For a couple of months now, the house next door to ours has been vacant. Like has happened across the country, the family that lived there had got into the house on a mortgage they couldn't actually afford. They had even paid a pretty big chunk down, but when they couldn't make the monthly payments, they lost everything and moved out.Now the house sits there without a For Sale sign and we don't know if the bank even realizes they have a defaulted property on their hands. In the meantime, a neighbor and I are trading off mowing the lawn to try and keep things looking nice and normal, but it's only a matter of time before weeds, neglect, and disrepair signal to the neighborhood that we've got a troublesome eyesore.
Across the street, the house of another young couple has gone unsold for a year...even though they have come down in price a couple of times already. They are moving out this summer and putting the house up as a rental -- never a welcome prospect for the surrounding home buyers.
No, the banks' and government's irresponsible home loan policies have hurt American neighborhoods in more ways than one.
Hey, maybe it's not even a bank that now owns the property. This story in USA Today suggests it could even be the federal government that is now my next door neighbor! After all, the fed now owns 50,000 family houses, "enough homes to fill a city the size of Riverside, Calif., or Miami" and is having one bear of a time unloading them. That means the government is "facing billions of dollars in losses."
And it means that the house next door may stay empty for quite awhile.
