Bankster Negligence, Excessive Sale Cancellations Lead To Havoc For Neighborhoods Littered w/ Vacant Abandoned Homes Going Through F'closure Process

In Tampa, Florida, the Tampa Bay Times reports:

• The foreclosure crisis has littered the region with thousands of abandoned homes. The houses sit idle as banks have been slow to seize them in the final stage of the foreclosure process, the public auction.
  
  
• Although recent headlines proclaim the worst of the housing crisis is over, the decrepit homes are a constant reminder that cleaning up the foreclosure mess remains a work in progress.
  
  
• The house on Lane's street in Lithia went into foreclosure in 2008 and has been vacant for more than a year. Aurora Loan Services had set an auction for February but canceled it.
  
  
• It's an oft-repeated pattern. In the last 12 months, lenders have canceled auctions on 4,204 properties in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. Sales have been canceled two, three, even nine times on some homes.
  
  
• In many cases, banks delay seizures to avoid having to pay maintenance bills or homeowner association fees. Meanwhile, neighbors fend off vandals and thieves and worry about property values falling because of the deteriorating houses.

For more, see Canceled foreclosure sales saddle neighbors, HOAs with expenses.

In related stories from the South Florida Sun Sentinel:, see:

• Neighborhoods crumble as thousands of homes sit in legal limbo, Sun Sentinel finds:
  
  Banks that made reckless home loans have been tiptoeing away from foreclosures in a tactic designed to cut their losses. The result: Orphaned, dilapidated homes dot the landscape from Kendall to Lake Worth.
  
  
• Bad-neighbor banks neglect thousands of South Florida homes, Sun Sentinel finds:
  
  Thousands of vacant homes across South Florida have deteriorated into eyesores that violate local health and safety laws, depress property values and spread blight. The owners of these homes: some of the world's biggest banks.
  
  Banks shift the blame, saying maintenance isn't their job but the responsibility of another bank or company, known as a "loan servicer." And they delay or evade accountability simply because they are faceless institutions, usually based in other states, even other countries.
  
  The Sun Sentinel, in its investigation, identified banks as owners only in cases in which they held title to the property. But the newspaper also found that years after launching foreclosure suits, some banks or their agents balk at completing the process and taking title to homes that are unlikely to sell for much. That practice fuels a separate legal "limbo" problem that traps thousands of vacated homes in years-long court cases, often as they tumble into ruin.
  
  Banks pay little price for letting neighborhoods rot.