Chased people on the road for taking pictures of my property

IamMine

I just got back from the police department filing a suspicious report against two people in an old and dirty Yukon truck taking pictures of our property yesterday.

I was in the garage on a smoke break when I caught a truck pulling up slowly and a female passenger taking pictures of our property.

WTF?!!!

Then as they pulled up closer and in direct view with me behind the garage door window, they sped up faster and continued to take pictures of the house and the property!

I came outside and flagged for them to stop so I could talk to them about what they were doing.

But they didn’t and left.

So I got in my car to follow them. I got to one road that they could have taken either way and I gambled by turning left when I caught them pulling out of the alley road on the main street, so I turned around to the right.

I was right behind them at the 4 ways stop intersection on the main street, but not long enough to read the license plate because at first I was busy waving at them to stop and pull over at the gas station on the right.

They ignored me and left. Maybe they didn’t see me?

I followed them with another car in front of me and I saw that they were speeding a little faster than the speed limit.

Another 4 way stop intersection– by the time I followed them, there were two cars in front of me and this truck speed away and I couldn’t pass around the two cars in front of me.

Two miles down, right before an intersection with flashing lights (another 4 ways stop intersection), I saw the truck was nowhere in sight.

I slowed down and spotted a truck hiding on a slight hill right besides a cornfield. The male driver gave a ‘she made us’ look and I pointed at them, acknowledging that I wanted to talk to them.

I pulled up next to their truck and asked what they were doing at my house taking pictures?

I couldn’t catch everything what the lady said but two words: mortgage selling.

I said what?! We are not selling our house, so why are you taking pictures?!

She shrugged and I asked if she had the papers to show me and she said yes.

I got out of my car and walked up to them. She handed me the paper – it looked like an old listing of our house – the exact one when we bought this house nine years ago.

Except that there were handwriting in pencil on it with information on our house – the layout of our house and some details about it.

The male driver wrote on a paper saying that the mortgage company was being sold to another company and this is why they were doing this.

I was still puzzled and didn’t feel comfortable continuing this conversation so I let them go…. But I am kicking myself in the ass for not asking for their business card! I also couldn’t read their license plate fast enough because they took off too fast.

I was just thrown off the guard and even couldn’t believe myself for chasing them – putting myself in danger’s way. But I had to know and the opportunity would have been lost if I had gone straight to the police with little information with distant viewing I had with the people in the truck.

I went to the police department this morning and they are filing a suspicious report. They will keep an eye on our house.

Hubby called the mortgage company and asked if we were under the foreclosure status and the answer was no because we are still trying to work out a plan.

Then I realized something and told the police that we did file for bankruptcy and the record became public last August.

He said it was a possibility that they pulled out that information and got the address on our house with an old listing and jumped the gun.

My friend thinks it was a possibility that they were con artists and the police agreed that it was also a possibility.

Jeez Whiz!

I told my friend – karma is a bitch….because for that and even if they got the first dibs on the house...good luck on investing in this house and paying the highest water bills in the entire state!

This house needs a new roof, windows replacement, furnace, water softener system, plumbing everywhere, re-wiring the house, new drywall in two rooms. And those are just the major ones!

This is indeed a unique house on a nice sized property with some pretty trees in a quiet and safe neighborhood. Its beauty can be very deceiving to people outside. :P

Seriously...that was disturbing what those people did.

Desperate people will take desperate measures in times like this…. the unemployment rate now stands at 15.3 when a year ago it stood at 9.8.

Digital Twilight

shit man.....

One day you'll come home from work and your house will just be GONE

IamMine

:roll:

mfc2006

wow..that's nuts!!

i hope that the police are able to follow-up on this. my only advice would be to stay in constant contact with your bank/lender so you're aware of any changes. i'm sure you're already doing this....just keep at it! good luck!

IamMine

mfc2006 wrote:

wow..that's nuts!!

i hope that the police are able to follow-up on this. my only advice would be to stay in constant contact with your bank/lender so you're aware of any changes. i'm sure you're already doing this....just keep at it! good luck!

yup...sure am!

