The New York State Conference of Mayors on Monday joined the growing call to rid the state of so-called "zombie properties," or homes that typically have been abandoned in the middle of a foreclosure process and left to decay.
And New York City is crawling with them.
According to an estimate from housing data firm RealtyTrac, four New York City counties—the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island—are among the top ten in the state for zombie properties, with a total of roughly 2,500 between them.
"Abandoned homes become magnets for crime, drag down property values and drain municipal coffers," state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who conceived of the bill that has been introduced in both the state Senate and Assembly, said in a statement. "Our bill will keep communities safer and lessen the burden of municipalities still struggling to recover from the housing crisis."
The conference, which is made up of mayors from across the Empire State, is adding its support to a bill that would create a registry for zombie properties and require lenders to alert homeowners that they can stay in their homes until the foreclosure process is complete. But if those homeowners abandon the property, the proposed legislation would make the lenders pay for upkeep.
7 comments:
The state purposely holds on to properties just so it can sell them a little at a time in order to get home values up. They will tell you that there are not a lot of homes for sale out there just so they can Jack up the prices.
Just figuring this shit out NOW. What incompetency and laziness in NYC by our leaders. Something like this should have been put in place years ago, but no wait till the decay is all over before doing anything.
That folks is called "The Jamaica Model".
Yea right now the only one that has access to this is Asians with cash.
Correct Joe and poster 3.
First wait for the inventory to start to be cleaned up, then wait until some group known for their warehousing undocumented arrives on the scene with plenty of cash.
A couple of Chinese rang my bell the other week and wanted to know if we wanted to sale. Now get several mailings a week from predatory developers.
I tell ya, get rid of Tony and let John Liu into your district (along with a Vallone, any Vallone) and you are f*ked.
Why aren't the houses being sold? Is it because they are being marketed with a bunch of un-eradicated fines etc that need to be paid to the city in any event over a purchase price that makes them unecomical to buy? The city should abate the fines under a program where the properties are sold to owner occupiers since everyone knows we have a housing shortage and owner occupiers have a stake in maintaining housing stock!
The "Bubble" will pop soon.
New York is way overpriced.
I was surprised to see the term "Zombie" house because I have one of these homes close to me. I call good old Bank of America and was told by a customer service rep that the owner still owns the house. I was like what but the owner has not lived in the house for 13 years. Banks are lazy and do not care about these homes. I hope this bill will help with these so called "Zombie" homes.
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