Banks that made reckless home loans have been tiptoeing away
from foreclosures in a tactic designed to cut their losses. The result:
Orphaned, dilapidated homes dot the landscape from Kendall to Lake Worth.
There are no owners willing to claim and care for them.
A months-long Sun Sentinel investigation of property code
violations involving abandoned homes uncovered case after case in which banks
launched foreclosure lawsuits but then stalled or avoided taking ownership. In
effect, the banks legally sidestepped responsibility for the empty homes,
causing great harm to neighborhoods.
The real estate industry calls such properties "bank
walkaways." They are no longer maintained by their legal owners, whether
they were investors bailing out of unwise deals or families in financial ruin
who decamped.
Nor are they being tended to by lenders, which have halted
foreclosure proceedings because the remaining equity in the properties is
deemed inadequate to cover the banks' costs to reclaim title and maintain,
refurbish and sell them.
The practice has contributed to South Florida's foreclosure
"limbo" problem in which thousands of vacant homes are stuck in
unsettled court proceedings for years.
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