Video of banks literally destroying foreclosed homes!

[TwixVoy]

Pretty damn interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvrc7x3Amps

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvrc7x3Amps

[ohheckyeah]

1. The best solution they could come up

with was to destroy brand new homes? What a waste.

[lbrtbell]

2. Destroy them rather than let the families remain in them

Yeah, that makes sense. :sarcasm:

[Egnever]

3. No families lived in them

Watch the videos. These were model homes never sold to anyone and they aparently were being fined for code violations. Perhaps destroying them was not the best solution but taking a loss because of an irresponsible builder and then getting fined daily on top of it isnt great for the banks either. Unless of course you want to keep sending them bailout money.

Blame the builder for this one.

[jmowreader]

6. They were unsalable model homes--there were no families "remaining" in them

I watched the video in question. The builder went into bankruptcy before he finished the houses. The houses weren't legally usable--no certificates of occupancy--so the county was on their asses, probably with threats of the fan-favorite "daily fines," to finish them and get them into usable condition--in a market that isn't buying new expensive houses. The bank did a simple financial analysis: would it cost us less to tear the buildings down and write off the construction loans we made on them, or to finish them, then pay taxes on assets we won't be able to sell for a few years? Oh yes: once the market recovers we'll have to completely rewire them and replace all the drywall because, by then, someone will have stolen the wiring so as to resell the copper. The answer came back: from a purely financial standpoint, removing the assets from our books with a dump truck will cost us less than maintaining them. (Plus, if they tear the homes down they can resell the millwork and any other item that can be removed intact.)

If the reason you're worried about these houses is because homeless people could have lived in them...trust me when I tell you these houses would have been worthless to homeless people; it looks to me like these were going to be the beginning of one of those "gated communities" that sell because they're so far from the inner city the gangbangers and crack dealers don't go out there. You know the kind of place--one that's so far from anything, they have to build a strip mall across the street from it so you don't have to burn two gallons of gas every time you need two pounds of hamburger. "Homeless" also implies "carless" and all the gated communities I've seen in a while are at least five miles from the city limits. It would have been one of those places where the brochure advertised "safe country living"...for you and the other 299 families in the development, all of whom live in 60x50 homes on 75x75 lots.

[elleng]

5. Not homes; houses.

'Reporter' was using incorrect term.

[elleng]

4. It is interesting and too bad,

but these are/were HOUSES, NOT homes. Construction cos. were trying to build and develop, but couldn't continue, probably for financial reasons.