cleveland

For neighborhoods fighting the blight and deteriorating property values caused by foreclosed properties that banks abandon or unload on speculators, this is big news: A housing court judge in Cleveland has ordered Wells Fargo to clean up the foreclosed houses it owns in Cleveland.
In the preliminary injunction he issued Thursday, Judge Raymond Pianka also required [...]

In another sign that the behavior of lenders who disregard their REO properties is gaining attention, The New York Times picks up on the common and scandalous practice of banks walking away from foreclosures.

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 [...]

The fight that neighborhoods in Cleveland are launching against banks that dump vacant and vandalized foreclosed homes back onto the real estate market received a bit of a setback, as I noted in my story Monday. A private, non-profit housing advocacy group had filed suit in local housing court to force the banks to clean [...]