OOPS! Contractor Absolutely Destroys a $369,000 Home Up For Sale, the Address on the Sidewalk was not the one on the House

 When a TCU-area rental house was gutted last week, just before it was to be sold, the owners had lots of questions.



Thinking burglars had destroyed the house and taken all the fixtures, they called Fort Worth police to report the crime. Their plight — remarkable in part because of the thoroughness of the burglars, who took appliances, toilets, furniture, cabinets, shutters, doors, molding and even the doorbell — made the news in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.



Worse still, owners Lee and Lelia Beckelman, of the Houston area, had a contract to sell the house at 2736 Forest Park Blvd. Their son had lived there with roommates while he attended TCU, but he moved out in August and the last roommate left in October.



Their real estate agent found the place gutted Feb. 9. Essentially all that remained were walls, bathtubs and some of the flooring.



But as it turns out, the whole episode was an honest mistake.



As Fort Worth police were beginning the investigation, they got a phone call from a contractor who explained what happened, said Fort Worth Police Department Sgt. W.D. Paine.



The contractor told police that the man who owned a house at 2700 Forest Park Blvd. hired him to gut it, Paine said. When the contractor and crew arrived at the street, they saw what appeared to be an address on the curb, “2700 Forest Park Boulevard,” directly in front of a house.



The crew didn’t notice that the numbers on the house said 2736, not 2700.



“It was a huge misunderstanding,” Paine said.