True Story

  A friend of mine in property management took on a customer who owned a rental unit, a single-family house in a small city on a quiet street in upstate New York. They had the house for rent, the description was posted on a website along with pictures and rent pricing, they were searching for a tenant.

   The house was empty, no furniture, no curtains, no rugs, nothing. Periodically they would check on the house to make sure everything was okay, no leaks, no vandals, etc. They kept finding cigarette butts and used tissues thrown on the floor, even an air mattress, all kinds of signs that pointed to someone breaking into the house and sleeping there, but no signs of how they got in. They assumed it was a homeless person, a squatter. Property management workers screwed the windows in place so no one could get in by opening up a window, all the doors were re-secured, and finally they installed a video camera.

   One morning my friend reviewed the video footage from the preceding night and saw on that video that someone had pulled an entire window out of its track, creating an opening to get into the house that way. They saw the person scramble into the house through the opening and pull the entire window back into place, good as new. He also saw on the video no signs that the person had left. Immediately he calls the police to meet him at the house and together they would catch the squatter. They enter the house with a key through the front door and find a surprised couple, both described as being extremely overweight, and probably in their 40s. Turns out the couple was using the house in order to carry out an extramarital affair. They were not homeless, not squatters, not addicts. After the guy scrambled into the house through the window, he’d go to the back of the house and let his woman friend in that way and once in the house they would carry on with their affair.