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posted by Bob at Thursday, February 21, 2008
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42 Comments:
Why dont the banks that hold the deed to these homes lose ?
They dont, they just got bailed out by taxpayers .
I dont think the city should be buying anybodys property.
Corporate welfare for banks !!!!
How about them buying my old car that doesnt run.
Jeff Matiatos.
Well folks now were going to see the banks and the city in a show down.It will take a year before banks in this town figure out a strategy to deal with this.Longer for out of town banks.
These city council members are braindead.They listen to people that run with these district councils like Cary Antrum(I believe)Wow met her once and all I can say is wow!Clueless.
And Bostrum what about all the landlords you put out of business with your corrupt code enforcement?Your an old coot and should retire old man.
Well St.Paul citizens you elected them and deserve all you get!HA HA HA!!!!!
Suburb Living
Would a landlord please answer my question :
IF a landlord goes belly up because of code enforcement and having been discrimitorily cited with code violations and such and had to get out, are the code violations reffered to the banks that owe the balance on the mortage
for repairs, or do the banks just wait to get in a new home buyer and dump the problems in their laps ?
I think the city and code enforcement should be hounding the banks that owe the mortages on these homes instead of landlords so much because the banks are in effect, co-signers if not more !
I see the landords losing but not the banks.
Most banks really own these properties and should be forced to work with the landlords more in the best interests of the tenants who rent and are subject to displacement when the code enforcement gets a bug up its ass
or the city implements its hidden agenda for wanting certain landlords out of buisness.
If i've got it wrong, I hope I havent offended anybody.
Jeff Matiatos
As Mr Lucht pointed out, they have been warned....over and over again and not only buy Mr Lucht, but countless others (including Atoorneys) about their code enforcement endevors. They didn't want to listen and now they scores of people suing them with lawsuits that they are surly going to lose. Now that they have chased most of the landlords out of town who were willing to rent to the poor people and replaced them with a bunch of vacant buildings purchased by green horns who know nothing about running a rental property business they are now going to make the vacant building mess that is the unientded consequences of the above totaly not saleable with this new law. These leaders are retarded. There has to be some kind of mental disconnect with the people to be pushing something like this.
The banks don't owe the mortgages Jeff, they own the mortgage. These banks are not going to be responsible for teh mortgages or the properties any more than General Motors is going to be responsible for a drunk that runs someone down in a Chevrolet. What is going to happen is that the banks are going to think it is no longer profitable to loan money on mortgages which means no new poele coming into rental property ownership. Once this happens the rents will go through the the roof because then only the rich will own the property.
And yes, the banks dump the repair resonsibility onto the new buyer, just as when you buy a used car and it needs some repairs. You are buying it as is, it is not new and that's reflected in the purchase price as is with everything people buy.
Doesn't make any difference what the city does, they're alrady past the point of no return.
Why then, when these homes become forclosed, does the city feel the need to spend our tax dollars cutting the grass and shoveling the snow on these properties when the banks who OWN the mortagess have the funds to take care of the upkeep ?
Jeff Matiatos
A couple of points.
Bostrom's idea is to require the banks (owner) to pay to repair the properties that are on the vacant building list before they sell them. Or for someone to have the money escrowed that would be enough to do the repair.
If people remember Nancy L's case, she claimed that she didn't know that the building was on the vacant building list when she bought it and that the City should not be able to force her to do a code compliance. If this passes, you would never have to worry about that again because the owner would have to do the repairs before they sell the buildings.
The banks hate it because they will have to add the cost of code compliance onto the house and escrow the money at sale. So, lets use as an example a $100,000 duplex on the east side that needs a code compliance and $50,000 of work. It would force the sale to be at the figure to sell the house and do the work $150,000 with $50,000 escrowed to do the work on the property.
It means more active negosiations on the price of properties and if you have been dealing with bank own properties, you know it is impossible to talk to anyone.
JMONTOMEPPOF
Chuck Repke
Good answer Chuck, but how about why the city should become involved in the maintenance and bail out of these properties that benifit the banks but punish landlords who in some case, are targeted by the city and code enforcement ?
Jeff Matiatos
The taxpayers DO NOT bail out anyone when it comes to ANY kind of maintenance on these rental properties, or any other properties for that matter. Any time the city performs work on a property, they charge for it and put the amount onto the property taxes for that property. If they shovel your snow, it cost the property owner $200.00. If they pick up trash, it's $300.00 to $400.00. Look at the council agenda. If you don't have garbage service the city provides it at $50.00 PER WEEK. There's people in there all the time contesting the assessments for the work done to their property.
chuck,
How do I get some information?
Like the true number of vancants
houses? The number of foreclose
homes in St.Paul? The total of
delinquent property taxes for
St.Paul? And how many vacants
and delinquent properties taxes
that was own by landlord ?
