. And those are the cleaner ones.
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Below are some lovely green, murky, algae-filled pools that are festering in the back yards of vacant bank-owned homes all over the Phoenix area. West Nile Virus is surely going to be epidemic this year!
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At least the bank, a realtor, a neighbor, or someone took the time to (mostly) empty this one.

Admittance to this pool might require a fishing license.

Do you know where your children are? Hopefully not at the bottom of this pool. As evidenced by the Tonka truck on the porch, little ones were playing here.

This one looks like it's half-filled with antifreeze.


I wonder if the Doobie Brothers' "Black Water" was inspired by this pool.

Someone made a valiant effort to bury this pool. Why, they even planted a tree where the skimmer used to be.
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Thankfully, none of these pools are in my neighborhood. While we do have a few bank owned properties on our block, none of them have pools.

2 comments:

DS Mark said...

I'd love to have a pool. Don't they have pool covers in AZ?

Ms. Val said...

Mark, yes, we do have pool covers here in Arizona, but they're not too terribly popular. For one thing, they detract from the aesthetic beauty of the pool.

Also, the type of covers we have are a heavy plastic sheeting that looks alot like bubble wrap. These blankets have their pros and cons. The're great for preventing chlorine and chemical evaporation. They also keep leaves and plant debris out of the water. And they expedite warming of the water in late spring.

But since warm water facilitates algae growth, it's those same passive heating properties that make a pool cover a bad idea for a neglected/unused pool. Also, if a child wanders into the yard and falls in under the pool cover, and drowns it could be weeks before he's found.

I'll bet that's more information than you were seeking on this topic...