More Foreclosures

San Jose tries to protect neighborhoods from foreclosure wave, prevent blight. The lenders pushed to keep homes in good condition and prevent blight in the city.

As the housing bend grind on, San Jose is getting out to residents in front of foreclosure and insists on the cleanup of abandoned homes that could blight city neighborhoods. The over grown lawns and vegetation can pose fire hazard, open door and window can attract wreckage, and excess garbage creates eyesore, said Michael Hannon, deputy director for code enforcement.

“When you look at the number of families impacted, it’s a large number, and we need to be responsive as much as we can,” said Leslye Krutko, director of the city’s Department of Housing, referring to those families who are losing their homes.

Properties are considered to be in foreclosure if owners received either a notice of default or a notice that the property was scheduled to be sold at auction, or if the property was repossessed by mortgage lenders during the period studied.

“If you’re a lender, the city expects you’re going to maintain that property so it doesn’t blight the community,” he said. “Nowadays, a vacant building is an ‘attractive nuisance,’”‰” that could lure vandals to the property, something the city and neighbors want to avoid.

Many of the vacant properties that San Jose residents call to complain about are owned by lending companies that have foreclosed, Hannon said. As a result, he said his inspectors have created a database of contact names and numbers for the many different lenders responsible for foreclosure properties in the city.

“It’s not fair to the citizens of the city of San Jose to have to pay for, essentially, property management,” From November 2007 to July 2008, the report said, 305 vacant houses were found to be in violation of the city’s neglected vacant house ordinance. But as of the end of the July, only 92 still needed “abatement” of some kind.

Jaime Alvarado, executive director of Somos Mayfair, a community organization in San Jose’s Mayfair neighborhood — and in one of the report’s hardest-hit ZIP codes — said the city’s efforts to prevent blight from vacant homes seems in his area to be working.

“In Mayfair, so far, so good, but it’s still early. Everyday, there are more and more houses vacant.”

Source: Mercury News

More news which have come in regards to the foreclosures was:

The rains may have stopped on Monday, but the flood of foreclosures has not.
Deputy Register of Deeds Nyci Centers reported last week 190 recorded in the year-to-date, as against 161 last year at this time.

There were 227 recorded by that office for 2007, a record.

“It’s not over,” said Sandy Jackson, assistant vice-president and collections manager for Monarch Community Bank.

Whether because of overbuilding, overvaluation or risky financing, the current foreclosure dilemma suggests one thing: No one is truly “comfortable” right now when it comes to finances.

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