Simply having a high quality-landscaping job can increase the resale value of a property by up to 14%. Some landowners, however, would rather use their property for storage and not for appearances.
According to WUFT, Doug Englert, a Gainesville, Florida man, might be considered a hoarder by the majority of his neighbors and anyone passing by his property, but he credits his unconventional handling of property to the way he was raised.
“Ever since I was a small kid growing up in the country, we’ve been conscious about not having a lot of waste and that tends to make you hold on to things longer than a lot of people do,” said Englert. “This society we live in today throws away a lot of things, and I’ve just never been that way.”
Patch.com reports that Terry Shulman, author of Cluttered Lives, Empty Souls: Compulsive Stealing, Spending, and Hoarding, believes that this issue affects more people than originally suspected.
“Relationship to stuff is a fascinating topic,” Shulman added. “The hallmark in the extreme is being unable to let go of almost anything, even a scrap piece of paper.”
Englert’s neighbors have been complaining about his hoarding since 2006. The city’s code enforcement division, the Gainesville Code Enforcement, has had to visit Englert’s property numerous times over the last decade and force Englert to clean up his mess.
After all eight times of the city’s code enforcement division visiting his property, Englert does in fact clean up his lawn, but it goes right back to being filled with cars, boxes, trailers, and more clutter.
“Instead of him being able to come into compliance before fines start accruing, we would actually take this case to our hearing officer, our special magistrate,” said Chris Cooper, the head of the Gainesville Code Enforcement. “If we was found guilty of having these violations of city ordinance, the fines would actually start accruing from the date we actually cited a violation.”
Englert plans on cleaning his property yet again and keeping it clean this time.
