Bankwalkaways.com
Bankwalkaways.com
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The new phenomenon as the Real Estate crisis worsens. You will find articles and other bank walkaway information at this site.
A Bank walkaway is simply a home that the bank started foreclosure proceedings, set a date for a sheriffs sale, and then canceled the sheriffs sale at the last minute leaving the property title in the home owners name. In some cases the home owner doesn't even realize that the home is still in his or her name. In the hardest hit areas such as Arizona, California, Nevada and Michigan, bank walkaways are becoming more and more common.
Bank Walkaways Real Estate Blog
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown wants a federal investigation into what he considers an alarming trend in the foreclosure crisis -- lenders or mortgage companies walking away from homes they've foreclosed on, leaving homeowners and communities to deal with the fallout.
Brown asked the U.S. Government Accountability Office on Wednesday to delve into these so-called "bank walkaways." He wants to know why they occur and how often; what they mean for neighborhoods and the owners of foreclosed homes; how they affect government efforts to address the foreclosure crisis -- and what additional steps could be taken, and what type of loans the homeowners had in the first place.
More...Cleveland.com
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Here is a good article written by:
By SUSAN SAULNY
Published: March 29, 2009
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Mercy James thought she had lost her rental property here
to foreclosure. A date for a sheriff’s sale had been set, and notices about
the foreclosure process were piling up in her mailbox.
Ms. James had the tenants move out, and soon her white house at the corner of
Thomas and Maple Streets fell into the hands of looters and vandals, and then,
into disrepair. Dejected and broke, Ms. James said she salvaged but a lesson
from her loss.
So imagine her surprise when the City of South Bend contacted her recently,
demanding that she resume maintenance on the property. The sheriff’s sale had
been canceled at the last minute, leaving the property title — and a world of
trouble — in her name.
“I thought, ‘What kind of game is this?’ ” Ms. James, 41, said while
picking at trash at the house, now so worthless the city plans to demolish it
— another bill for which she will be liable.
City officials and housing advocates here and in cities as varied as Buffalo,
Kansas City, Mo., and Jacksonville, Fla., say they are seeing an unsettling
development: Banks are quietly declining to take possession of properties at the
end of the foreclosure process, most often because the cost of the ordeal —
from legal fees to maintenance — exceeds the diminishing value of the real
estate.
The so-called bank walkaways rarely mean relief for the property owners, caught
unaware months after the fact, and often mean additional financial burdens and
bureaucratic headaches. Technically, they still owe on the mortgage, but as a
practicality, rarely would a mortgage holder receive any more payments on the
loan. The way mortgages are bundled and resold, it can be enormously
time-consuming just trying to determine what company holds the loan on a
property thought to be in foreclosure.
More... The
New York Times
Bank 'walkaways' from foreclosed homes are a growing, troubling trend
Renetta Atterberry thought she had lost her East 102nd Street house. So she was shocked to learn in January -- five years after her mortgage company filed for foreclosure -- that it was still in her name.
Worse, the long-vacant rental home had been vandalized and she faced a raft of housing code violations. Since then, she has been saddled with debts of about $12,000 to pay for demolition and back taxes.
"I thought I had nothing else to do with that home," said Atterberry. "I was so embarrassed and humiliated by this."
Her mortgage company didn't buy the house and never took it to sheriff's sale to see if somebody else would, leaving Atterberry the legal owner, responsible for upkeep and taxes.
These so-called "bank walkaways" are another troubling development in the foreclosure crisis, particularly in cities like Cleveland with weaker housing markets, say housing advocates and government officials.
More......Cleveland.Com