Kudos to Joy San Buenaventura

[Rob Tucker]

I want to bring attention to the quick thinking of Joy San Buenaventura regarding a glaring fact of our housing crises.

She immediately recognized the potential of bank owned houses and is taking steps to bring these properties back to market. There are hundreds of them across the county.

During the boom years here, pre recession, spec builders went a bit nuts building 3+2s and our housing stock got out of balance. Then came the recession and people walked away from their mortgages. The result is a little hard to understand.

Full homes sitting empty now for several years. One, right next door to me, is ripe for a family. Some bank has been sitting on it. Paying taxes and mowing the lawn for about eight years. I do not understand the economics of this.

The state, and Joy is leading this, needs to leverage these banks into releasing these properties for rent or sale. I don't know the mechanism it will require but appreciate Joy's leadership on moving this solution forward.

Mahalo to Joy.

[mella l]

What a good idea. Hope this works out for all but mostly for those left without their homes.

mella l
Art and Science
bytheSEA

[terracore]

"Some bank has been sitting on it. Paying taxes and mowing the lawn for about eight years. I do not understand the economics of this."

This isn't a phenomenon limited to Hawaii. After the last recession the housing market tanked and the banks "needed" to bring it back up. The only way to increase the prices was to limit inventory. In some markets the prices have more than rebounded and the banks profit selling them at the inflated prices. The banks don't care about homelessness, they only care about profit. They make more money on loans for new construction than they lose paying property taxes and mowing lawns as they wait for their property value to hit whatever sell price the algorithms come up with. The banks "need" home values to perpetually increase so that they can continue to profit from people maxing out the bank credit cards so the owners have to refinance their homes to pay them off. Debt servitude, forever.

[kalakoa]

The only way to increase the prices was to limit demand.

This usually happens before construction by slowing down the building permit process.

Later, there's a "housing crisis" due to the shortage.

It's BS all the way down...

[1voyager1]

Not meant to be critical terracore, but what you meant is limit availability.
Banks hold back what they consider to be excessive numbers of repossessed or other returned properties to limit availability in order to bolster prices.
The greatest problem with doing that here is that the house or other building will likely deteriorate and become unlivable if left fallow for too long because of the climate, termites, etc.
Many bank owned properties in Puna subdivisions are now only worth the land value less the cost of bulldozing the deteriorated buildings.

[terracore]

Yes that's what I meant, thanks for the catch.