New York regulators said Monday that 11 lenders have agreed to monitor and maintain vacant properties in an effort to protect them and combat neighborhood blight.
The banks, mortgage companies and credit unions represent nearly 70 percent of the New York market and will adopt practices to limit the damage from so-called “zombie properties,” according to the Department of Financial Services. They agreed to best practices that include checking within 60 days any residential properties that are delinquent on loans to begin determining if they are abandoned, the department said.
The 11 lenders are Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citi Mortgage, Ocwen, Nationstar, PHH, Green Tree Servicing, Astoria Bank, Bethpage Federal Credit Union, M&T Bank and Ridgewood Savings Bank.
“The wave of zombie properties that arose in the wake of the financial crisis harms local communities and threatens the long-term health of the mortgage market,” department Superintendent Ben Lawsky said. Many homeowners defaulted on mortgages in the aftermath of the 2008 national financial crisis when the housing bubble burst. “These commonsense actions are an immediate and vital part of repairing that damage as we continue to pursue additional legislative reforms,” he said.
5 comments:
The longer a house sits there without being sold, the more damage the house will have. They are sitting on these houses because they are hoping that the value of the area goes up that way, they can sell the house for way more than what it's worth! I seen this one foreclosed house in bayside here and they were asking 470k for it and the house had hardly no floors and had no kitchen to it! I told my brother that they only ones that will buy it are some asians that own or know someone who owns a construction company and they will probably turn it into 3rd world crap, but even their third world crap would be better looking than how this house is now. With People Out There Willing To spend money on Crap and Developers who are willing to buy any Property In nyc, Regular people Who make a "Middle Income" will never be able to afford any house in nyc ever again. So these houses will probably sell for at least 300k with at least 100k worth of work in the house that needs to be done.
This was every city in America for the past 30 years-- except NY. Now it's here to stay.
We will get to the point where damaged unsold property will need to be demolished as a regulation. Better an empty lot than squatter squalor.
Again, where is our city council on this issue? You see them jumping up if a developer needs a stop sign to slow traffic at a site to ease construction traffic.
They are always ready to help a developer destroy the fabric of a community, encourage absentee landlords milking property through intentional lack of enforcement, or landlords to covert a shopping district into fraternity row, or to take our taxes to support infrastructure for projects that house people that are not here yet.
I do think a lot of the anger at minorities in the area is also stoked by the politicians who know that a divided community is a friendly community to loss of services as well as development.
I have seen a Zombie house sit and slowly destroyed for over 15 years. Makes no sense. The homeless bums moved right on in and striped the house bare. If the bank would have moved fast enough this house could have been sold a long time ago.
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