The number of foreclose propreties
from landlord?
My point is that the city has
cause this problem. By going after
landlords. And now they went to
do the same to banks. Its hard to
a loan in St.Paul, Now.
Leslie K. Lucht
To 4:54 p.m. ::
You say the taxpayers dont bail out anyone ??
I say that if the city is charging a fee to clean up foreclosed properties, we are being charged.
The issue is whether the banks that own the mortages have been
assessed for the work.
So far it seems like the fees for
assesments to these properties are being deferred to prospective new building owners .
The banks need to absorb all costs for the care of the properties they own'
These greedy banks ignored the reality of peoples income not being what it really was and gave out low interest loans .
The banks thought they were going to make a killing once the interests rates reached their high point.
The banks have no excuse and didnt the banking scandles involving the Clintons teach them a lesson ?
JAM
To JAM
You say:
"I say that if the city is charging a fee to clean up foreclosed properties, we are being charged."
What is that you do not seem to understand that the city is getting paid back (with interest too) when they charge someone to do something on a property?
You obviously have some issues and think the city should be able to be paid twice for the same work. I wonder if you would be as charitable if someone wanted to collect from you twice for something.
The city has been "double dipping" for a long time. I know property owners who recieved bills for excessive use fees and paid them only to find out that the city also billed the new owner for the same charge. They refuse to issue a refund to either of the 2 owners and threatend the revocation of their Rental Registration license if each of them did not pay. What a racket!
To 7:38 from JAM :
We are both right.
But until the tax payers are reimbursed, it is our tax dollars that pay whoever the city designates to clean up these properties.
Why doesnt the city go to the banks to clean up these properties that the BANKS OWN ??
JAM.
The issue here and now is really what St.Paul is doing to solve its vacant housing problem.
My comment on this matter is in part that while it is noble of the city to say they would buy up some of these properties, fix them up and sell them, in this housing market, they may not even sell, especially in the areas of the east side where the problem is concentrated.
Further,the city should not be buying in this volitile housing market.
We need to enact laws that prosecute banks for making bunk loans to unqualified homeowner wannabees.
These banks made the loans out of greed.
Let them pay for their own upkeep .
JAM.
jam must be a city employee, but so be it. Go ahead and rape the banks. First it was the landlords, now the banks....who next do you want to make responsible? With this kind of thinking, the only people that are going to be left in the city is governemnt and the people sucking off of them for every type of social service imaginable.
this guy is so typical of most of the people in St Paul who think everyone except the person causing the problem is responsible, and that is exactly why the city is in the mess it is in. The city nor people like JAM acknowledge any of theri part in causing the vacant building situation with their illegal code enforcement activty, nor did anyone think there was anything wrong when the city decided to pick the taxpayers pocket for 25 million dollars to buy and rehabilitate the problem they helped cause. I don't recall JAM here saying anything then. Listen to what the 2nd banker has to say in the council meeting. If the collateral is in question, there's not going to be any more money being lent in St Paul and without that and the people willing to take risk, the infrastructure of the city IS GOING TO COLLAPSE!
This is bad policy. I suspect the city really does want to see the properties safe, habitable and occupied by good families. However, the council seems to have forgotten the basics of motivation. To encourage something, one should create incentives; to stop something, one should create penalties.
The city is creating penalties to the transfer of distressed housing. Ironic given that the current owners are clearly failing (for some reason). They should WANT to transfer the housing to someone else! This ordinance will penalize transfers!
Personally, I am indifferent to this ordinance change. I think the ordinance is horrible for the city. There is no doubt in my mind that it will take banks months – if ever – to figure out how to rehab a building. It is not their expertise! Once we slow the transfer of properties it will increase (dramatically) the number of vacant buildings.
So why would I be indifferent? Because what a wonderful situation for investors. We have the strength to purchase buildings from the bank on a six month contract (which is NOT a sale!). Few home owners will have the financial strength to convince a bank to accept a CD. As inventory of distressed properties increases, the prices will surely fall further, faster and give all investors great opportunity. In other words, I am struggling between my own greed and what I think is best for St. Paul. The phrase constantly going through my head is “stupid is as stupid does.”
Amazing to me. If the city wants to restore these houses and get good families in there, they should create incentives to get these homes up and running again. I think they should lower the code compliance requirements to safety issues, cooperate with banks to offer loans on uninhabitable homes and maybe even offer financial incentives through things like TIF financing. That would bring in buyers other than just us investors.
I suspect some bureaucrat will say my ideas are impossible and quote a whole bunch of bureaucratic rules… Doing nothing is better than creating new penalties!
Bill Cullen.
Jeff Matiatos,
You wrote “We need to enact laws that prosecute banks for making bunk loans to unqualified homeowner wannabees.”
