bank-owned properties

Late last year, TWI wrote about a landmark lawsuit in Cleveland, in which housing lawyers were trying to stop banks from dumping their rundown and neglected bank-owned homes on the city. The lawyers, working on behalf of a local nonprofit, had momentum at first, securing  a temporary restraining order for two weeks that temporarily stopped [...]

Calculated Risk picks up today on an overlooked outrage we’ve been writing about for a while now — the way banks handle their inventories of foreclosed homes. We’ve pointed out that banks often let those houses sit, vacant and vandalized, or sell them at fire sale prices to speculators.
I’m hearing stories frequently of banks selling [...]

Now and then you’ve probably seen some heartwarming story about the charitable group Habitat for Humanity helping to build a home for someone down and out on their luck.
Just to show you how bad the crisis in vacant and foreclosed has become, Habitat for Humanity is still around, and still helping out — only now [...]

The Los Angeles Times takes a close look at a problem TWI detailed Tuesday in a piece about neglected bank-owned property. Some of that property, as we explained, includes half-built housing developments, where construction was halted when the mortgage market went bust. Those developments are called PVC farms, after the PVC sewer pipes that stick [...]