The Home Front

Bank Demolishing New Homes Instead of Selling Them

May 5, 2009 RSS Feed Print

The housing crash has hit Southern California so hard that one bank found it preferable to take the wrecking ball to 16 homes there rather than to attempt to sell them, The Wall Street Journal reports. The bank obtained the homes through foreclosure.

Guaranty Bank of Austin is wrecking the structures to provide a "safe environment" for neighbors of the abandoned housing tract in Victorville, a high-desert city about 85 miles northeast of Los Angeles, a bank spokesman said.

Victorville city officials said the bank told them the cost of finishing the development would exceed what they could sell the homes for.

The bank also faced escalating city fines as vandals and squatters took over the sprawling housing project, leaving behind graffiti and drug paraphernalia, city officials said.

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All of you folks condemning the bank for this "wasteful" destruction - have any of you ever BEEN to Victorville? The temperatures can easily soar above 100 degrees so we are not exactly talking "Garden Spot" here. It is an area of cheap housing for folks who either enjoy the hot, hot climate and distance from more populated regions or those who can not afford the cost of housing closer to the cities.
If you are going to condemn anyone, condemn the idiotic developer and the original bank for going forward with this project in the first place.
I have seen what can happen when unfinished homes stand empty. The area becomes a crime magnet. If anything, this bank did the entire area a favor by wiping out this foolish mistake.

Lynn of LA of CA 2:19PM June 21, 2009