Begs the obvious:
Who do you think is “unqualified” to have a mortgage?
If we prosecute banks when PROPERTY OWNERS go bad on their loan, won’t banks quit loaning money in Minnesota?
Bill Cullen.
The only problem I can find with you Bill is that you operate on common sense and logic. You see, here in St Paul, we like the stupid and we like to fight and hurt people. It raises our self esteem......right Kathy?
Bill,
Banks will never quit loaning money when they know that the U.S. Government will save their ass every time they run a Low-High interest rate scam.
You seem to want to ignore that millions were allowed assume loans
with the greedy banking systym hoping that it would all pan out.
You must like the fact that Federal tax dollars have been dumped into the banking systym as a result of the banks greed and stupidness.
Sure, the homeowner wannabees that couldnt make good on their obligations share the blame to, but we expect more from the banking systym, and what is happening with the housing crisis today is mostly the result of the banking systym trying to dupe people into paying high interests rates while letting them in with bait.
Jeff Matiatos.
While I do not agree with Jeff completely, I do share his hatred of the banks. There is not a week that goes by that I don't get 3 to 5 offers to open up a charge card and borrow money, many of them pre approved. I almost feel harraased by their relentless mailings and offers. Banks have no concept of people being responsible, they just push the money out the door knowing that some of it going to go bad and they don't care because they just pass the loss onto the people that are responsible and pay their bills. I hope they all go broke.
Les, most these vacant homes are not rental property. The slumlords homes have very little impact on the vacant building crisis.
The hell they're not, I heard Marcia Moermund tell the city council last year that most of them were rentals. Can we see that counicl meeting Bob. It ws last fall sometime.
We all hate landlords,subpar renters and now banks.We want home owner occupied-HOMEOWNER OCCUPIED,NO!!Did you hear me? Homeowner occupied!Folks isn't this what got us in the mess in the first place?People buying houses that shouldn't.Now you penalize the bank that gave out risky loans so the city could have homeowners.Anybody in favor of this plan is a complete idiot.Cased closed.
Bills right.By the time banks or regular people who have one of these cat 2's or 3's knows what to do it will be late in 2009 with another 1,500 vacants added to the list and the city scrambling to pass another failed policy.Chuck stay quiet on this.The last real estate project you were on was a failure.
The city should losen its code equal to hud standards to make sure they maintain affordable housing in St.Paul.Most of these vacants are in lower income neighborhoods and raising the bar on the code before sale is putting many of these homes once affordable not.So folks once again we are watching the city before our eyes distroy affordable housing and rental.
Tim Ciani
I hope they do it! I'll be very happy to buy for pennies on the dollar and sit on them for a few years to make a killing. Who needs a renter with a program like this. Go for it Bostrom. You've got my vote.
Thanks for the tip Bill. I'll be out shopping today and through out the weekend.
Bill your right.I know house buyers that are already drooling at this new city ordinance.It takes already cheap housing and makes it really cheap with CD financing from the bank.No holding cost while you rehabilatate.These people on the city council are lost so lets take advantage of their stupidity.
Sid
This should be the link to the vacant building list:
http://www.ci.stpaul.mn.us/depts/dsi/codeinsp/vblist.html
As of February 1, 2008 1625 vacant buidings. So, for all of you with tin foil hats that think that it has been the City's code people that have closed all of these buildings down, go look at a Council agenda and walk with me step by step...
1. Public Hearings only happen twice a month.
2. Orders get a public hearing.
3. There has never been more than 5 buildings up for hearing at one meeting in the last year.
4. If you said every meeting there was 5 just for arguement. You would have 5 code houses times 2 meetings a month times 12 months
(5 X 2 X 12 = 120)giving you a maximum of 120 houses that the City could have forced on the list!
So where in the heck did the other 1,505 vacant buildings come from!!!!
Even if I undershot by 100% if the City was wacking 20 a month and if no houses were ever being reocupied it would take over FIVE years of 20 houses a month to put that many houses on the list!!!
So go to Wallmart and buy roll after roll of tin foil and wait for the black helicopters to come.
JMONTOMEPPOF
Chuck Repke
Granted the banks made a lot of bad loans, that have returned to them.
Now the city wants to dump responsibility for its code compliance requirements on them, as well as anyone else.
To get out of this mess, the banks should muddle through the foreclosure disaster they created, without additional problems added by the city, and without additional costs to the taxpayers.
The city's code compliance requirements are at the heart of the lawsuites, and should be dumped. Dawkins actions were stupid from day one, and still are stupid.
Repke your like a broken record.You didn't get a round mouth from eating square meals!
Listen to Ciani.
Yeah Tim I looked at Chucks real estate deals.Chuck you know nothing and you date women who like men who wear tin hats.