Thanks...but i don't like this sense of insecurity. i hope it'll pass but I am on alert, for sure...

crazy people. and i thought i was crazy!

pjtradeking

If it makes you feel any better, my wife use to work for a major mortgage company, and this was/is a common practice about 4 years or so ago. My understanding is that companies buy and sell mortages to one another all the time to boost assets and whatnot. I beleive(and dont hold me to this) when you buy a house , there is a clause or some wordage that says your mortgage can be sold at anytime to another company and you dont have to be notified. Doesnt effect you in anyway, your payment just goes to someone else is all. That is about all I really know, but I had gone with her a number of times in case someone were to ask or get nasty. If they did come out, she just handed them a business card and showed them the paperwork. Hope that might make you feel a bit better. :-)

IamMine

pjtradeking wrote:

If it makes you feel any better, my wife use to work for a major mortgage company, and this was/is a common practice about 4 years or so ago. My understanding is that companies buy and sell mortages to one another all the time to boost assets and whatnot. I beleive(and dont hold me to this) when you buy a house , there is a clause or some wordage that says your mortgage can be sold at anytime to another company and you dont have to be notified. Doesnt effect you in anyway, your payment just goes to someone else is all. That is about all I really know, but I had gone with her a number of times in case someone were to ask or get nasty. If they did come out, she just handed them a business card and showed them the paperwork. Hope that might make you feel a bit better. :-)

Thanks, i did think that was a possibility; however - our mortgage is one of the largest companies - CitiMortgage. :P

I also have had my mortgage sold to other companies several times over the years before CitiMortgage and I was always notified by mail.

It just bothers me why they didn't stop when I waved at them outside of my house. They could have explained right there.

But they chose not to....

Then they were speeding away from me?

One consideration is the high emotion here in MI with a lot of layoffs and foreclosures which may freak them out.... however my demeanor or body language should have indicated I was no threat but concerned and curious why they were doing this.

The police agreed with me and it was safe to file a suspicious report and keeping an eye on them or any other suspicious activities.

Thanks for sharing, pjtradeking. i still want that cute yippie dog.... could have came in handy yesterday!

Who Princess

Kind of weird how those people handled the situation when all they had to do was stop and explain why they were there.

But I agree with pjtradeking, mortgage companies sell mortgages to other companies, usually groups or "bundles" of them, and that's been a pretty common practice for a long time. When we bought our house in 1990, our mortgage was sold to another mortgage company 3 weeks after we closed on it! We never even made a payment to the first company. Kind of annoying after you've spent all this time shopping around for the "right" lender. After about a year and a half it was sold to another lender.

When we refinanced after living here about 4 years, there was a clause in our new mortgage that the lender would never sell it. We didn't ask for that but I appreciated it being in there. I don't know if that could actually be enforced but so far they've stuck to it.

tybird

Way back when....I used to take pictures of houses for an appraiser.....got chased down at least once. :twisted:

IamMine

tybird wrote:

Way back when....I used to take pictures of houses for an appraiser.....got chased down at least once. :twisted:

Ah, so it was you today.... :P

Happy Friday, everybody...

Thoughts_Arrive

Once me and my friends were driving and I was taking photo's of random people, the look on their faces was priceless.

tybird

IamMine wrote:

tybird wrote:

Way back when....I used to take pictures of houses for an appraiser.....got chased down at least once. :twisted:

Ah, so it was you today.... :P

Happy Friday, everybody...

Would love some extra income, but no....it wasn't :evil: me.

IamMine

tybird wrote:

IamMine wrote:

tybird wrote:

Way back when....I used to take pictures of houses for an appraiser.....got chased down at least once. :twisted:

Ah, so it was you today.... :P

Happy Friday, everybody...

Would love some extra income, but no....it wasn't :evil: me.

I know, I was kidding... it would have been a funny story if I was chasing a person who happened to be a PJ fan!

Thoughts_Arrive wrote:

Once me and my friends were driving and I was taking photo's of random people, the look on their faces was priceless.

Thoughts_Arrive, lol.... that could have been me going wtf!!! fuckers!!!

I remember in Chicago during lolla 07 when hubby and I were taking a long walk around downtown Chicago... there was this person who was taking random pictures and as she turned to us and took a picture of us, I gave her a stern look with

After a pause and silent stare at her, she felt guilty and apologized... asked if she could take pictures of us? "No thanks"

She was this confident and inconsiderate, not to mention arrogance sprayed in the air around her until she saw me....all of a sudden she felt very small and consciousness got to her.

Then I told hubby to just keep walking, let her deal with it....don't pity her. It'll pass anyway...she'll get back to her old self.

I was right because we saw her again later... back to herself and not caring about asking people's permission when taking pictures of them. :P

Anyway... thanks for all the inputs and stories shared here.... I do feel a little better today.

Heatherj43

IamMine wrote:

I just got back from the police department filing a suspicious report against two people in an old and dirty Yukon truck taking pictures of our property yesterday.

I was in the garage on a smoke break when I caught a truck pulling up slowly and a female passenger taking pictures of our property.

WTF?!!!

Then as they pulled up closer and in direct view with me behind the garage door window, they sped up faster and continued to take pictures of the house and the property!

I came outside and flagged for them to stop so I could talk to them about what they were doing.

