Realtors' Latest Challenge: A Surge of Squatters

Monique Bryher, a Realtor with Pinnacle Estate Properties in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, has just about had it with squatters. In recent months she's encountered people living in four vacant bank-owned homes she's trying to sell. In one case, she says, the renegade residents "threw weekly rave parties and charged admission," leaving behind vandalized cars and a street littered with beer cans. (Photos of what they did to the house are above and at left.)

In previous posts we've written about groups like Take Back the Land, whose members seek to house otherwise homeless people in vacant foreclosed properties. The current crop of squatters, Bryher says, are "more opportunistic people, not some poor family desperate for a place to live."

According to many Realtors, the situation is becoming more common -- and more dangerous -- as the backlog of foreclosed properties increases.