Two notorious Plaza-area ‘rat houses’ sell for $250K each in hot Kansas City market
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Kansas City ‘rat houses’
For years, neighbors fought the owner of a rat-infested house near the Country Club Plaza.
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Kansas City’s real estate market has become so heated that even the “rat houses” of Westwood Park — two notorious bungalows, located just off of Ward Parkway, southwest of the Country Club Plaza — have fetched $250,000 each.
One is in the process of being destroyed. The other is being renovated.
“Did you ever read the Stephen King book of short stories?” said attorney Victor Weber, a Kansas City bankruptcy trustee with Merrick Baker & Strauss who worked to prepare the houses for sale. “One of the houses we went into was absolutely infested with rats. They (workers) said that when you went inside, you could hear them: hundreds of little rat feet running around. It was actually kind of frightening. Really strange.”
But the sale of the homes, located side by side at 4933 Westwood Road and 4937 Westwood Road, comes as a great relief to neighbors who, for more than 20 years, have been living out a nightmarish saga, battling the homes’ former owner, Carol L. Dille (pronounced “Dilly”), who, they claimed, not only tolerated the rats, but fed and nurtured them.
Over the years, neighbors, living in homes now valued at $500,000 and more, would spot rodents crawling on the fences, digging in their own yards. Dogs chased them down. The Star chronicled the conflict in 2019.
The home that is being renovated — two bedrooms, two baths, hardwood floors — is more than a fixer-upper.
In 2015, after the Westwood Homes Association sued, a judge appointed a receiver to repair things. Workers entered the home and were overwhelmed with the stench of rot and animal urine. Rodent feces were found from the basement to the attic. Rooms were jammed with logs, leaves and tree branches, which had become rodent homes.
A freezer in the basement contained the corpses of woodland animals: an entire red hawk, an opossum, its mouth agape, an owl, rabbits, squirrels. In another drawer, they found various squirrel limbs and tails.
But eventually Dille — a once successful AT&T executive who had been a top student, a varsity cheerleader and 1970 homecoming attendant at Westport High School — got the restored house back and again allowed it to fall into squalor.
Both yards were overgrown with thigh-high weeds. Dille said that she was a “natural gardener,” who would never hurt a creature. The rats came back.
Sentenced to prison
Then, from a criminal case unrelated to the homes’ condition, Dille in November was sentenced to two years prison — having pleaded guilty to bankruptcy fraud and wire fraud to prop up her homes and income. That included stealing $76,601 of her former husband’s Social Security retirement benefits over a three year period.
Dille, who turns 69 at the end of July, currently is being held at a minimum and medium security facility in Greenville, Illinois, with some 1,200 prisoners. She is set to be released in August 2022.
Meantime, the federal bankruptcy court was tasked with disposing of her property to repay creditors, including her ex-husband and those holding notes on her properties.
On June 11, the two Westwood properties were sold to Kansas City area real estate investor Brad Baker for $250,000 each.
“The day we listed those, we got like 30 bids on each,” Weber said. “It was crazy.”
Kansas City real estate is experiencing a brisk seller’s market. In June 2020, homes in Johnson and Jackson counties took an average of 41 and 40 days to sell, according to statistics from the Kansas City Regional Association of Realtors. This year, those have been cut by more than half to 16 and 19 days, respectively.
In Johnson County, the average sale price of a house in June, now at $435,000, went up some $55,000 from June of last year. In Jackson County, the average home is at $274,000, up $36,000. Housing inventory is 41% lower than it was this time last year; sellers are getting their asking prices or more.
“You know, the best way to sum it up is that this is the hottest market we have seen in a long time,” said Tony Conant, president of the association. “We have more Realtors than homes on the market right now for only the second time in history. Competition is high.”
A ‘great house’
Dille owned other property, including a home in Brookside at 206 E. 66th St., also said to have had rat problems in the past. That property sold in June to a buyer, Found Properties LLC, of Kansas City for $212,000.
Dille also owned a home and property in Bates City, east of Kansas City near Interstate 70 in Johnson County, Missouri. Weber said the home is currently under contract and is to be sold for about $310,000, with two parcels being sold for $49,000 and $60,000.
Weber expects that when all is settled, Dille’s creditors, including her former husband, may possibly recoup as much as 50 cents on the dollar they are owned.
Baker, a real estate investor for 30 years, who has developed numerous lots in the Kansas City area, said that the formerly empty home at 4933 Westwood Road was in such irreparable shape that it would cost more to renovate than to build new.
The house is expected to be razed in the next two to three weeks. The front lawn has already been plowed up. Trees have been cut down, their massive limbs allowed to fall through and collapse the roof of the house.
“The tree guy said, ‘Can we just drop on the house?’ I said ‘Absolutely,’” Baker said. He said he is unsure whether he will sell the lot for development or develop it himself.
“If I build something, it’ll be something that’s kind of fitting with the neighborhood,” he said. “I’ve built modern houses in West Plaza, but in Westwood Park I would probably lean a little bit more toward maybe Prairie-style, you know, a little bit more overhangs.”
The rodents, meantime, are long gone at the house next door at 4937 Westwood that Dille used to call home. Baker is already in the midst of renovating it for either rental or sale.
“I’m really excited about it,” Baker said. “I’m over there every day.”
He called it a “great house,” with scrolled wood features and hardwood floors. He said it will be a completely renovated two-bedroom home, with two baths and a new kitchen.
“When I tell my friends I’m working on the ‘rat lady’ houses, they say we really have to re-brand that,” Baker joked, adding later in seriousness, “It was just too beautiful a house to tear down.”
