Viewers were stunned by Lisa Hardy’s good luck when CBS This Morning told her story. Not many people get the opportunity she did.
Hardy didn’t have a deed to the home she lived in for 9 years nor did she have a rental contract. She lived there for free.
The mother of three lived in the Eastside Indianapolis house simply because no one else did. The home belonged to no one.
And no one ever came around looking for rent.
Indianapolis was full of abandoned homes after the mortgage bubble burst. It just so happens that the home she lived in never went up for auction at a tax sale. And no one seemed to notice that the property taxes went unpaid despite the utilities being connected and paid on time.
But Hardy didn’t just waltz into the home with the intention of being a squatter. In fact, she did what many people might do in a similar situation.
It all started when she worked as a leasing agent for Showhomes Property Management. The company told her she could move into one of their homes rent-free for as long as she worked for the company.
“They said, ‘Pick out a house,'” Hardy recalled to the Indianapolis Star.
She chose a two-story, 3-bedroom, 1,490-square-foot-home built in 1910.
Then the housing crash hit and Showhomes Property Management was caught up in some major mortgage snafus. While Hardy was laid off and the company went out of business a few months later (the owner even went to jail!), she was never asked to leave the home.
So she didn’t.
“I thanked God every single day,” she said. “There’s not one day I haven’t thanked the good Lord for the opportunity to live here without rent.”
She paid her bills and even once inquired about property taxes. But she told the Indianapolis Star that the city told her not to pay the overdue taxes if she wasn’t the homeowner.
So why did she decide to tell her story?
The home was finally sold to a Singaporean real estate developer at a surplus sale and she hoped that they would agree to do some needed repairs and rent the home back to her.
The house was a godsend to Hardy when health issues kept her from getting a job and while she was raising two teenage sons and then a young daughter.
And it wasn’t just her house that had been forgotten – those around her were vacant.
While the neighborhood drew squatter and drug addicts, she never had problems living there. And she hated the idea of what would happen to the house if she moved out.
Then again, why would she leave?
The stress of not knowing if someone might come knocking on the door to kick her out one day did take its toll, though.
“I lived here on pins and needles. I never knew when I was going to have to go. It was stressful,” she said.
And while she didn’t sink any money into major repairs, she did keep the property functional and neat.
But the cracks in the walls as well as the cracks in her plans to live there eventually emerged.
CTL Group bought the property at a surplus sale for $7,500. But they didn’t contact Hardy – they didn’t even know she was there. They simply ended up buying hundreds of cheap homes in the area.
But CTL’s founder and group managing director, Clara Tan Lisin, told the Indianapolis Star in an e-mail that the company planned to spend $15,000 to renovate the house and that they would rent it to her.
“If she wishes to be my tenant I am more than happy to accept her as my tenant after my renovation. This saves us trouble of looking for a tenant,” the new owner said.
And Hardy said she’d love to stay if the rent was affordable.
The last anyone had heard, the company struck a deal with Hardy that allowed her to stay in the house – just not rent-free.
Be sure to scroll down below to see an interview with Hardy shortly after her house sold and she agreed to tell her story.
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