But they didn’t and left.

So I got in my car to follow them. I got to one road that they could have taken either way and I gambled by turning left when I caught them pulling out of the alley road on the main street, so I turned around to the right.

I was right behind them at the 4 ways stop intersection on the main street, but not long enough to read the license plate because at first I was busy waving at them to stop and pull over at the gas station on the right.

They ignored me and left. Maybe they didn’t see me?

I followed them with another car in front of me and I saw that they were speeding a little faster than the speed limit.

Another 4 way stop intersection– by the time I followed them, there were two cars in front of me and this truck speed away and I couldn’t pass around the two cars in front of me.

Two miles down, right before an intersection with flashing lights (another 4 ways stop intersection), I saw the truck was nowhere in sight.

I slowed down and spotted a truck hiding on a slight hill right besides a cornfield. The male driver gave a ‘she made us’ look and I pointed at them, acknowledging that I wanted to talk to them.

I pulled up next to their truck and asked what they were doing at my house taking pictures?

I couldn’t catch everything what the lady said but two words: mortgage selling.

I said what?! We are not selling our house, so why are you taking pictures?!

She shrugged and I asked if she had the papers to show me and she said yes.

I got out of my car and walked up to them. She handed me the paper – it looked like an old listing of our house – the exact one when we bought this house nine years ago.

Except that there were handwriting in pencil on it with information on our house – the layout of our house and some details about it.

The male driver wrote on a paper saying that the mortgage company was being sold to another company and this is why they were doing this.

I was still puzzled and didn’t feel comfortable continuing this conversation so I let them go…. But I am kicking myself in the ass for not asking for their business card! I also couldn’t read their license plate fast enough because they took off too fast.

I was just thrown off the guard and even couldn’t believe myself for chasing them – putting myself in danger’s way. But I had to know and the opportunity would have been lost if I had gone straight to the police with little information with distant viewing I had with the people in the truck.

I went to the police department this morning and they are filing a suspicious report. They will keep an eye on our house.

Hubby called the mortgage company and asked if we were under the foreclosure status and the answer was no because we are still trying to work out a plan.

Then I realized something and told the police that we did file for bankruptcy and the record became public last August.

He said it was a possibility that they pulled out that information and got the address on our house with an old listing and jumped the gun.

My friend thinks it was a possibility that they were con artists and the police agreed that it was also a possibility.

Jeez Whiz!

I told my friend – karma is a bitch….because for that and even if they got the first dibs on the house...good luck on investing in this house and paying the highest water bills in the entire state!

This house needs a new roof, windows replacement, furnace, water softener system, plumbing everywhere, re-wiring the house, new drywall in two rooms. And those are just the major ones!

This is indeed a unique house on a nice sized property with some pretty trees in a quiet and safe neighborhood. Its beauty can be very deceiving to people outside. :P

Seriously...that was disturbing what those people did.

Desperate people will take desperate measures in times like this…. the unemployment rate now stands at 15.3 when a year ago it stood at 9.8.

Don't you live in Armada? That is a really nice area! I love the houses thru there that have the wrap around porches and all the beautiful spindles and whatnots around the roof of the porch. Plus the huge porches.
I would tell the cops too. Who knows what the were uo to.

IamMine

Wow, heather! It's been so long - last time i saw you at Detroit 2006's pre-party!
,
Ha, yup still living in Armada at the moment. It is nice, quiet, safe and unique (in my opinion) place. But there are more empty houses here in the village and i suspect more will be. They still charge way too much for water and who the hell can afford that anymore? From what i heard, a lot of people who lived in the new subdivision were working for the big 3 companies.

We live in the oldest area where there are more senior citizens who have pretty much lived their entire lives here.

The schools all have been upgraded with latest technologies and security is taken very seriously.

Hell, i was publicly humiliated by the principal when there was a misunderstanding about keeping my daughter in school when I "violated' the procedures and policies when i took her to her classroom without having her hair checked by the principal to make sure the head lice was still gone. I had an emergency appointment and thought she said i could take her to classroom because i couldn't stay with her.

She totally freaked out when she found out she was in her classroom and told the entire school!

When i came in to get her, parents in the hallway were pointing me to the office and I was like :evil: Who the hell do you think you people are.... :evil:

Everyone knew my business! But I was calm and took her home.

Then I emailed her and CC'd to EVERYONE in the office including the teacher, rebuking her that it was really unnecessary for her to do that and of all people, she knew better that I wouldn't do it intentionally. That this could have been handled privately without everyone getting involved.

I went on and on.... but since then, she's been extremely nice and everyone else backing off because they knew it was wrong and said nothing.

Umph. Small towns do suck sometimes...but they do protect well.