I could understand, that if people die or get sick and have to move they leave their things behind. What I don’t get, is why nobody else cares for this stuff. Surely there must be family or friends, why don’t they do something about all this, partly really beautiful, belongings rotting away slowly. I experienced this myself. We once wanted to buy an older house, after the owner had died in hospital a year or so ago. The door was opened for us by a relative of this man, and it was just unsettling: the kitchen table was still set with breakfast board, knife, marmelade, coffee creamer… so this man had a heartattack, the ambulance was called and the door was just shut and never opened again until we came. What kind of person could he have been, that no one cared about his belongings? Still harrowing…

The owner died and the inheritance is either disputed or the new owners can't be bothered because they live too far away/ are not in good health/ are in prison/ can't be found, etc.

It's interesting to me that no one has broken in to steal stuff. After my grandma died my mom left stuff in her house until she could go through it and get it to family and friends. (It was a big house and there was a lot of stuff and my mom and dad lived next door so they thought it was "safe"). Within a few months, people had figured out the house was vacant. They broke in and stripped everything out of the house including large pieces of furniture, art deco light fixtures, and glass doorknobs. I cannot figure out why this house hasn't been stripped clean. Maybe there is a giant fence around the property??