City Demolishes Wrong House, Suspects a Scheme by Homeowner Next Door (Video)

Another city has accidentally demolished the wrong house, but in this case it might be hard to blame civic officials or even the demolition crew. Although the house in Pontiac, Mich., that was supposed to be leveled was actually just next door, the man who owns that house is accused of tricking the wreckers into razing the wrong one, reports Detroit TV station WXYZ.

In the past year, AOL Real Estate has carried stories of several purportedly abandoned homes that were mistakenly demolished -- through foul-ups in paperwork or communication -- and in the case of Fort Worth, Texas, two of them in two days. While officials in Fort Worth fessed up to the errors, authorities in the Detroit suburb of Pontiac are accusing a homeowner whose house was slated for demolition of switching the numbers on his with that of a house next door. (Maybe because of the number of houses blighted or abandoned there, home-demolition snafus have been a recurring problem in the Detroit area.) The owner of that demolished home told the TV station that he'd planned to rent it out in October and might seek compensation from the city of Pontiac.

As seen in the the above video, not everyone thinks that the destruction of that house in Pontiac was necessarily a bad thing, but the owner of the neighboring dwelling is now under investigation for his alleged role in the mix-up -- which only seems to have delayed the inevitable.

More about wrecked homes:
Abandoned New Orleans House Falls on Neighbor's Home
Phoenix Home Wrecked in Hostage Standoff -- Who's Responsible?
Not-So-HighTimes: Rental Wrecked by Weed Growers

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