Frank Talk About Milwaukee’s Foreclosure Crisis
Experts at panel discussion say city making great progress in solving the problem.
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Experts at panel discussion say city making great progress in solving the problem. Back to the full article.
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Categories: Real Estate
The city really fell down on the job when the mortgage crisis happened. They could have made these properties available to low income residents at reasonable prices starting five or six years ago. Anyone who had sense enough to know the importance of paying their rent on time would have been able to own a home for less than half of what they were paying for rent in some of these dumps.
You would not believe the amount of vandalism that was done to nice houses during this time – and don’t mention the water damage caused by thieves stealing copper pipes and water heaters. And why, someone please explain to me, didn’t the city make it illegal for these recycling places to accept copper unless the seller could prove where it came from? Now the city wants want to give these houses away since they are almost worthless — instead of having a program to match them with potential homeowners when they in reasonable condition shortly after they were vacated. So why don’t they now start a program to train the unemployed people in the central city to repair them? They can salvage some of this housing stock and teach primarily young men construction skills. But that probably makes too much sense.
@LeeLee The city didn’t own the properties, hence they couldn’t sell them.
I am talking about the property tax foreclosures that the city did own. The bank foreclosures did not sit on the market for years, although they did suffer from the copper vandalism that caused enormous water damage to otherwise decent, livable homes.
@LeeLee Again, generally, the city didn’t own the properties right away. It took at least 3 years of non-tax paying before the city would take the property. And even after that point it was still possible for people to get the properties back. Yup, there is a bit of a legal process to go through prior to the city just taking away somebody property (which I’m pretty sure is a good thing). But often enough by the time the city got the properties it was already wrecked.
“The bank foreclosures did not sit on the market for years” And this is simply not true. The banks left a massive mess
My last word on this. I am referring to what happened when the city took possession of these properties – once they had offered them for sale. Instead of getting profession real estate companies to sell the properties, as they have stared to do now, the city attempted to sell the houses themselves. Major disaster. The problems with bank foreclosures happened because of lags or failures on the part of the banks to take possession of less desirable properties – NOT WHEN THEY THEY WERE LISTED FOR SALE BY A REALTOR.