I found this story interesting because I have a retired friend that
came back to his summer home and shop last spring to find them
stripped of their metal content.

Yes...including all his machines, stock and vehicles...and guns.

As he said it wasn't the house that made him almost cry, it was the
loss of machines and tools that he had spent a lifetime acquiring.

They are still battling the insurance company for reimbursement.

The home and shop were less than five years old...the machines all
older American iron.

For the rebuild/reconstruction, he is specifying PVC for the plumbing
this time.

And adding a remote alarm system.

TMT

Some homes worth less than their copper pipes By Jason Szep
Tue Apr 1

Shards of broken glass outside the basement window of 31 Vine Street
hint at the destruction inside the three-story home.

Thieves smashed the window to break in and then gutted the property
for its copper pipes -- a crime that has spread across the United
States as the economy slows and foreclosed homes stand empty and
vulnerable.

"They cut it here and then pulled it right out of the wall," real
estate broker Marc Charney said, pointing to broken plaster near a
wrecked baseboard heating system in the 2,774-sq-ft home in Brockton,
Massachusetts, a working-class city of 94,304 people.

Similar stories are unfolding nationwide as a glut of home
foreclosures coincides with record highs in the price of copper and
other metals.

Real estate brokers and local authorities say once-proud homes coast-
to-coast are being stripped for copper, aluminum, and brass by
thieves. Much of it ends up with scrap metal traders who say nearly
all copper gets shipped overseas, much of it to China and India.

In areas hit hardest by foreclosures, such as the Slavic Village
neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, copper and other metals used in
plumbing, heating systems and telephone lines are now more valuable
than some homes.

"We're in an incredibly unfortunate time where the nonferrous metals
commodities market for scrap is at an all-time high. Houses are
getting stripped pretty quickly once they go through the foreclosure
process," Cleveland city councilor Tony Brancatelli said.

"We're seeing houses sold for $100 that are distressed houses that
should not be recycled," he said. Some boarded-up homes in his Slavic
Village community have "No copper, only PVC" painted on the boards to
stop would-be thieves.

In Brockton, which suffered 400 foreclosures last year, blamed largely
on predatory lending, and which is bracing for another 400 this year,
Charney said the thieves inflicted about $15,000 of damage on the home
on Vine Street.

"I had this property under agreement. We negotiated. The offer was
accepted. The buyer came back to the property three weeks later only
to find they had gotten in and stolen the copper, so we had to go back
to the bank and renegotiate," said Charney, president of
CharneyRealEstate.com.

After haggling, the bank shaved $5,000 off the $105,000 price.

"The problem is there's almost no security. Does this look like
anybody lives here?" he said, gesturing to the boarded-up home with
chipped yellow paint and a "notice of foreclosure" letter affixed to
its door.

"It's like a big billboard saying 'come and take me,"' he added. "It's
an epidemic."

DEPRESSING HOME PRICES

Jonathan Osman, a broker in Charlotte, North Carolina, said growing
numbers of banks are balking at lending to prospective buyers of
foreclosed homes that are stripped of copper pipes and other metals,
further depressing housing prices.

"If the appraiser spots something that is not right, like copper
tubing lying on the floor or something missing a lot of wiring, that's
a red flag to the buyer's bank. That will essentially melt down any
transaction you've got," he said.

"They don't want to make a $200,000 loan on a house that has serious
problems in case the buyer defaults and they are stuck with it," he
said in a telephone interview. "It stinks for the banks that have
foreclosed on the property because they now have a house that they
really can't sell. They have nothing to do but auction it off for
whatever they can get for it."

Along with copper, he often sees air conditioners and garbage
disposals torn out. "I don't know what the solution is other than for
the banks to not put a sign in the window saying the house is vacant,"
he said, "or maybe keep tenants there."

At least 15 U.S. states -- from California to New York -- drafted
legislation in the past year to deal with the problem, from tighter
regulations on scrap metals' traders to tougher penalties for metal
theft, local authorities and metals industry officials say.

"In my district, we've got a lot of foreclosed homes and we've got a
ton of people who are breaking into these homes, stealing the copper
wiring right out of the walls," said Andy Meisner, a lawmaker in
Michigan's state Legislature who plans an April 15 hearing on two
bills intended to tackle the issue.

"It is a problem that is really affecting us throughout the whole
state," he said. "When all the copper is taken out, the house
basically becomes a knock-down. It then has a depressing impact on
property values."

He said authorities in Hazel Park, a city in his district, ran a
clandestine sting operation on a metal trader. "They saw a guy
literally walking down the street with bundles of wire in each hand.
They saw him walk into a scrap yard and walk out having sold this
scrap he had obviously stolen," he said.

EXPORTED TO CHINA

Several scrap traders contacted by Reuters said they had measures in
place to identify metals stolen from homes.

"If somebody looks suspicious we don't buy the material," said Marc
Kaplan, one of the largest scrap metals traders in New Jersey. He said
scrap copper sells for about $3.50 a pound -- against 70 cents just
three years ago.

He and other scrap traders estimate that more than 80 percent of
recycled copper is exported to China and India.

Warren Gelman, president of merchant broker Kataman Metals Inc in St
Louis, Missouri, said illegal trade is just a small fraction of the
scrap metals business.

He notes that the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, an industry
body, sends frequent alerts to all scrap traders on metal thefts in an
attempt to stop illegal deals.

"If local law enforcement has a theft, they report it to us and we
then turn around and package it for our members in the region," said
the institute's spokesman, Bruce Savage.

"This problem has been gathering a certain amount of momentum over the
last year as you've seen commodity prices spike up to record highs at
the same time you've got an economy that's teetering domestically," he
said.

But real-estate brokers say more needs to be done to stave off further
damage to areas hit hard by waves of foreclosures.

"It's happening in too many places throughout the country for people
to be saying that they are policing who they are getting it from,"
said Bill Collins, president of the New Jersey chapter of the National
Association of Real Estate Brokers.

(Reporting by Jason Szep; Editing by Eddie Evans)