A common sight for many of us nowadays, is the sight of an abandoned house for sale. Some people don’t necessarily think of this as a bad thing and more as an opportunity, and they see an abandoned home as a possibility. The website realtytrac.com recently published an article referring to foreclosure gold and the amount of abandoned houses for sale. The simple fact of the matter is that the recession, how I hate that word, has put many neighborhoods in peril, with repossessed houses that have turned beautiful neighborhoods into something from a horror movie.

Forget about the Hollywood studios, I have the best set possible for a movie right next to me with the abandoned house for sale next to mine! Unfortunately many of my neighbors were hit by the recession, and now there’s a number of abandoned houses for sale near me. Many developers and real estate investors are looking at abandoned properties as a near term profit gold mine. The banks have been putting their repos up for auction to try to recoup some of, but not usually all of the money they have lost.  Diving into this market now, may be the perfect time, for once we climb out of this economic slump then it’s likely we’ll witness another property boom.

An abandoned house for sale in a good neighborhood may seem like an attractive opportunity, the only real danger is how long can you carry the property while riding out the current economic environment before you can sell it? The chances of selling an abandoned home on today’s market, for the price that it should achieve, is rather dismal. Not everyone is taking the same risk as they did once before, to pursue their dream home, vacation home or investment property. However, those who can afford it have one of the best investments available today - purchasing an abandoned house for sale at bargain prices!

From 11 Alive, Atlanta, Georgia

(ATLANTA) — Four-time World Heavyweight boxing champion Evander Holyfield has reportedly saved his massive metro Atlanta mansion from foreclosure.

Holyfield’s Buffalo, NY-based agent tells 11 Alive’s sister station, WGRZ, that the former champ has worked out an agreement with mortgage holder JP Morgan Chase & Company.

This agreement gives Holyfield until August 4th to pay the back debt on the 54,000 square foot home.  It was set to be auctioned on July 7th.

Holyfield’s agent says his client is working on several projects right now including a comeback fight. Agent Jerry Schaffer says the details on that should be announced in the next 60 days.

The foreclosures and outright abandoned homes in this neighborhood are so bad it was chosen as the backdrop of the next “Nightmare on Elm Street” movie.  It had just the right mix of misery and darkness which makes the perfect setting for a horror flick.

From the Post Tribune of Northwest Indiana

GARY — Dilapidated homes and dead or dying trees provided a stark setting Monday for additional filming in the city of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” — this time in the 400 block of Tyler Street.

It was warm, but there almost seemed to be a chill in the air, thanks to the shooting of a major release that will continue the cinematic franchise which details the twisted actions of Freddy Krueger.

A film crew numbering more than 25 members focused on a stretch of large, abandoned homes that included 441 Tyler St. and the three houses immediately to the north of it.

“I guess they had the look that they wanted,” said Ben Clement, executive director of the Gary Office of Film and Television.

That look, added Clement, was apparently “foreboding and ominous.”

Patricia Jackson took in the making of a Hollywood production from her front porch across the street from the neighborhood eyesores that were being prepped for shooting.

“It’s OK,” the 49-year-old mother said of the experience. “I like horror movies.”

A fan of the “Nightmare on Elm Street” concept, Jackson was joined on the Tyler Street front steps by her 24-year-old son, Xavier.

“It’s a fun experience watching it,” he said. “I’ve never seen a movie actually being filmed — not in person.”

For Xavier, there seemed to be enormous hustle and bustle — and public works arrangements — to accommodate exterior footage in the flick that will probably be fleeting.

“It looks like a lot of chaos,” he summed up.

Set for an April release next year, “A Nightmare on Elm Street” is a New Line Cinema movie, distributed by Warner Bros., a name synonymous with legendary filmmaking.

The Jacksons were hoping to get paid by New Line for use of their front lawn, which was accessed by crew personnel and used for video-monitor and chair placement.

