Developer Sues Sex Offender on Sales Loss
“A developer who claims sales in a subdivision stopped after a sex offender and his wife bought a home has sued the couple and the real estate company that arranged the purchase. NGI Rental filed the $2 million lawsuit Friday against Randall Dee Collins and his wife, as well as the real estate company that arranged their new home purchase. Randall Collins, 39, was convicted of molesting young girls and is listed on the Arkansas Crime Information Center Web site. According to the lawsuit, his wife hired a real estate company to sell her old home, saying she had married a sex offender and that her home was too close to a school. A day after the couple bought a home in a new subdivision, the police department distributed fliers detailing Collins’ case. The lawsuit claims residents indicated they would move if Collins did not leave the neighborhood — and that sales came to a standstill because the developer was required to tell potential buyers about Collins.” —Newsday (US)
Because everybody loves a lurid detail, here is the perp’s entry on the Arkansas Crime Information Center sex offender registry. The guy looks like he could be a high-school track coach. But then again looks don’t mean much when evaluating a criminal, do they?
At any rate, this case introduces a fascinating complication into the putatively feel-good story of sex offender registries. In other words, in spite of their relative inefficacy, everybody but the perps and privacy advocates thinks that sex offender registries are a great idea. After all, would you — especially if you’re a parent — want to move into a house next door to a perverted sex criminal? Of course not! And yet, however noble an idea the public registry of sex offenders may be, it’s gradually having a twisted consequence: the devaluation of real estate. Nobody wants to live beside a sex offender, and so wherever sex offenders live, property values go down. It’s simple math. It makes you wonder if, one day in the future, it will oblige sex offenders to live in ghettos, little enclaves of deviants and freaks. Or you could also imagine crooked real estate developers hiring sex offenders to colonize desirable tracts of land so that they can swoop in and buy up lakefront property at rates made low by sexual panic.
The developer should sue the appraiser also.
All comments become the property of PervScan. You must use an email address to post a comment. However, PervScan disallows email addresses in the text of comments.
Mouth to Mouth