Buffalo is now demanding that lenders maintain properties that have been foreclosed on.  Cleveland and Chula Vista (a San Diego suburb) are also in the process of adopting this initiative.  I hope that Phoenix follows suite with this, it's sad to drive into a nice neighborhood and see a home that is completely neglected by a lender.  I have seen countless homes in our area who's landscape that was once thriving but is now dead, or dying.

In my opinion this practice is not only sad, but stupid.  I would assume that the lender would like to get as much money as possible from a foreclosed property, but when I take clients through these properties they either want to undercut the price drastically, or have no desire to see the home and move on to the next property.

I can understand the lender's point of view, they have a tremendous volume of homes that are now in their possession and the cost of maintaining these properties can be very expensive.  But, I still feel that they are losing more money by having to sit on these properties, or take much lower offers, than if they would maintain them.

Hopefully, more cities will start demanding this from lender's as it isn't fair to the rest of the neighborhood to have these eyesores drop the value of their homes.  These are tough times and this topic can be argued from both sides as the lender's are having a tough time of it too.

My issue is, why are we as homeowners required to maintain our homes by HOA's, and cities, yet the lender's are allowed to do as they please?