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Neighbors Are Left With A Mess
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Published: June 27, 2008
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RIVERVIEW - Robert Ramirez awoke in the middle of the night to clanging metal and a rumbling moving truck in the back yard next door.
Evicted neighbors loaded their belongings and fled the two-story stucco home. They left doors and windows open, and trash and debris strewn across the lawn. It has been eight weeks, and no one has shown up to take care of it.
"This used to be a really nice, close-knit community," Ramirez said, standing on his dark green lawn framed by lush plants. "Now, with that house here, there's no way I could sell my house. I'm stuck, and my property value is falling."
During the worst wave of foreclosures in U.S. history, the Riverview subdivision of Lakeside is a microcosm of the problems felt by hundreds of other Bay area communities.
A record 1 million U.S. homeowners face losing their homes, the Mortgage Bankers Association estimates. Florida has the second-highest number of foreclosure filings in the nation. In the Bay area, one out of 271 households received a foreclosure filing last month.
No neighborhood is immune. But experts say subdivisions built during the housing boom, such as Lakeside, are particularly hard-hit. They were popular with investors, and clusters of homeowners in these areas stretched their budgets with creative financing such as 100 percent loans and adjustable interest rates. Now, mortgage payments are rising beyond what many can afford. On top of that, the turbulent economy is costing some their jobs, making it even tougher to make payments.
In Lakeside, lenders have moved to foreclose on 43 of the 327 homes, or 13 percent. Forty-four percent of the homes have been resold. Many of the sellers were behind on their mortgages and slashed prices by tens of thousands to avoid foreclosure. Streets are dotted with empty homes or renters who don't stay long.
As cash-strapped homeowners move out, they leave behind more than just homes. Frustrated neighbors are left to deal with the fallout.
'Feeling Of Blight'
The effects of the foreclosure wave can be seen just inside the entrance to Lakeside, off Symmes Road near U.S. 301. There are 16 homes with for-sale signs, and rent signs line streets. A pile of household trash and an old mattress are stacked at the curb in front of one house, the molding evidence of homeowners vacating in a hurry.
Signs advertise homes as "pre-foreclosure" and "short-sale" deals.
Such scenes already frighten potential buyers who come looking for a deal on their next home.
"We get a couple streets into the neighborhood, and the client asks me to turn the car around," said Frank Monte of Monte Real Estate. "The feeling of blight hits you right away."
Lakeside's houses aren't all empty or neglected. It has its share of clipped hedges and green lawns, the pride of long-term homeowners. Children ride bicycles and play in the park. But a couple of homes on each street hide what you can't see from outside: vacant rooms piled with the remnants of hurried evictions.
The neighborhood has its benefits, which attracted families and other buyers. Lakeside is in the heart of an area targeted by builders for growth. It's close to Interstate 75, and shopping is just a short drive away. Since 2000, scores of new, sprawling subdivisions have popped up. Builders are still selling new homes nearby.
Lakeside was started in 2002 and took three years to build. It was a big hit. The neighborhood is a mix of starter homes and two-story houses with oversize garages. Homes ranged from the low $100,000s to the mid-$200,000s during construction.
Attractive features of the neighborhood were low homeowners association fees and the absence of community development district fees, savings that gave Lakeside an advantage over nearby communities with fees as high as $2,400 a year.
"Buyers loved Lakeside because they could afford better houses," said Richard Nappi, a real estate agent with Fallon & Associates. "But they did without amenities some other neighborhoods in the area have, like a pool and clubhouse."
When Ramirez bought his home in 2004, he said, all of his neighbors knew one another, and it was the quietest neighborhood he had lived in. Life was good for about two years.
Then the housing market tanked as many of his neighbors absorbed skyrocketing payments from adjusting mortgage rates and rising insurance premiums. To avoid foreclosure, some sold their homes in fire sales. Others walked away.
The house next door to Ramirez's went into foreclosure in December. Renters moved in shortly thereafter. Two weeks before they left in the night, he says, he found them stealing water from his garden hose.
"That's not supposed to happen in this kind of neighborhood," he said.
Ramirez paid $140,000 for his house and recently had it appraised so he could refinance for a better interest rate. He was turned down.
"The guy from the bank said I'm about $20,000 in the hole," Ramirez said. "He said I'd probably be OK if the house next door didn't look so bad."
Code Enforcement Complaints
Bill Langford, who oversees code enforcement for south Hillsborough County, said he writes about five complaints a day on vacant homes, most of which are in foreclosure. This time last year, he wrote just one a month. He comes across smashed windows, mosquito-infested pools, broken-down cars in driveways.
Some lenders are quick to take care of problems, he said, but many homes sit for months before the lender takes control.
Langford was recently called to Lakeside by a resident. He came across the vacant home next to Ramirez. He taped a complaint to the door and talked to a neighbor about an inflated pool left in the yard. He called the city's sanitary department about trash left along a street.
