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Archive for December, 2008
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Tuesday, December 30th, 2008City tags lenders with property upkeep duties
Monday, December 29th, 2008Banks and financial institutions that file foreclosure actions against properties must maintain the properties if they have been abandoned by their owners, under a new ordinance adopted by the Common Council.
“This is a very important piece of legislation,” said Ald. Michael Murphy, who sponsored it with Aldermen Jim Bohl, Robert Bauman and Willie Wade. Murphy said the ordinance is being eyed as a nationwide model.
Under the legislation, lenders must inspect a property once a foreclosure action is filed and register the property if it appears to be abandoned. Lenders must reinspect occupied properties every 30 days.
The ordinance also requires lenders to assure that:
• Buildings are secured and inaccessible to unauthorized persons.
• Litter, trash, debris and graffiti are removed.
• Grass is mowed, noxious weeds are removed, vegetation trimmed.
• Immediate risks to health, welfare and safety are eliminated.
• Public walkways are kept free from ice, snow, mud and other debris.
Violations can bring fines of $100 to $2,000.
Many banks and lenders support the ordinance, which was modified in draft form after lending institutions objected to some of its original provisions, according to testimony before the Common Council’s Zoning, Neighborhoods and Development Committee.
The city has 1,700 foreclosed properties, with another 4,500 “on the waiting list,” Murphy told the council.
In some instances, owners who can’t make their mortgage payments are simply walking away from the properties, he said.
As a result, “the snow is not shoveled on the sidewalks, the grass is not cut, the garbage is not picked up, these properties end up becoming attractive nuisances, they become problems with gang members, solicitation. They also become fire traps, they also provide further decline in property tax values of the properties adjacent to them.”
The new ordinance, he said, is “not a silver bullet in terms of addressing all of these issues.”
The ordinance gives the city one way to deal with an issue made more difficult by the securitization and sale of loans between institutions. Murphy singled out Deutsche Bank, based in Germany. Deutsche has more than 400 city properties that have been foreclosed upon and 14 servicing agents.
“None of them can be reached,” he said.
The ordinance, he said, “is not a panacea, but I think it’s the right direction.”
The home sales math really hurts
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008One.
That’s how many of 34 Milwaukee home sales listed in Sunday’s Journal Sentinel was for more than the assessed value of the property. It’s listed in blue in the picture below.
Twenty.
That’s of how many home sales involved foreclosed properties.
On average, the 34 properties sold for 43%, or $45,571, under assessment.
Ouch. The implications for the city budget and the distribution of the property tax burden are huge. Maybe warm weather sales won’t be so skewed, but these numbers are not good.
A few caveats — the paper actually lists 36 sales, but the assessment for one property, 9727 W. Lolita, was for $50,000. The home there is new and the assessment is for the lot only, so that property was excluded from the analysis. Another property, 6709 W. Monona Pl., is not in the assessor’s data base, so that one also was rejected as well.
Another assumption is that if a previous owner is listed as a financial institution, the property was foreclosed upon.
Click on the picture for a larger image.
On the bright side…
Monday, December 22nd, 2008It’s too damned cold out and I had to run outside in my stocking feet to grab my ancient cocker spaniel, who decided to dwell in the snow to chow down on something she should not (I’m sparing you the details here).
Fired up the computer and the iTunes library came up a crapper — totally corrupted, so I have to go back and add back in hundreds of folders of music. And yet, and yet…
I don’t have to shovel this morning.
It’s a fine day.
“Modest,” my eye — that’s a 50% price increase!
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008The Journal Sentinel yesterday raised the retail price of its daily newspaper by 25 cents, labeling it “modest” increase.
It’s also a not-so-modest 50% jump, which the paper forgot to mention in this instance, but would have been sure to point out had it been imposed by some other business or — golly! — by local government as a property tax increase.
I really, really want the paper to stay in business and stay locally owned, as weak as it is at times. If you don’t like the JS, you would probably like not having it even less. The paper, though, now is charging proportionately a lot more for a lot less content and letting its readers know this in a note that just reeks of “you are idiots anyway” attitude.
JS — Please. Stop it.
Tags: Journal Sentinel
Posted in Commentary, Miscellaneous | 9 Comments »