OK, not quite. The house that Rep. Dennis Kucinich bought out of foreclosure in 2009—a hulking brick thing off Pennsylvania Avenue SE—is a bit down the road from the D.C. mayor's manse at 2619 Branch Avenue SE. (This post initially printed the exact address, which is available in public records, but Kucinich's office has rather [...]
There’s long been an O’Brien on Acker Place, and Anita O’Brien wants to keep it that way.
Her great-grandfather, Lewis, purchased the redbrick rowhouse at 660 Acker—a one-block street with narrow brick sidewalks and thin trees—in 1902. The Capitol Hill property drifted among relatives until her grandfather bought it during the Great Depression. Her father grew up there, traveling up its [...]
Thus far, D.C. hasn't been known for its foreclosure crisis. But according to this Washington Business Journal article, the city will be applying for a HUD stimulus grant to rehabilitate foreclosed and abandoned properties here. Money could also be used for the Home Purchase Assistance Program, which had to reduce assistance levels last fall.
On [...]
A few months ago, I joyously posted a very hilarious Saturday Night Live sketch about the foreclosure crisis. Or rather, I asked a colleague to post it when the embed link wasn't working. Whatever.
Then, in a whoosh of writing, copying, pasting and clicking (the glamorous blogging life), I forgot about it. SNL was apparently not [...]
Today's Washington Post has a front page article on how, essentially, foreclosures are a pain in the ass to all involved. For me, the story didn't break too much new ground—but hey, I read about this stuff all day long. A few weeks ago, I wrote about the prevalence of floods and mold problems in [...]
Just in time for Halloween, here's a creepy foreclosure story.
The A.P. already wrote the best headline imaginable "No Rest for the Dead at Foreclosed Mich. Funeral Home"
The North Pole will never be the same again...
Michael Graham has been the Santa at Tyson's Corner Center for 18 years. According to the Washington Times, he made $175 an hour. But, now, he won't be making anything because the mall has chosen to work with a new photo operator, which will be [...]
Today's Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece on what the Treasury Department's bailout plan does not address: the root cause of the financial crisis. Apparently, the funds do little, directly, to prevent foreclosures and stabilize home prices. Instead the amorphous blob of billions—as I like to think of it—will go to "taking stakes in [...]
The worst foreclosure property Mike Hendley has ever seen had 3 feet of sewage covering its basement, all of which had trickled downhill and somehow got into the house.
"You could smell it from 10 feet in front of the door," he says.
Hendley works for the Laurel franchise of Servpro, a national company that pumps water [...]
Earlier, I wrote about "buyer backlash" in the media—that, while most news about the foreclosure crisis, including a story in our very own newspaper, has tended to condemn the lenders, the buyers are now getting some of the blame. You can read my first example here.
Number two comes in the form of a piece written [...]
