The 'filthiest house in Houston' still hasn't sold

BEFORE: A house dubbed the "filthiest house in Houston" by its realtor Paul Gomberg is filled with trash and animal waste. BEFORE: A house dubbed the "filthiest house in Houston" by its realtor Paul Gomberg is filled with trash and animal waste. Photo: HAS | Keller Williams Photo: HAS | Keller Williams Image 1 of / 57 Caption Close The 'filthiest house in Houston' still hasn't sold 1 / 57 Back to Gallery

The home at 5623 Willow Walk St. is still sitting on the market and still covered in feces and grime.

That's even after listing agent Paul Gomberg, who's part of the "Rockstar Realty Group" at Keller Williams realty in Conroe, chose to embrace the home's disgraced state.

He made a video playing up the house's neglect, showing room after room covered in pet waste, old food wrappers and mounds of trash. (Story continues below.)

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"People ask to see it, and I tell agents, 'It's really yucky in there,'" Gomberg says. "I had one or two agents saying that their clients walked into the house and they vomited in the house at some point. That's how stinky the place is."

The gimmick seemed to have worked at the time.

"Originally I had it listed for $125,000 as a short sale, and we had a flood of offers and as high as $218,000," Gomberg says.

After this year's recent flooding, the owners were able to get a two-month extension on their loan, but they've opted to abandon the property.

Gomberg says that the lender, PennyMac Loan Services, hasn't received the last 23 payments owed on the property. PennyMac lenders told Gomberg not to accept any offer less than $280,000, which none of the bidders would pay.

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He believes the bank may place the home under foreclosure by the first Tuesday of September.

"They sent a guy out in early April," Gomberg says of PennyMac. "He said it was really bad. They started calling me back, asking when I'm going to clean it up. I told them, 'I'm the agent.'"



A concerned neighbor took it upon herself to make a few improvements.

"She thought about buying it for safety reasons," he says. "You could smell it from the street. She spent around $1,200 (to clean it up)."

The swimming pool also had to be cleaned, after Harris County issued numerous safety violations. The carpet has been removed and Gomberg estimates that 80 percent of the trash has been cleaned out.

The owners, Gomberg says, are living in another one of their homes. Gomberg had previously sold the couple a home in March 2015 before they offered him this listing, telling him it only "needed a little work."

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Sadly, Gomberg says that the family's potbelly pig, which might have been responsible for some of the mess, was eaten by the owner's dogs.

"They went to Disneyland for 10 days and the pig was eaten by their dogs," Gomberg explains. "They didn't leave enough food for the dogs."

The house they're living in now could be "Part 2" in the sorry saga.

"I was there in April, and it was starting to smell pretty bad," he says. "But that's for another day, I don't have it listed."

Note: This article has been updated.