Ethel Veselinovic sauntered over from her Tyler Street home down the block to catch a unique piece of show business that included lighting equipment, clearing of tree branches and the stretching of nearly two-stories’ worth of blue, canvas-like material between two of the abandoned houses.

“I’m excited,” the 33-year-old woman said. “Nothing like this happens around here.”

Clement said Monday that New Line was boarding up the abandoned structures and cleaning the landscape around them, leaving the area on Tyler Street looking “much better.”

Footage for “A Nightmare on Elm Street” was shot in May at the grand, shuttered City Methodist Church, 6th Avenue and Washington Street. A film crew returned to the church on Monday to do some overnight filming.

Congratulations to Cleveland! If each city took action and acted in this manner it would preserve the values of the homes that are adjacent to each bank owned property. The story below specifically deals with Wells Fargo, however, as you can tell from the LenderOffender rankings - many top institutional banks are offenders of neglecting properties throughout the country.

From WCPN 90.3 FM (Ohio) -

A Cleveland judge says if Wells Fargo wants to sell off its bank-owned property in the city, it has to make some effort to fix them up first. The ruling effectively stops the sale of an estimated 180 Wells Fargo-owned houses in the city of Cleveland. As part of our ongoing series, Facing the Mortgage Crisis, ideastream®’s Mhari Saito reports.

The case actually started last winter when a local nonprofit called the Cleveland Housing and Renewal Project took Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank to court. The nonprofit’s attorneys wanted the global lenders to stop the sale of 36 trashed houses for pennies on the dollar to out of state investors. The Wells Fargo case ended up in mediation and somewhere along the way took a wrong turn. The nonprofit, now joined by the city of Cleveland, went back to court, asking city Housing Court Judge Raymond Pianka to stop Wells Fargo from selling all of its estimated 180 bank-owned Cleveland houses. On Wednesday, the judge partially agreed ruling that Wells Fargo must show the court proof that it has made some effort to fix up any house before selling it off. Frank Ford heads the nonprofit that filed the suit.

Frank Ford: This is a victory for any Cleveland homeowner that has to live next to a Wells Fargo house that is dragging down their property value.

The ruling does not apply for Wells Fargo houses for sale over $40,000. In court, Wells Fargo’s attorneys argued the lender was not a landlord or rehabber and that if forced to fix up properties, it would have to “rethink all of it’s business practices.” In a statement, Wells Fargo said it believes the ruling has no legal basis and its attorneys are reviewing legal options, including an appeal.

Several of you have asked for the repost of the CNN Saturday Morning News featuring LenderOffender.com.  Please see below for the entire transcript unedited. To see the entire video, please click here.

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OK. So foreclosed properties, becoming neighborhood eye sores. You know, you can imagine, people don’t live there anymore, things go awry. Well one man got so mad about it, they took matters into his own hands.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN, watched by more Americans than other news channel. Now back to CNN SATURDAY MORNING.

NGUYEN: It’s not just the people whose homes are foreclosed on who suffer. Empty homes can become eye sores and property values they will drop. It made one homeowner really mad and he did something about it. CNN’s Ted Rowlands has his story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The people living next door to Mark McKinzie moved out almost two years ago. Now weeds are actually growing out of the garage.

MARK MCKINZIE, LENDEROFFENDER.COM: I said, well what can I do? Well I can create something that might call attention to the problem and give frustrated residents a voice out here.

ROWLANDS: Last month McKinzie created lenderoffender.com, a website where anywhere in the country can post for free information about neglected foreclosed property. For each entry there’s a photo, a few comments and the name of the lender or bank that owns the home. When a property is cleaned looked up, McKinzie takes it off the site.

He says this house down the street has been vacant for months.

MCKINZIE: Look at the lawn. That is a black dead lawn. So no one in this neighborhood deserves to live next to this property and homeowners in this area neighborhood deserve to know who owns this property.

