Weeds have grown so high that they've become a traffic hazard. Fast-food bags and juice bottles are strewn over the property. Windows are broken, and the fence is falling down.
And more than once, building inspectors have arrived to find the front door open.
Finally, in September, the city condemned the building and issued an arrest warrant for Demetria Hinkston, the owner of record.
But Hinkston said she moved out after her bank filed for foreclosure in 2004 and hasn't lived there since.
"They're coming after the wrong people," Hinkston said. "It's not mine no more. Why should I fix it up?"
It's a growing problem as foreclosures mount faster than the ability of banks to manage them. Houses are foreclosed and abandoned by their owners, who then stop maintaining them - even though the deed can stay in their name for months and years.
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That means unpaid property taxes, mounting building code violations and creeping blight on city neighborhoods.
"It's our biggest problem," said William V. Langevin, director of Cincinnati's Department of Buildings and Inspections. "They do their very best to not take title unless they absolutely have to. The banks are notoriously recalcitrant in reclaiming the property, and once they do, they don't maintain it. It's absolutely inexcusable."
Exact statistics on the scope of the problem are hard to come by. In Cuyahoga County - where data on sheriff's sales and property transfers are better integrated - a study by Case Western Reserve University found at least 1,400 unrecorded deeds on foreclosed properties since 2005.
An Enquirer analysis of partial Hamilton County data found at least 140 properties that were sold at foreclosure sale last year and still not recorded in the new owners' names, most often the banks. Until the deed is recorded, the former owner remains owner of record - shielding the new owner from county tax collectors, city building inspectors and angry neighbors.
Officials say it's impossible to know how many unrecorded deeds there are.
"If they don't want to record the deed, I can't go snatch it out of their hands," Hamilton County Recorder Rebecca Prem Groppe said.
State lawmakers are moving to fix the problem. A bill passed Wednesday by the Ohio House would require sheriffs to automatically record deeds within 14 days of a judge signing off on the sale. The bill passed the House 90-2 and now goes to the Senate.
State Rep. Mike Foley, D-Cleveland, also blames years of inaction by state and federal regulators as subprime mortgages grew.
"We have all these mortgage companies who basically foisted themselves on low- and middle-income people over the last six, seven or eight years who are filing these foreclosures but don't want to take responsibility for their actions."
Foreclosure lawyers say banks aren't entirely to blame. They complain that sheriffs are often slow to release the deeds to them and that federal regulations for government-backed mortgages also can tie up the paperwork. Speculators, too, often buy properties at sheriff's sale and sit on the deeds, hoping to flip the properties without actually taking possession of them.
The bill wouldn't affect the growing number of federal foreclosures, or the state foreclosure cases that are abandoned by the banks even before the sheriff's sale.
Take the case of Mistii Malcolm, who faces criminal charges for not maintaining her Corryville home. J.P. Morgan Chase Bank foreclosed in 2005, saying Malcolm and her husband owed $97,600 on a house only worth $42,900. The bank won a judgment in court - but then suddenly dropped the case, without explanation, before the house could go to auction. By that time, the Malcolms had moved out.
"When most people get a foreclosure notice, they just move out. They don't have the money, and they don't have the means to fight it," Malcolm's lawyer, Michael Tranter, said. "As they say, possession is nine-tenths of the law, and they're not in possession of it."
Malcolm is scheduled to appear in housing court Jan. 18.
The bill also wouldn't have helped Hinkston, whose case ended up in federal court after she filed for bankruptcy. A bankruptcy stops foreclosure proceedings and puts the house in a bankruptcy estate.
The bankruptcy trustee, attorney Thomas J. Geygan Sr. of Sycamore Township, argued that the company with Hinkston's mortgage didn't have a rightful claim to the property.
Geygan ultimately put the deed in the name of Opteum Financial Services LLC May 4 and mailed it to the company's Cleveland attorney. The deed still hasn't been recorded. Neither the attorney, Kathleen Nitschke of Giffen & Kaminski, nor Opteum executives returned calls and e-mails seeking comment.
Hinkston is scheduled to appear in housing court again this morning. In her first court appearance Nov. 30, she waved her foreclosure papers in the air.
"The house is not mine," she pleaded. Judge Russell Mock advised her to get a lawyer.
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source: enquirer.com
