Here is the story of a place that I worked on recently:
The older couple was very well off, he was a college professor and she was a medical doctor. They both tended to accumulate a lot of things, but their main hobby was collecting vintage books and magazines. A few years following the mother’s death, the son moved the father into a care facility due to severe dementia. And then let the house sit vacant…..
Two years past (miraculously the house had not been burglarized) and then the water pipes in the attic froze and burst. The problem was discovered within two days, but by then had ruined the ceiling, walls, and floor of both the upper and lower stories, as well as thousands of books. The son then had the damaged books and other items that had been ruined hauled to the dump, but left everything else (including all the furniture) in the house while $60,000 dollars of repair work was done. This means the contractors had to move the furniture from room to room as they worked.
When the repairs were completed, the house sat vacant for another year. Then the son and his wife came to town and removed “Everything of any value”.
Postscript: Calculate the cost of the items that were destroyed, plus the repair work on the house, plus three years of utilities, taxes and insurance. All of this cost could have been avoided if they had sold the house when the father first went into the care facility. This cost is far greater than the total of all the "items of value" that remained.
NEVER LET A HOUSE SIT VACANT!!!!!