Lots of debris is created when older buildings are renovated, demolished or replaced. That debris, which is usually carted away and discarded, can contain precious metals in the following forms . . .

If you are in the business of demolishing buildings, you know that the first order of business is usually to “just knock it down . . . make it disappear!”

There is a reason for that. The sooner most old buildings are gone, the sooner they can be replaced with a new shopping center, apartment complex, parking lot, or other income-generating project. So you follow the instructions of the developer that hired you and as quickly as possible, that old building is reduced to rubble and trucks start to haul it away.

Last month, a development firm from New York bought a vacant 50-acre manufacturing complex from Caterpillar in Milwaukee. And in the same month, the vacant 37,000 square foot Vista Pointe Industrial Plaza building in San Diego was sold to a California developer.  

The lesson for real estate developers is to make sure to recover precious metals from appliances – or at the very least, to work out a deal with the scrap metal recycling company to share the value of precious metals.