Big Gov’t At It Again – Solving the Foreclosure Issue All Wrong!
April 4th, 2009
The City of Boston has managed to come up with another waste of taxpayers money. Mayor Tom Menino has recently announced $4 Million in funds are newly available for taking care of foreclosure filled Boston neighborhoods. These funds come from the “Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008″ that you and I will be paying for years to come.
The amount of funds is too small to make any noticable effect on these neighborhoods.
The 51 page Application Package describes the 15 documents that an interested party would have to submit. Some are simple affidavits, but most are huge undertakings, such as construction costs based upon 3 bids from General Contractors.
These regions covered are essentially Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, and Hyde Park. These areas hold 1271 foreclosed properties.
We all suffer in our home values when there is a local foreclosed home priced at a discount. This is not the way to turn it around. Using all taxpayer’s money to produce complicated programs and free money helps very few in the end. Why are we helping out the City of Boston? The south side of Framingham has been crushed in values by REO properties, so why not funds for them?
My real estate team is selling foreclosure properties in the Metrowest area each month. I would estimate that over the past year, my Buyer Clients have 80% of these listings getting multiple offers on them! The banks need to suck up the loss on these properties and move on. The buyers are out there for correctly priced homes.
How many bureaucrats created these 51 pages of complicated applications?
Who will review all the documents provided by the applicants? How many additional government workers will need to sort thru the information? See the waste at the Dept of Neighborhood Development - they are busy with monthly press releases about new programs they create!
This program will not just hand out $4 Million to a few savvy developers, but will create another $4 Million in bureaucacy!
Who will benefit the most from the program? Tom Menino. A few press releases and ammunition that he has “done something significant” to help the blighted neighborhoods. Terrific, just where I want my taxes to go!
Categories: Market Conditions, Real Estate
This entry was posted on Saturday, April 4th, 2009 at 10:53 pm and is filed under Market Conditions, Real Estate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I can’t believe this government that they’ve once again wasted the tax payers money.
Dave
What nonsense, the City of Boston is far ahead of other cities in terms of stemming the flow of foreclosures caused by greedy banks and real estate speculators. Just look at Hendry Street in Dorchester and how public action stemmed foreclosures, kept tenants in place and saved the neighborhood.
Though not intimately familiar with Hendry St area, a search for info online does not clearly display to me that 1) the neighborhood is “saved” and that 2) the issues are created by greedy banks and speculators rather than bad investment decisions by good people. Lastly, these areas listed in the blog post have averaged 139 sales per month over the past year, with $460M worth of value. While this is a high foreclosure market, there is nothing that clearly displays to me that private investors would not solve the issues over time. Massachusetts is well down on the list of states that have been hit hardest by foreclosures. Everything is relative, and living on Hendry St may certainly feel like the end of the world has come, but it hasn’t.