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Your neighbor’s repossessed house

Posted on April 28th, 2008 – 11:40 AM
By James Shiffer

foreclosure1.jpgThe foreclosure octopus has reached its tentacles into virtually every neighborhood in America, from subdivisions in windswept exurbs to downtown condos in renovated industrial buildings. So how do you keep track of what’s being repossessed by banks and lenders on your block? Some metro counties and cities make it easier than others to find foreclosure lists online.

Hennepin County provides a look-up database for the previous 12 months of foreclosures. You can search by address, mortgagor or the lien type. Minneapolis has a plethora of foreclosure maps, down to the ward and neighborhood level.

Dakota County has a foreclosure lookup for the prior 12 months, as well as an interactive map of the repossessed properties.

Washington County provides PDF maps of foreclosures in different cities as of January 2008. People have to go to the office of the Washington County Sheriff to see the full list of foreclosure sales.

Scott County has maps of foreclosures in the county from 2005, 2006 and 2007.

Ramsey County, Anoka County, Carver County and Wright County don’t appear to provide any lookup or online list of foreclosure actions.

Although it’s not exactly a foreclosure list, St. Paul keeps a running total of its vacant buildings. As of April 17, there were 1,775 in the city.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 11:40 am and is filed under Property problems, Public records. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

6 Responses to “Your neighbor’s repossessed house”

  1. Carrie Says:
    April 28th, 2008 at 3:01 pm

    With Credit Suisse’s projection of 12.7% of all American household with a mortgage going into foreclosure the problem is going to get much worse before it gets better. I wish people in trouble would act quickly — they do have options… one of the best is short selling… so you don’t leave your neighborhood with another empty home to drive down prices and drive up crime.

  2. D Says:
    April 28th, 2008 at 4:00 pm

    I need a little help here with large amount of home going vacant to foreclosure and a lot of good apartments comverted to condos where are all these people going?

  3. Roy Says:
    April 28th, 2008 at 9:01 pm

    Since you have posted this article, Edina Realty has removed every property listed as vacant in St. Paul. There are properties that I have looked at before 5:00PM that are now gone. I can still find them through CB Burnett and RE/MAX, so obviously banks are still trying to offload them. It seems like a certain contingency of realtors are trying to prevent a honest view of houses within a neighborhood. This is why I will continue to rent. I have perfect credit, enough money for a downpayment, a VA loan…and I will wait for the market to continue to drop. We have a least another 10% to go in the Twin Cites.

  4. Jessie Says:
    April 29th, 2008 at 1:10 pm

    Part of the problem with the drop in market prices is that if you did get an ARM loan thinking that you’d be able to build up your credit and then refinance, now you cannot because your house is now worth less than what you bought it for. — As for where are the people going, some are moving in with friends and relatives, others are renting and I’m sure that some are just squatting in all those empty houses too.

  5. John Gall Says:
    April 29th, 2008 at 1:57 pm

    D

    One answer to your question is that these former homeowners are simply going to rent homes. When a person is foreclosed they have six months where they can live in the home and make no payments. This gives them lots of time to save up for a deposit and first months rent on a similar home. They have at least six months to find a new place. With investors now buying foreclosed and short sale properties many in foreclosure can simply move. They may not have the exact type of house they had before but they are not necesairly going to need to move into apartments. Now the StarTrib would tell you that it’s bad for investors to buy up lots of homes and rent them because it makes neighborhoods “transient”. The funny thing though is that these same people they demonize as making the neighborhood worse because they rent not own are the same people that six months ago may have lived in the same neighborhood. So really investors are helping in two ways. 1: They buy homes shrink the supply and help move us out of this mess. 2: They provide housing to those who now have to leave. Hopefully most are good landlords that take care of their tennants and investments and while it causes a shift in ownership it still results in people being given homeownership.

  6. shortygirlk2 Says:
    April 29th, 2008 at 8:51 pm

    I’m not really sure I like the fact they are publishing the actual addresses of the foreclosures on line. Don’t you think it would make it easier for the copper pipe theifs to find vacant (or soon to be vacant) houses?

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