Posts (RSS)Owners Buy Back Houses in Foreclosure Listings
For homeowners who lost their distressed properties to foreclosure, buying them back is a dream they would always have. The dream has become a reality to some homeowners who were able to buy back their houses in foreclosure list.
And more and more homeowners in Boston, Massachusetts are starting to realize this dream as a growing number of nonprofit organizations and housing advocates are helping them buy back their foreclosed houses.
Some of these homeowners who bought back their repo properties refused to leave the premises and continue to find ways to recover their houses. With the buy back option, former owners were able to repurchase their houses at significant discounts because of the decline in real estate values.
Housing attorney Zoe K. Cronin of Greater Boston Legal Services said that nonprofit organizations are in the process of assisting and helping a lot of former homeowners buy back their foreclosed houses. She said that former owners are the priority to buy the houses in forclosure listings unless someone would be willing to purchase them at real market value.
Meanwhile, the buy back program is spearheaded by Boston Community Capital, a nonprofit with a goal to help create and develop healthy communities. Currently, it has 30 borrowers who are in the process of repurchasing their repossessed houses.
The buy back program works this way. Boston Community will purchase a foreclosed home from Wells Fargo Home Mortgage and then after several weeks, sold it back to its original owner for the amount equivalent to what the borrower owed to the bank.
Boston Community Chief Executive Officer Elyse Cherry explained that the nonprofit wants homeowners and their families to remain in their houses and stop foreclosures because vacant and abandoned properties fall into disrepair, affecting other residents in the neighborhood.
For the past 25 years, Boston Community has already invested over $423 million to assist and help low-income neighborhoods across the United States.
Organizations like Boston Community are a great help to former homeowners because with damaged credit, they find it difficult to purchase a new house or repurchase their old houses.
The buy back program is one of the efforts undertaken to reduce the number of houses in foreclosure listings in Massachusetts. In 2008, the state?s foreclosure rates increased to 12,430, representing a 62 percent rise from 2007.