Banks destroy brand new homes rather than repair code violations.

[girl gone mad]

Run time: 01:14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COy1YyVUPQ8   Posted on YouTube: April 27, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: April 28, 2009 By DU Member: girl gone mad Views on DU: 2319

 
Part 1 is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvrc7x3Amps

[beachmom]

1. Do you have any back ground on this?

Where is this? Why does it make more sense to destroy home than fix up? The video alone doesn't complete the story. I will check out Part 1, though.

[MADem]

2. If the value is upside down, then it's cheaper to pay tax on a lot than a home. NT

[beachmom]

3. Actually, Vid #1 said that the banks could not keep paying the fines

for not having the houses up to code. The homebuilder is who defaulted, and the homes were not finished. This is in Southern California.

[MADem]

8. Fines plus taxes equals a money pit.

They probably sold the fixtures, fittings and assorted hardware to a salvage joint before they wrecked the joint.

[girl gone mad]

6. This is in Southern California.

Looks like the bank doesn't expect this area to recover any time soon.

[martymar64]

25. It looks like the Antelope Valley area

North of L.A., that area is desert, not really a sustainable place to be building residential developments. A commute into L.A. would be likely about 2 hours each way. Not sustainable at all, physically or economically.

[Warpy]

4. Those places didn't have all their windows and doors

and couldn't be secured. Many of them didn't have roofs or exterior stucco, either.

It would have cost the bank a fortune to secure these places for the ten or so years it would take for McMansions in the middle of godforsaken noplace to become salable again.

Housing has been grossly overbuilt, especially at the top end. Likely these lots will become the type of housing we need sometime in the future, smaller houses that are easier to heat and cool although less attractive to speculators.

I'm not surprised to see a development at this price range and stage of construction being razed.

[beachmom]

5. Yep. Plus the banks were paying monthly fines for the houses not being

up to code, since they were unfinished. I don't think the documentary maker was judging the bank in this case. Just showing the effect of the housing crisis.

[Warpy]

7. Right, and I'll bet most of the copper had already been stripped

if any of them had the rough plumbing and wiring done.

I know it's sad to see wasted labor and materials, especially when a lot of us are too poor to afford either to patch up our own modest houses, but this was a sound decision on the bank's part and should have been done months ago.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

16. What copper?

Most houses today are done with PEX.

[izquierdista]

19. Warped thinking

You're living up to your nick today to call that a "sound decision". It was a lunatic response to stupid regulations. I don't understand how unoccupied property can have problems from "code enforcement". If the house was unfinished (didn't have a certificate of occupancy), the building permit can be kept open by having an inspection once every six months. It sounds like overactive code enforcers who have been browbeaten by the county treasurer (and the San Bernardino county treasurer is probably picking up change out of the fountain at the mall to make ends meet) into giving out fines to everyone they see.

It is going to take a LONG, LONG time for "change we can believe in" from the top to trickle down to stupid county bureaucrats forcing banks to destroy homes while at the same time they are trying to figure out what to do with all the homeless.

[Warpy]

21. Uh, did you watch that video?

Those places weren't liveable. They weren't even decent squats.

[izquierdista]

22. Did you understand what you saw?

Unoccupied houses being torn down because someone didn't know how to preserve the value of the work the builder had done. If the bank is going to foreclose on the builder, then it becomes THEIR problem how to get the best value from the collateral. What they did was equivalent to taking a car new from the dealer and parting it out.

Bankers pay themselves very, very well, because the rest of us (including brain surgeons and rocket scientists) are too stupid to understand the enormously difficult process of making secured loans. But now when it comes time to get value out of the collateral, they are not so smart, are they?

Remember the old newsreels of dairy farmers pouring milk down the drain during the Depression while people lined up at soup kitchens? This video shows we have reached that point.

[Warpy]

23. Unoccopied? UNBUILT

Better watch it again. You seem to have missed a lot.

Most of them barely had the plywood sheathing on them.

Many had no roof, missing windows and doors.

The stage of construction indicates roughed in plumbing and wiring, if that, and none of it connected to either sewer or electrical service.

They were out in the middle of godforsaken noplace.

They weren't even suitable for squats.

As I said in my post, wasted labor and materials bother me, too. However, given the state of construction, the location, and the fact that they were the wrong type of housing, razing was probably the best answer.

[izquierdista]

24. Noplace??

Victorville has been growing rapidly because many people consider it a nice area. Close to the big city of Los Angeles, but being north out on the edge of the desert, none of the air pollution. Given the rate of growth in southern California, that neighborhood would get filled in in another 5 or 10 years.

In parts of Europe, you can see similar houses 1/3 or 1/2 or 3/4 of the way through the construction process. Of course there the houses are individually owned and the owner is making progress slowly but surely, finishing another phase when he has money to buy materials and time to do the work.

I will rephrase what I said before: bankers have no clue how to get value out of the assets that they have repossessed.

[girl gone mad]

9. That's a good point.

These houses look enormous. The high end market was significantly overbuilt during the boom because the margins on $300K + homes were so much better for developers and local governments preferred the higher tax base that this development brought.

[phantom power]

10. A couple weeks ago, 6 new-builds were torched nearby in Cave Creek...

It may have been mischief, but all six were bank owned, and I have a pet theory that the bank had them burnt.

[edc]

11. I understand why

it makes economic sense for banks to cause depressions, to knock down unfinished houses, to put people on the street who can't pay their mortgages, to let those homes fall into disrepair, to let those homes become crime vectors as they decay and then be demolished so another speculator can come in and start the whole process over again someday. I understand it all perfectly, and that's just the least of the reasons why I hate capitalism.

[Karenina]

12. Hal-LO! Altes Haus!

:hi:

[edc]

15. Guten Tag.

:hi: Das gilt auch fur dich. Frau?

[corpseratemedia]

13. great response (can I say it's a DUzy?)

:thumbsup:

[dembotoz]

14. we should remember this and which bank did this

for when they go for funding
or when they recieve go neighbor awards

this is just not good

[ProgressiveProfessor]

17. They were half built shells that were not livable...

[girl gone mad]

18. They were mostly finished.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

20. Depends what article you believe

No windows, few doors, all without plumbing...some not installed others stolen. They were also ransacked as well.

*Maybe* Habitat for Humanity could have finished them, but no builder would.