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My brother and sister in law live in Arcade, and have been battling Bank of America over an abandoned house next door to them for years. The house had an addition on the back which had the roof collapse in. After 3 years of fighting, the bank finally tore the addition down, long after rot, mold, rodents, etc, had moved in.
The main house is mold filled, has a dead and gutted deer in it (which was done before the place was abandoned) broken out windows, and a flooded basement. It still just sits.
It is sad really, as that kind of thing really depresses streets and neighborhoods!
The house immediately next door to my house, where the previous owner attempted suicide (another neighbor found him in his attempt--sitting in his closed garage with his snowblower turned on--perhaps alcohol-induced, as he drank quite a bit) and foreclosed sat unattended for a while. Over the past six months some upkeep efforts were made (cosmetic, anyway--lawns were cut regularly; I did see some guys go inside on occasion...reports from inside were that it wasn't pretty, even in a house that would seem to be in pristine condition judging from the outside). Now just about a week ago, I came home to see it was on the market, with a real estate agency I'd never before seen by the name of "SawCC"--if you Google it, you'll see that they're based in NT and "CC" stands for "commission cutters". Of course a bank-owned property is going that route, realtor-wise....
The problem of bank-owned properties that are left abandoned to rot are a nation-wide problem, and much worse in areas where there were large numbers of foreclosed properties. New York has passed some laws to force owners (ie, banks) to maintain these houses, but as per usual, they've found ways to circumvent the law, so their properties continue to be eyesores.
It's insane the laziness of banks when it comes to these properties. We struggled with Citibank to get them to finish filing for the foreclosure to a house so we could purchase it. The house was becoming a drug hangout for some homeless suburban trash and property crimes were creeping up around the neighborhood. A scared senior next door was threatened after police calls were made and the Town couldnt do anything to help. We had to call like 20 people to finally get someone in their legal department to listen. He got some intern on the job to finish the simple paperwork to close the foreclosure, deed was still in old owners name but the people had been evicted 2 years prior and had moved out the area. We had a buyer for them so that helped speed the process up.
I guess the first-ring suburbs are dealing with what the cities have dealt with for decades. Did they think this was just going to remain an urban problem?
The street I lived on in West Seneca/South Buffalo border had no less than 4-5 abandoned houses that sat empty for the entire 6 years I lived in the area.
The bank would send people to board up the house, then to cut the grass nothing else.
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