Real estate sale postponed by circumstances beyond the owner's control

"Broom clean", perhaps, but not in "substantially UNCHANGED"

A house under contract was gutted by a contractor who misread the address. "It was a huge mistake", he says.

As Fort Worth police were beginning the investigation, they got a phone call from a contractor who explained what happened, said Fort Worth Police Department Sgt. W.D. Paine.

The contractor told police that the man who owned a house at 2700 Forest Park Blvd. hired him to gut it, Paine said. When the contractor and crew arrived at the street, they saw what appeared to be an address on the curb, “2700 Forest Park Boulevard,” directly in front of a house.

The crew didn’t notice that the numbers on the house said 2736, not 2700.

“It was a huge misunderstanding,” Paine said.

The owner of 2700 Forest Park didn’t give the contractor any keys, and instructed him to just kick the door in to get inside, Paine said. The contractor did just that, and he and his crew removed almost everything inside over three days, during which they told neighbors they had been hired for the work.

Paine said police don’t intend to charge the contractor for the “big goof-up.”

“We can’t really file a criminal mischief charge because his intent wasn’t to deprive them of the property,” Paine said. “We’re leaving it up to the contractor and victim to settle it.”

Back in, I think, 1968, the parents of my then-girlfriend were set to close on a house at 145 Riverside Avenue, but the day before sale, state and local police raided the place and destroyed much of the interior: the children of the seller had been selling massive amounts of drugs from the premises. Walls were sledgehammered, even a piano in the living room was smashed. Several of our crowd visited the premises to make sure the police hadn't missed anything dangerous, but alas, they'd been too efficient, and there was nothing left.

The sale eventually went through, and the house stayed standing util just a year or so ago, when it was replaced by new construction.

So, ya just never know.