Today marks the official one month mark since I moved in. That’s enough time to finally have things (mostly) settled and to figure out how livable the house is. All things considered, the place itself isn’t bad, really. There are a few layout issues and plenty of things that I would have done differently if it were my house – like the magenta bathtub and toilet. I mean seriously, how on earth did anyone ever thing that was a good idea? Other than that, the place seems to have good bones and is suffering only from the obvious neglect of the previous tenants and the general laziness of the property manager… Which of course brings us to the crux of the matter: A full month after moving in, there is still a Ford Expedition sitting in the driveway.
If someone drove up with a rollback and “disappeared” this Expedition, I certainly wouldn’t be filing a police report. I’d probably be willing to give them a hand loading it on the truck. It’s got a little body damage and I don’t have keys or anything, but I’d guess that you could make a good profit parting it out. I don’t have the time or energy to do it myself… and the point, of course, is to get it out of my driveway and into someone else’s. Maybe I’ll put a “Free to good home” sign on it before I leave for work in the morning.
Since I think 30 days is more than sufficient for the property manager to take care of this issue (and since the car seems to meet the legal definition of abandoned), I’ll be calling the Motor Vehicle Administration and the local police tomorrow to start the process of formally declaring it abandoned. That takes about 30 days from start to finish, but after that I can file for title and then sell the damned thing myself. I hoped I wouldn’t have to be a douchebag about this, but from here on out that seems to be the way we’re going to have to handle things. That’s probably what I should have done from the beginning. Serves me right for trying to be a nice guy.