Les Lucht, alleged before the city council, in Les's mind the city's intention was to make it tough on the banks so the city ended up with the vacant homes in foreclosure. Then, non-profits could ultimately gain control of the properties for rehab or rebuild to house low income people.
And I thought the landlords contention in the law suits was the city was running low income people out of town with their code enforcement policies.
You can't have it both ways boy's!
Now you're getting it Amanda. None of their stuff makes any sense.
It's enforcement that is creating the vacant buildings but less then 10% of the buildings are on the list because of enforcement.
The City is after the landlords to get rid of poor people so that they can house more poor people.
The City is against all landlords except you can tell that the City was out to get them because it didn't pick on other landlords.
The City is involved in a conspiracy...except nobody benefits from the conspiracy...
And around and around and around they go...
Tin foil cases and cases of tin foil...
JMONTOMEPPOF
Chuck Repke
Hey Amanda and Repke I don't like these landlords either but is Les in the Suits?He can't even complete a sentence.
George
You got a big mouth Repke and it's going to make you look like a fool. By the end of the summer there will be a recall campaign going on to get rid of the trash in city hall. You have no idea my friend how hot things are about to become in the next few months. I attended the meeting the attorneys had for property owners screwed by the city a few weeks ago and there were many who were interested in bringing lawsuits from what I saw. Kiss your city goodbye asshole, they're bankrupt.....they just don't know it yet.
The SH*T is hitting the fan down at city hall right NOW!
The law suits are starting to pile up people.
I'm sure we will hear more from Bob on this later.
How yeah like that Lantry?
Over 50,000 cities in the United States and not one- none have gone bankrupt over a lawsuit. Over a million lawsuits have been filed in just the last eight years. Not one has come close to bankrupting a municipality.
If your lawyers are telling you that you're going to be awarded so much money that you'll bankrupt the city- they're lying and probably worth what you're paying them.
If you win one judgment, you'll be lucky to get any cash. It will probably result in the judiciary regulating the code enforcement tactics as civil rights violations and then forced to change. Then the law that is being tempered, will be fixed.
You'll still have to make the repairs.
George, Les is and the other landlords are the types who tries to get money for nothing or complain of non-existent violations against his rights.
They put their saving into a business they couldn't manage and now want to sue the city for their loss on their bad investment.
Geoff
Landlords and tenants in Port Huron, Michigan sued the city over a very expensive and onerous inspection ordinance. They spent more than twenty-five thousand dollars on lawyers and only won a few concessions in front of a judge who believed in government control of everything. Then they got smart. They put their money behind a new slate of candidates for city council. When they won, the city manager and city attorney were fired and the inspection law was changed.
The only way you can fight city hall and win is in the next election.
Geoff
Geoff keep you eyes on the ball my friend.Its about to get real interesting.These landlords bringing the suits are all in and are very smart.They know how to win.They are the pioneers landlords for years have needed.You will all know their names someday as the ones who did stand up to city hall and win.
Linda
Amanda,
You do not understand what the city is doing.
When the city give the nonprofits
propreties to build on. Its for low income housing. So, are putting more low income people in
one area.
CDC are part of the city planning
to put controls on the poor famlies.
This is what the city should do.
1. work with the banks on vacant
Like the building need to be
tear down. Pay them amoumt about $20,000.00 to $30,000.00.
then teat it down.
2. sell the land to public so they can build new house. But not sell them more than $40,000.00 to $50,000.00.
3. No one group can purchase more Three lots. At time. They must have build house the lot first and
then they can purchase more lots.
4. The city and county should give tax breaks to the builder.
5.Make the lots big in the city.
If two lot are vacant next each other. Make one lot. So you can have big yard. And house.
6.City work with the landlord that
remains and help them. form a partnership with them.
7. Stop building low income housing. Do that right away.
That will be start to fix the problem. Do not force people.
The city think everyone has money.
That the case. You can just increase your price on things . Like the city just increase taxes.
If you do not have the money.
But they need to settle lawsuits and then maybe they can start working with the landlord and the banks. If not the city will become a ghost town.
Leslie K. Lucht
What you all seem to be missing is this.
1. Many of the foreclosures have insurance to cover the banks loss so they really don't care what happens to the property.
2. Banks are not set up to repair or rehab properties and they will just let the city take the property back and tear down the house. This seems to be what the City wants as they will eliminate low income housing.
3. For those people that own vacant houses and can't afford to fix them, this just means the City will tear the house down since they will not be allowed to sell it.
4. The existing vacant homes cannot be held to the new law, so if this is what the City has in mind it will only open itself up to new law suits.
5. Clearly, the City Council is not getting very good legal advice or they are ignoring it. Seems to me they should seek outside legal council - they need it.
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