Post such as these have nothing to do with Minneapolis. Please, folks, refrain from sending such off-topic stuff. It is against the rules.
David, with all due respect I beg to differ. I took the trouble of reading up on the foreclosure crisis in Philly and we have similar potential in Minneapolis. In both cities the problem seems to be runaway home prices in the late '90s that forced many buyers into highly leveraged mortgages. Thanks to an epidemic of "flipping" in the late '90s, finally brought under control by our DFL legislators, many homes in Minneapolis are mortaged for far more than their current value. To give an example, back in the mid '90s a basic new single family home here sold for a bit under $100,000. After the property flipping epidemic new homes sold for $200,000, and tiny century old houses like mine with no basement, central heat, etc. sold for over $100,000. Since then the market has crashed and many of the folks who could barely make the payments on these overpriced homes are unemployed or have seen there incomes severely diminished. To add insult to injury they now owe more than their homes are worth. In the rental market a similar situation exists, with many landlords that bought buildings at the top of the market now stuck with half empty buildings that won't even generate enough rent to pay the mortgage payments.
With several buildings in Hawthorn sitting empty and unsold for going on to years now we're going to see a lot of foreclosures. The unrest that accompanies same will not benefit our neighborhoods, and as property values are in free fall some owners will do desperate things- like knowingly renting to criminal enterprises and arson for insurance.
hanging on in Hawthorne,
Dyna Sluyter
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