ROWLANDS: Citibank owns this house. They told CNN it became vacant in late November and is now in escrow. As for the lawn, they said “we did not sod the lawn because it moved in the market very quickly.”

One lender, Wells Fargo actually cleaned up their properties listed on the website. In a statement to CNN, they said in part, they are “very concerned with preserving the condition of homes and neighborhoods and added they’ll keep watching the website.”

Delores Conway, a professor at the University of Southern California specializing in real estate says and lenderoffender.com may push others to act. DELORES CONWAY, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA: It may help to nudge the lender along a little bit in terms of coming out and putting in the proper maintenance to the property.

ROWLANDS: McKinzie is hoping she’s right, especially when it comes to the house next door.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NGUYEN: Mark McKinzie says he invites anyone living near poorly maintained foreclosed homes to take a few photos and add them to his site. Ultimately he hopes the problem will be cleaned up so the site won’t be needed any more.

By Carl Love - Press Enterprise

For almost two years Mark McKinzie sat and looked at the abandoned property next to his house in east Murrieta.

But instead of just fuming about it like most folks, McKinzie did something about it: He started a Web site to publicize wrecked properties, the goal being to shame the property owners, usually some big lender, into doing something about it.

It’s called LenderOffender.com and here’s a sample comment about a Winchester home posted last week: “This thing has been abandoned forever, completely rotted out, right down to the missing peephole in the front door.”

Feel the rage in that post? This is like the ultimate cathartic experience for frustrated homeowners tired of living amid foreclosed squalor: Take a picture of that abandoned house that’s been driving you bonkers, ship it to McKinzie’s site, and let rip the most damning comments imaginable.

Wow, that felt good.

McKinzie has good reason to be frustrated. He moved here in 2002 from Poway and paid $273,000 for a 3,200-square-foot house. He invested $35,000 in the front yard to make it look first class.

At the peak a few years ago he estimates it was worth an ungodly $580,000. Then came the tidal wave of foreclosures, including the wreck next door.

Now that house, same size as his, is on the market for $223,000.

“I never thought it would go below what we paid for it,” he says. “It’s just disgusting. Not only are they (abandoned houses) a disgrace to the neighborhood, but they lower the values of our homes.”

He takes out his angst on his Web site. He started it in mid-January with pictures of about 100 lender-owned houses he had no trouble finding in southwest Riverside County. A program manager for a technology company, he had the expertise to get it up and running in no time.

It’s definitely a labor of love for McKinzie. He has advertisers, but that just covers costs. “It’s more of a hobby,” he says. “It’s not a business.”

Besides a photo of the abandoned property, residents can attach a graphic to it, including icons for a brown lawn, a black lawn, green pools, garbage, and, my personal favorite, holiday lights. Yes, there is nothing more festive than Christmas lights on an abandoned home in July.

Sarcasm is a recurring theme in the descriptions of about 300 homes on the site. Of one Florida property, a writer says: “Broken windows, door wide open and large sprigs of parsley growing in lawn. Oh, but what pretty Xmas lites (sic).”

A property in Winchester gets this ringing endorsement: “Black and flat . . . nice look for the neighborhood.”

Andy Warhol talked about everybody getting 15 minutes of fame and McKinzie is definitely getting his. TV stations in San Diego, LA, and Baltimore have done stories on his site, as well as CNN. Don’t worry local chamber of commerce types, he’s often described as “a California man.” Whew! We wouldn’t want anybody to get the idea that, like, well, you know, we might have a little foreclosure problem.

McKinzie is having an impact. Wells Fargo has promised to clean up any properties posted on the Web site. And he does take properties off the site that the lender tells him have been fixed up, four so far. “That’s exactly what I wanted to accomplish,” he says. “The bank was called out and the bank moved fast.”

So don’t just get mad, frustrated homeowners, make a post on McKinzie’s Web site. Shame is a powerful thing, even to those big banks we all love so much.

