Neighbors lend hand to pull weeds

By: NELSY RODRIGUEZ - Staff Writer
Murrieta residents maintain foreclosed property to keep neighborhood looking clean | Wednesday, March 5, 2008 10:59 PM PST ∞

MURRIETA -- Soon after the house was empty, the fence fell down. A little later, weeds started expanding their conquest of the front lawn. Leaflets congregated where a welcome mat would have rested if someone was home to invite guests.

Watching the transformation from her study across the street, Althea Ingram worried the house that had been abandoned was receiving guests -- the wrong kind.

"It's hard on the neighborhood," Ingram said. "It's depressing and you worry. I worry that someone's just going to come in."

The abandoned home is one of hundreds of foreclosed homes that have emerged all over Murrieta. Bank-owned properties have risen to 734 this year and another 609 homes are in the process of going into foreclosure, according to figures provided by the city.

While Murrieta officials have started to seek creative solutions to the regional mortgage crisis, Ingram and her fellow neighbors in the Blackmore Ranch development have literally taken matters into their own hands.

She and neighbors on both sides of her home and the vacant property at 35824 Red Bluff Place are pulling weeds from the yard, mowing and watering the lawn and clearing mailers off the front step. They rebuilt the collapsed fence and Ingram even put the property's water bill in her name -- adding about $25 a month to her expenses.

"At first, I was just going to drag my hose across the street," Ingram said. "It just never occurred to me to let this house sit. It doesn't cost anything to pull a weed."

Ingram's efforts and those of her neighbors are a theoretical dam against the runoff of lowered property values streaming from foreclosed homes. It's a grass-roots job that complements the city's efforts to quell the effects of the dipping housing market.

The City Council announced Tuesday it would hold mortgage clinics bringing together lenders and people about to lose their homes to discuss options other than foreclosure. The council also approved an ordinance to make banks and lenders responsible for the maintenance of homes they have repossessed.

During its midyear budget review, the Murrieta finance department estimated the city will lose 4 percent in property tax revenues due to the median home price dropping from $460,000 to $440,000 this year.

While local realty groups seize the day by offering bus tours of bank-owned properties that are sharply reduced in value, those who don't plan on leaving their homes are anxious that blighted yards will financially drag their neighborhoods down further than the poor housing market has.

"When neighborhoods get drug down, whole cities get drug down, which is pretty much happening across the nation right now," said Gene Wunderlich, chairman of the Southwest Riverside County Association of Realtors.

Wunderlich said about 75 percent of bank-seized properties in the nation are the result of some sort of fraud -- either an applicant fibbed about some personal information for approval of a home loan or a mortgage company acted unconsciously and created market-driven, money-skimming schemes.

The practices of the mortgage industry bring out a bit of bitterness in Ingram.

"I'm really annoyed with the home loan system," Ingram said. "What I find unfortunate is that people (who) bought over their heads and didn't think about the repercussions had to leave their homes. I can't imagine emotionally what that must be like."

A day after thanking the city staff for rushing to host the first mortgage clinic tentatively set for April 3, Councilman Doug McAllister hailed Ingram and her neighbors for lending a hand where it's needed.

"I thought that was so cool," McAllister said Wednesday. "It really speaks to the kind of folks we have in Murrieta. They see a problem and they want to become part of the solution."

Pushing for more solutions to the problem of blighted homes, the City Council on Tuesday took action to make banks behave responsibly for maintaining foreclosed homes.

Starting April 3, lenders will be charged $100 per day for failing to register a property that has been foreclosed or failing to post that the property is bank-owned; $250 for allowing lawns to die or failing to remove graffiti, litter or weeds; $500 for unmaintained swimming pools with stagnant water and unsecured structures on the property; and up to $1,000 if the city learns public utility theft happens from the property. The city will inform banks and lenders in order to allow them to comply without facing fines.

The fines could mount up to $100,000, the ordinance states, and could be used to issue a lien against the property. The homes will be monitored on a monthly basis by a code enforcement officer.

"We're trying to be as innovative and creative as we can to solve an unusual situation that we know is going on," McAllister said.

While Ingram praised the council for passing the ordinance and for publicly addressing the crisis, she didn't have to look farther than out of her front window to know more will have to be done.

"The City Council is going to have to be really smart about how they handle this," she said. "They're going to have to be visionary."

-- Contact staff writer Nelsy Rodriguez at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2626, or nrodriguez@californian.com.