Lenders ignore foreclosures in some neighborhoods

Seventy-eight-year-old Norman Harris takes pride in his property, and is tired of looking at overgrown grass, broken windows and transients hanging out at the abandoned home next door.

"At one time, somebody was sleeping in that shed back there," Harris said, pointing to the back yard of the neighboring home. "It's ridiculous."

The home, at 5402 N. 52nd St., is in Tampa's Grant Park neighborhood, and used to be someone's investment home. The home is in an area that was up and coming in 2003, when Harris and his wife built a new home there.

But a tenant moved out in 2007, and Harris says the home has been empty ever since. Two years later, in 2009, US Bank filed for foreclosure. But the lender hasn't taken it back, and it hasn't taken any steps toward maintaining the home. And that's left a major eyesore for neighbors like Harris.

The home on Harris' street is a microcosm of how lenders handle foreclosures in this economy and how that affects neighborhoods. Owners in foreclosure often flee long before the lender takes the home. Lenders aren't legally responsible for homes until the foreclosure is final, so the longer it takes to foreclose, the longer the home could sit in disrepair.

As lenders struggle to get foreclosures off their books, experts say they pick and choose which homes they want. Homes with equity or homes more likely to sell will be picked up first by lenders trying to make up for losses. And even though they don't have to, some lenders will take care of homes they believe to have value – even before the foreclosure is final.

But that's not typically the case in working-class neighborhoods where Harris lives.

"If this were South Tampa, Tampa Green or New Tampa, someone would come out here," Harris said.

That could be true, said Daren Blomquist, spokesman for Calif.-based RealtyTrac, which tracks foreclosure trends nationwide.

"It may cost the lender more to take it back and care for it than they could ever get for selling the property," Blomquist said. "If you just look at it from the bottom line perspective, some of these properties aren't worth it for the lender to foreclose."

It already takes lenders 676 days, on average, to foreclose on a home in Florida, according to RealtyTrac's second quarter data. Homes valued at more than $600,000 typically are foreclosed on faster than homes valued under $200,000, Blomquist said.

"And then there are some homes lenders just don't want to mess with," Blomquist said.

Harris said the home next to him should be bulldozed. If the bank doesn't want it, the city should take care of it, he said.

Harris said he's complained to the city council, mayor's office and code enforcement. He keeps hearing the same thing: there are too many homes like that one, and there's not enough to take care of them all.

That answer isn't good enough for Harris, who says the city uses his tax money for plenty of other things.

"They can build Riverwalk," he said. "Hello? They can build Riverwalk."

City of Tampa Code Enforcement director Jake Slater said it's not that simple. He said his department is overwhelmed.

"Most of the banks are pretty good to work with, but it's just a matter that we don't have the manpower or the funding to deal with all the foreclosed properties," Slater said.

Slater said he wants to help, but the situation boils down to responsibility. Until the bank legally takes the home back, code enforcement can't go after the bank.

Once the bank owns the home, though, code enforcement can levy fines against the lender until the property is cleaned up.

sbehnken@tampatrib.com