Not long ago, I happened across a pretty nice neighborhood with well kept lawns, attractive entryways and manicured shrubs. There was a real sense of pride in the “curbscape” of one particular street, in fact it was obvious that these homeowners realized how vital of a role landscaping played in the value of each and every home on their street. However, as I wound around the curve I came to a house that looked completely out of place. This particular house wasn’t smaller and it wasn’t painted an odd color, it was visibly different in the fact that it was a real eyesore.

I got out of my car and approached the house. The front lawn was completely black, absent of any signs of watering in quite some time, and the blackened grass crunched beneath my feet as I approached the front door. I waded through a pile of old fliers and telephone books that had been distributed on more than one occasion and then took notice of the porch lined rotting plants. How could this house reside in a neighborhood amongst the obviously well cared for homes? Does this neglect not border on the criminal or at the very least break several city ordinances? I continued around the back through an unlocked fence to find more of the same – trash, weeds and an array of dead plants. This house was obviously vacant and neglected but nonetheless, someone still owns it.

I returned home and did a quick search on the property and found the owner to be none other than our own beloved government backed Ms. Fannie Mae. How is it that Ms. Mae can carry on with her property in such neglect while blatantly disrespecting her neighbors? How is it that she isn’t held liable for breaking civil ordinances and racking up penalties in the thousands? Basically, what gives her the right to drag down the market comparables in the neighborhood resulting in decreased home values for her neighbors?

Let’s face the facts, when the government wants to sell a home, they’ll do it their way and without consequence, and the neighboring community will feel the effects. We can all thank Fannie Mae for taking a leading roll in leaving discarded properties to rot away in communities across the country. With no great surprise, Fannie Mae tops the LenderOffender list.

The next door neighbors moved out in April of 2007, they were renters but I wonder what happened to the owner. It’s kind of odd, who would own a home and never come around after the renters move out?  I believe I have the answer, it’s the kind of owner that should have never of purchased an investment property since they couldn’t afford it in the first place. Who really cares, just walk away and let the property rot away, let the lawn die and let the pamphlets on the doorstep collect in an endless waste pile.

I’ve been looking at that property for well over a year  and half, watching the grass grow 2 ft. high and then turn brown and rot away. I’ve been picking flyers out of my yard since the pile on their doorstep seems to shift every time a gust of wind comes through. I put time and money into my yard and I take pride in how it looks, so who is the loser that just decided to bail on the yard next door? I don’t know but I guarantee it’s now owned by a bank who has decided to neglect it and let it continue to sit and rot.

I work all day at your typical 9 to 5, I have a family to take care of and plenty of responsibilities. Should I dedicate a weekend (since I have nothing better to do) and pick up the trash in their yard, mow their lawn and pull the weeds?

Well, on November 30, 2007, I pulled the weeds, picked up the trash and mowed the lawn……..the lawn of a vacant banked owned property.

It’s that time of year again when you start thinking about how fast the holidays are approaching. It’s time to start shopping, hanging up decorations and stringing those lights around the edge of your roof.

On a recent Saturday afternoon I took a walk in a neighboring subdivision and noticed something oddly out of place. As I came to the end of one of the cul de sacs I looked up at the roof line of one of the homes and noticed a long string of icicle lights and a second string of 70’s shaped bulb lights. I’m sure everyone is familiar with a home or two that just never seems to take down those lights, maybe the owner is lazy or just likes to look at them all year round…..however, this time it was different. Those little lights that once glowed and flickered in the night marking the beginning of the holiday season were now covered in filth and entangled in cobwebs……those lights had been left behind.

The lights that had brought joy to one family is now looked upon by the neighborhood with disdain. Should those lights that brought smiles and represented hope and goodwill be looked upon with such disgust, the answer is obviously “no”. Who should be taking responsibility for these lights and restoring that colorful representation of joy? The original owner has long since left so I would ask that in the interest of good taste, would the new owner, National Bank….please remove the holiday lights or at least swing by the neighborhood during the upcoming holiday and plug them in.