A great idea, just a year or two late
So what took them so long?
That’s my reaction to the rollout Monday by state official and nonprofit executives of an initiative to buy up foreclosed homes in New Bedford and other hard-hit cities and towns across the state.
Citizens Housing and Planning Association will run what’s described as a “clearing house’’ for foreclosed properties. Community development groups will then buy up these distressed homes and condos, fix them up, and resell them at affordable prices to low and moderate income buyers.
Of course, the only problem is that the small-time real estate speculators who helped make a mess of inner-city neighborhoods across the state are already at work, snapping up foreclosed properties at dirt-cheap prices.
Dorchester housing researcher John Anderson, who has been tracking these scams for years, recently warned of a surge of such deals, typically all cash, taking place in Dorchester and other Hub neighborhoods. Condo units that were sold back in the boom, in some cases to straw buyers, for $300,000 can be bought now for $50,000 or less.
If well meaning activist groups like CHAPA want to make a difference, they had better act fast and start buying up these properties
Unfortunately, some of the most promising homes and condos have probably already been cherry picked.
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You're right, Scott. It would be better if real estate "speculators" kept their hands off these properties, so their value could go to zero, they could be stripped of plumbing and appliances, and used for crack houses and gang dens. Darn those speculators.
No, it's more likely that these people will hold on to the properties, make NO improvements, let them be stripped of plumbing and appliances, refuse to maintain the properties to minimal standards, and wait until "boom" times return.
This is what happened with my former neighborhood in the South End. It's why the Alexandria Hotel is still a boarded-up mess.
Markel, the problem is that purchase of distressed properties by real estate speculators does not prevent the problems that you describe, which result from the homes being unoccuppied and prime targets. This is likely to happen even after community groups acquire them. The speculators flip these properties just like they might have flipped an appreciating high end property during the boom years. Sold properties can come with alot of unforseen baggage. The Cleveland experience that was reported in NYT magazine a couple of weeks ago describes what can happen. Where will the community groups find the necessary financing to rebuild or rehabilitate these units?
Van Voorhis should know better. CHAPA, MACDC and other community based groups have been actively fighting the foreclosure crisis since at least the summer of 2006. That is when we started working on Major Anti-Foreclosure Legislation that eventually became law in November 2007. We then immediately created a broad task force to start attacking the issue of already foreclosed properties and many community groups have already begun buying homes. We could go faster if Congress and HUD had moved faster to release funding, but don't blame us for that! In fact, it was CHAPA and other community advocates who were finghting submlending for years before the crisis hit.
This blogger might want to review your comment before posting it.
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