Tennessee real estate investor Paige Batten bought a house back in October 2024 that she was hoping would be a quick flip, but things haven't exactly gone her way.
And not just because she's been sitting on an empty home for over a year, but because when some prospective buyers finally came to tour the house, she found out that someone had removed the driveway.
Yes, the whole driveway.
‘I had a call on Saturday morning ... and she was like, Hey, we're thinking about putting in an offer. When are you going to finish up the driveway? And I'm like, well, the driveway had a couple of cracks in it, but we're not planning on redoing the driveway. And she's like, well, maybe we're at the wrong house,' explained Batten.
This happened a few weeks back.
Batten called the police about the missing driveway. During their investigation they found that a whole crew with a truck and trailer, a dump truck hauling a backhoe, and a king cab truck hauling a backhoe came out and removed the driveway.
‘The biggest thing is just trying to, you know, find out who did this by Miss, not trying to accuse anybody or anything, but just hopefully somebody will come forward and go, Hey, we made a mistake. And, you know, own up to it, and hopefully we'll get a driveway, porch without us paying out all the money,' said Batten.
Otherwise, she's in for $14,000 to replace it with no guarantee of selling the house.
But what would drive someone to steal a driveway?
One potential reason is a new scam being perpetrated on house flippers and real estate investors who have homes sitting empty for extended periods of time.
It's actually a scam on contractors called an "overpayment scam".
The thieves scan listings on online reality sites, looking for houses that are sitting empty then call a contractor about doing some exterior work (like removing the driveway). The scammers write a check for more money than the contractor asked for then say, "oops we made a mistake" and ask for the difference to be returned. The scam artist's check bounces, but they run off with the overage.
Obviously, there's no way to know that's what happened in this specific instance, but I doubt the resale value of a destroyed driveway is worth the time and effort of the acquisition.
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