"Home improvement" brings big returns

When you ask a real estate agent how best to make your house more valuable, few, if any will tell you to add some toxic waste to it. Evidently though, in West Hartford CT, that does the trick in doubling your house value.

One night in October 2005 when a weeklong rainstorm dumped over a foot of rain, the main sewer run by the Metropolitan District Commision overflowed and dumped its contents all over Elmfield St and the homes along it. The fire department came out to help the residents pump out their basements but when they reached the home of Linda Gilnite and started pumping, they abrubtly stopped. What they thought was just water was in fact, raw sewage. The four feet of "water" kept rising, completely filling the basement, creeping up into the first floor and knocked over the heating oil tank to add about one hundred gallons of floating oil to the mess.

Gilnite is still fighting the MDC for compansation but now, she is also fighting the new property assessment. In October 2005 her home was assessed at $72,870 and after the October 2006 reassessment it has changed to $138,400.

"My house is worth nothing, " she said

Not only is that Gilnite's opinion but it is also the opinion of a realtor who gave her a written estimate for her home of a bit over $200,000.... only after it is decontaminated. There is no point to even trying to sell it before then. Gilnite went to town hall to appeal her case and she recalls the assessor scratching out prices until he admitted he didn't know how much to say the house was worth. The original document is not in her file but a scanned copy of it was later found and even though it is a little hard to read, the words " the house is contaminated and unsellable" can be made out.

On April 2 2007, Gilnite received a letter from the Board of Assessment Appeals saying " the Board has decided there will be no change to the assessment."

I bet everyone else in town wishes they had half their home flooded with heating oil and raw sewage. For no more effort than watching a weeks worth of rain, they too could have their house value double.