Unfortunately, though, many of the eyesores aren't against code. His advice? Try to help the problem yourself by mowing a neighbor's yard or picking up trash.
"Foreclosure is like a cancer," he said. "If someone isn't at least monitoring the front yard, vagrants and vandalism will follow."
Many of the Bay area's new neighborhoods in trouble were popular among investors. Some out-of-town buyers bought in Lakeside, but 233 of the homeowners have homestead exemptions, according to the Hillsborough County Property Appraiser's Office. That's a sign that the majority of owners want to call Lakeside home.
When Shawn Campbell moved onto Placid Lake Court in Lakeside four years ago, he knew all of his neighbors. He has watched many leave, one by one.
The young couple next door lost their home to foreclosure a few weeks ago. The stress led to fights, which led to divorce, and they left in a hurry, leaving many belongings behind.
The house across the street from Campbell is empty, too, with for-rent signs taped to windows and stuck in the ground in the front lawn.
In the past two years, car burglaries and vandalism have increased.
"One night, every car on the street was broken into," Campbell said. He blames the empty homes.
Another night, garages and mailboxes were spray-painted with vulgarities.
Campbell tries to stay positive. He doesn't need to move right now, so he plans to sit tight and wait for the next real estate cycle.
"It's going to take a couple of years, but I hope this will all work out and families will move back in."
Houses In Limbo
It's not always clear who's responsible for taking care of vacant houses.
Brian Chase, who manages Lakeside's homeowners association for Unique Property Services, follows up with letters and phone calls to residents, asking them to correct problems. But when owners are losing their homes to foreclosure, they don't typically call back.
"One lady recently told me she knew the bank would end up with the home, so I needed to deal with the bank," he said.
That's not always easy. Once a lender takes legal possession of a home, it is responsible for maintaining it, but lenders, overwhelmed by the flood of foreclosures, are taking months to reprocess houses. During that time, houses often are in limbo, said John Mechem, spokesman for the Mortgage Bankers Association.
Often, the owners are already gone or not willing or able to care for the home. Lenders are so focused on helping people keep their homes that "the maintenance of vacant homes becomes secondary," he said.
Looking Ahead
On Lakeside Vista Drive, around the corner from Ramirez's home, is a picture of what Lakeside was supposed to be.
Kids play with a sprinkler toy in the driveway. Their mothers watch from lounge chairs. This is the kind of scene that one of the moms, Ragin Abdul-Malik, said attracted to her to the neighborhood in August.
Until the market changes, though, appearances rule.
Tammy Smelser sits outside waiting for a real estate agent to bring by a prospective client. She's frustrated because her home has been on the market for more than 30 days, and she has dropped the price by $15,000.
They're now asking $230,000. They have an offer for $190,000. The family needs to move because of a job change, and the house is not in foreclosure.
"Everyone is offering us foreclosure prices, though," she said.
Smelser said her neighbors are begging her not to rent the house.
Monte, the agent with Monte Real Estate, said it's sometimes difficult to get prospective homeowners to look at properties in Lakeside. He's trying to get a buyer interested in a six-bedroom foreclosed home, originally listed by the lender for $260,000. The asking price dropped to $239,000, but Monte still has no offers.
Recently, Monte said, a buyer was enticed by an abandoned home in Lakeside. He thought he could get the home for a steal, but when he walked in, "we had to put our shirts up around our noses because it smelled so bad. We lasted only 15 seconds in there."
Monte, who said foreclosure properties in the Riverview area make up a large portion of his business, said it's not just homeowners who are affected. Often, he said, investors don't tell their tenants they're behind on their mortgages. Instead, he said, they collect rent and pocket the money. By the time the renters are notified by the lender to vacate, they don't have long to leave.
"Some of these renters are furious," Monte said. "They trash the house inside and out just to get back at the homeowner for not being honest."
Real estate agents say they feel guilty about selling in Lakeside.
Cally Doyle, an agent with Signature Realty, helped a young couple buy a three-bedroom Lakeside home in February for $175,000. Now, she wishes she had steered them elsewhere.
"It was a great deal at the time, but now that home is worth $150,000, tops," Doyle said. "I feel like I did them an injustice, but I don't have a crystal ball. I believed we were at the bottom."
Prices are falling everywhere, Doyle said, but particularly in neighborhoods such as Lakeside, where foreclosure filings are increasing and the quality of life for homeowners is declining.
The falling prices may be the necessary evil on the path back to a stronger market.
Throughout the neighborhood, there are glimpses of hope and change to come.
A couple of streets over from the vacant home that has so piqued Ramirez, two houses have new signs in their yards with words that point to a different future for Lakeside.
"Sale pending."
Reporter Shannon Behnken can be reached at (813) 259-7804 or sbehnken@tampatrib.com.
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