Archive for the 'cities' Category

The real estate market in Chicago, Illinois has generated an increase interest from vulture investors. Industry experts said that most of these vulture investors are real estate developers whose overbuilding activity was cited as one of the factors that pulled down the housing market and the economy.

Real estate developers set aside their development plans and started scouring Bank Foreclosure Listings to find repossessed properties to purchase at discounted prices. Industry experts believe that by temporarily stopping development works, real estate developers are ensuring that they will survive the crisis until such time that the construction activity picks up again.

Belgravia Group Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Alan Lev said that his company still has plans for new construction projects. However, as long as the number of properties on Bank Foreclosure Listings continues to increase, it is hard to think of building new structures, Lev added.

The Belgravia Group is planning to purchase distressed properties worth $100 million.

Many industry observers believe that more properties will be placed on Bank Foreclosure Listings this year as owners who failed to refinance their debt will be forced to place on the market for sale their residential or office projects.

Industry experts predict that about $814 billion multifamily and commercial mortgages nationwide will mature from 2009 to 2011, with $24.3 billion loans in Illinois.

These expert predictions are driving real estate developers in Chicago to raise money, not to fund new construction projects, but to purchase foreclosed properties at discounted prices.

Prices of apartment properties in Chicago sold between October 2008 and March 2009 dropped by 15 percent to $101,215 from the same period a year ago.

However, industry experts cautioned investors on the possibility that the flood of mortgage defaults would be contained once credit starts flowing. This would mean a substantial reduction in the supply of distressed properties to buy. Added to that is the competition to win profitable deals.

Major real estate investors and developers, including Walton Street Capital LLC and John Buck Co., are searching the Bank Foreclosure Listings to purchase distressed commercial mortgage loans or busted projects.

Indeed, real estate investors/developers are expecting a bumpy road ahead in the foreclosure buying market. But they see no other way to survive in the current housing crisis.

Canyon Lake in California has issued an ordinance which requires all bank owned homes foreclosures to be registered with the city. Owners of foreclosed properties who failed to comply with the city ordinance will be made to pay a fine.

The registration of bank owned homes foreclosures is part of Canyon Lake’s efforts to alleviate the devastating effects of the foreclosure crisis in the city. Under the ordinance, owners are given 15 days upon acquisition of foreclosed properties to register them with the city. An annual registration fee of $130 is required for each property. Failure to register a foreclosed home will mean paying a fine of as much as $1,000 daily.

Once bank owned homes foreclosures have been registered, they will be inspected immediately to determine if they meet the city code. Owners of these foreclosure properties will be required to maintain them following standards applied to other properties in the city.

In the event that bank owned homes foreclosures are sold by a lender or bank, the buyer is mandated to inform the city about the sale in order to terminate the registration requirement.

Mayor Mary Craton is calling owners of bank owned homes foreclosures to maintain them. She is confident that the city will be able to implement the program successfully.

Councilman Barry Talbot estimated that there are nearly 125 foreclosed houses in the city, adding that as much as 30 properties are receiving notice of foreclosures monthly. He said that many foreclosure homes have fallen into a state of disrepair while others have been occupied by squatters.

He believed that the ordinance would boost efforts to lessen the impact of foreclosures on communities by helping identify owners of the foreclosed properties and ensuring that they are well-maintained.

Meanwhile, Canyon Lake is not the only city in Riverside County that has implemented the ordinance requiring registration of bank owned homes foreclosures. The county itself has implemented the same ordinance, along with cities of Murrieta, Temecula, Lake Elsinore, San Jacinto and Beaumont.

These ordinances are similar in the sense that they require lenders of bank owned homes foreclosures to conduct routine maintenance on properties, such as maintaining lawns, cleaning pools, removing debris and weeds and making sure that the houses are secured.

The increasing number of bank foreclosure homes in Middlesex, New Jersey has caused blight on neighborhoods. Most of these abandoned and vacant foreclosed properties have become eyesores and magnets to vandals and thieves.

To stop the deterioration of communities brought about by the increasing number of foreclosed homes, Middlesex has proposed an ordinance that would ensure foreclosed houses are maintained despite the absence of any occupants.

The proposed ordinance would require owners of bank foreclosure homes to maintain their properties until buyers are found. Non compliance of the ordinance will mean paying a fine of $500 daily.

Middlesex Councilman Michael Class explained that he started crafting the ordinance after some residents complained to him that foreclosure homes in their neighborhoods were in a state of deterioration because of lack of maintenance.

He said that there were cases in town in which banks foreclosed on properties and do not take care of them after the foreclosure. The garbage piles up and grasses start to grow. In some foreclosed houses that have swimming pools with undrained water, mosquitoes would start to breed on these areas.

Class pointed out that there is no rule or policy that protects neighbors from deteriorating foreclosed properties.

He said that owners of repossessed homes, usually the lending institutions or banks, should register the properties with Middlesex. A fee of $50 is required per registration. Under the proposed ordinance, signs should be placed on windows to provide contact information on the person to call in case of emergency. This person should live not farther than 40 miles from the foreclosed house.

Attorney Edward J. Johnson said that owners of foreclosed properties that are not maintained would received a complaint from either the zoning official or code enforcer. Non-complying owners of foreclosed homes would be given a deadline to clean up their properties before the matter will be brought into court.

Johnson added that once the complaint reached the court, the judge could either give the offending party another chance to clean their properties or fine them.

According to Johnson, the judge would determine what type of fine he is going to impose. He added that it would be cheaper for banks or lending institutions to hire workers to clean bank foreclosure homes than pay the fine.

The rising number of bank foreclosed houses has forced the city of Aurora in Colorado to require banks and lenders to register all foreclosed properties on their inventory to monitor them to ensure that they do not become eyesores to communities and magnets to criminals and vandals.

The foreclosure crisis has ruined thousands of lives. And not just that of distressed homeowners but also residents of neighborhoods where bank foreclosure for sale properties are located. The situation in the city of Newark in New Jersey is not different from other cities and towns ravaged by foreclosures.

Phoenix is rising fast from its real estate collapse, with investors and home buyers bidding against each other to acquire forclosed VA homes and other foreclosure homes.

Residents of Chicago, Illinois get proactive in their fight to curb the number of properties put on the bank forclosure listing. Over 200 community resident leaders from schools, area faith institutions and organizations staged a rally in front of a branch of the Bank of America to demand bank accountability.

Some neighborhoods hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis can expect to see fewer properties in bank forclosure list anytime soon with the city council’s approval of a program to purchase foreclosed and vacant properties in Tampa.

Biscayne Bay Lofts, the developer of the 28-story,118-unit Onyx on the Bay condominium tower in Miami, Florida is facing bank forclosures action from Corus Bank. Court records showed that Corus has filed foreclosure proceedings against Onyx’s 41 unsold units.
The lawsuit, filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, has named Biscayne Bay Lofts and its development partners Luis [...]

Some homeowners in Las Vegas, Nevada are accusing their homeowners’ associations (HOAs) of using unpaid fines as reason for forclosed homes for sale. Some said that they were slapped with accumulated collection agency fees and late penalties by their HOAs over as menial a reason as failure to submit on time paperwork for converting a grass lawn to desert landscape.