Lawn maintenance and foreclosures

Like many of you, we have a number of homes that are in various stages of foreclosure or bankruptcy proceedings. Many of these houses are sitting empty with few prospects of being occupied in the coming months. Meanwhile, the landscaping on several of them is being neglected. We have tried to get the bank (attorney, executor, whoever is currently managing the place) to take care of them, but some of them just are not interested in dealing with that right now. We can go through our standard process of sending reminder letters followed by demand letters and ultimately going to court, but that will take more time and meanwhile the landscaping gets worse. Our CC&Rs do state that we have the right to maintain the landscaping and charge it back to the property, but as has been stated in this forum several times it would not be wise to do that without either the owner's permission or a court order. We are starting to ask for that permission, and if we get it then we'll see if we can find some volunteers to at least mow the lawn every week. I don't think the HOA should pay for the upkeep otherwise we'll have every homeowner in the neighborhood wanting us to take care of their yard also.

So how are you handling this sort of situation?

I'll have to check on that, but I don't think our city will do anything until it gets to ridiculous proportions (grass taller than the fence). I think we would prefer not to wait that long if we can avoid it. It is worth checking into though. Thanks for the suggestion.

it can't hurt to remind the mortgage holders that any fines, etc. generated for violations of the codes (lawns and weeds, etc.) will be assessed, and that they WILL be paid before the house can be sold. It is in the best interest of the banks, etc. to be diligent. After all, they got a bad deal sitting in their laps, it isn't going to help them recoup their money to have a lien (if you can lien for fines) or a nasty letter to the potential buyer.

Of course, one problem is that your fines better be more than the cost to mow: otherwise, it is cheaper to not mow, and just pay the fines at the end.

Unfortunately we don't have fines. We can only levy a limited assessment to recover actual costs (certified mailing fees, attorney fees, etc) associated with bringing the member / property into compliance. The ones who don't seem to care about the property don't seem to be too concerned with these assessments either. I guess they figure that whoever ends up buying the property will pay them in order to get a clear title in exchange for the low price of the property.

How does a bank get sent to jail? Seriously.

Glen:

My veiwpoint on that law is that it wasn't very well thought out. America as a whole has a problem with jail overcrowding so now they want to send people to jail for not mowing their lawn? As someone said in a foreclosure how do you pick which bank member goes to jail? Can you even legally do that?

I like the way our city handles it, we get a notice with 10 days to correct, if we don't they mow and bill us. If we don't pay then it is added as a tax lien to our property.

What if the officer isn't local? Are they going to travel three states to pick him up and go through extradition?

I saw that and understood, never said you were behind...those were more rhetorical questions.

Indeed Mary just as raising money is not the intended purpose of being able to fine. I would much rather have someone comply to a first violation notice and be done with it. Unfortunately there are some that would rather spend their hard earned money or time "on principal" even when it can be pointed out in black and white where they are wrong.

Dwight:

For each of our communities we have implemented different options, they are as follows:

1. We got the teens in 1 community to be involved, by mowing once a month of the few homes that are abandoned and pay a smaller fee than we would to a landscaper.

2. We placed in our budget a line item Lawn Mowing and use it when the grass is really in need. We don't do weekly mowing or weeding, just enough to keep the community looking good.

3. We wait until the bank or HUD takes Title, then if we do any mowing the bank has to pay the fee when it sells the home, therefore we back bill the invoice onto the account.

4. We formed a community task force of concerned HO's that go and mow the abandoned homes as volunteers.

As the old adage goes; it takes a village to rise a child! It takes concerned citizens to make change, they have to get involved.