Foreclosure Hits Summit County Ohio With A Fury Up 600 Percent
Predatory Lending Report Says Foreclosures Up 600% since 1995; Real Estate Prices Tumble
Foreclosures in Summit County have risen more than 600 percent since 1995.
More than half of all homes sold in Akron this year have been sold by banks at a fraction of their valuation.
The news comes from a report from a committee charged by Akron City Council to study predatory lending.
In the end, the committee blames the bleak numbers on the foreclosure scandal striking the housing market nationwide.
Foreclosures, the committee warns, affect all homeowners, wealthy and poor, who as a result of the filings will see vacant homes and decreased property values in their neighborhood.
The findings didn’t surprise committee chairwoman Lolita Adair, an Akron real estate agent and housing advocate for 43
years. She had been warning others of the looming mortgage dangers since the late 1990s.
”I’m a people person and I don’t like seeing little people with no defenses being used and seeing others gain. I don’t think that is what this country is set up for and it bothers me,” Adair said Tuesday.
The committee, appointed by council last December, recommends governmental action at the local, state and national level. And their recommendations go beyond educating home buyers.
Greed among federal bank lenders, the committee found, is the common thread of the foreclosure epidemic.
They say a plan initially designed to put more African-Americans, Hispanics, poor and credit-impaired buyers in their own home through relaxed mortgage restrictions ”became a tool used by enthusiastic mortgage lenders without discrimination.”
”Suggesting that the problems of predatory lending can be corrected by simply educating the consumer is like yelling to a drowning man and asking if he would like a life preserver,” Adair wrote in her report.
The report indicates that the financial toll from the foreclosure crisis has yet to be fully calculated. But locally, one glaring issue is the decline of home prices in Akron.
Committee researchers tracked home sales in 10 Akron neighborhoods from February to August. Out of 590 sales, 466 had a lending institution as the owner.
Further, the study found, the sale prices on the bank- or mortgage lender-owned homes were almost always significantly lower than the county’s valuation.