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8/14/2011 226
The house looks nice enough.
It sits on a large corner lot with a well-tended yard and a screened-in porch.
It’s quiet except for the creaking front door that swings open, evidence of the hasty departure of its former inhabitants.
The home is one of 107 properties in the city that was foreclosed on in March for unpaid taxes that dated back to 2008.
Scattered on the floor inside are remnants of family life — piles of toys and clothes, half-empty boxes of pasta and a crumpled photograph of a man holding a young girl.
It’s a familiar scene for Jackson County Treasurer Karen Coffman, who was visiting tax-foreclosed properties on a mid-April afternoon to review their condition and talk to any lingering residents.
And it’s one that’s becoming more common.
This year, 226 properties were foreclosed on countywide for unpaid taxes — the highest in the county’s history.
“Every house has a story,” Coffman said. “You never know what happened. You just guess.”
A growing problem
While mortgage foreclosures are still a primary culprit in property loss, comprising the majority of overall foreclosures, tax foreclosure is on the rise.
The rate of tax foreclosure has increased exponentially in Jackson County, where 43 properties were foreclosed on for unpaid taxes five years ago. Last year, 152 properties were foreclosed on.
The number of homes or other buildings that have slipped into foreclosure is also rising. There were 109 tax foreclosed buildings this year and 97 in 2010.
“It’s huge,” Coffman said. “We’ve never seen numbers like that.”
Problems surrounding tax foreclosure aren’t isolated to Jackson.
“It’s on everybody’s radar screen,” said Neeta Delaney, co-director of the Michigan Foreclosure Task Force. “We hear repeatedly that tax foreclosures throughout the state are doubling.”
The task force has traditionally focused its work on combating mortgage foreclosures, but could expand that to include tax foreclosure, which appears to be growing at a faster rate, she said. Continued economic struggles, particularly unemployment or underemployment, are the main sources of the problem, Delaney said.
Read more http://www.mlive.com/news/jackson/index.ssf/2011/08/tax_foreclosures_hit_record_hi_1.html
The house looks nice enough.
It sits on a large corner lot with a well-tended yard and a screened-in porch.
It’s quiet except for the creaking front door that swings open, evidence of the hasty departure of its former inhabitants.
The home is one of 107 properties in the city that was foreclosed on in March for unpaid taxes that dated back to 2008.
Scattered on the floor inside are remnants of family life — piles of toys and clothes, half-empty boxes of pasta and a crumpled photograph of a man holding a young girl.
It’s a familiar scene for Jackson County Treasurer Karen Coffman, who was visiting tax-foreclosed properties on a mid-April afternoon to review their condition and talk to any lingering residents.
And it’s one that’s becoming more common.
This year, 226 properties were foreclosed on countywide for unpaid taxes — the highest in the county’s history.
“Every house has a story,” Coffman said. “You never know what happened. You just guess.”
A growing problem
While mortgage foreclosures are still a primary culprit in property loss, comprising the majority of overall foreclosures, tax foreclosure is on the rise.
The rate of tax foreclosure has increased exponentially in Jackson County, where 43 properties were foreclosed on for unpaid taxes five years ago. Last year, 152 properties were foreclosed on.
The number of homes or other buildings that have slipped into foreclosure is also rising. There were 109 tax foreclosed buildings this year and 97 in 2010.
“It’s huge,” Coffman said. “We’ve never seen numbers like that.”
Problems surrounding tax foreclosure aren’t isolated to Jackson.
“It’s on everybody’s radar screen,” said Neeta Delaney, co-director of the Michigan Foreclosure Task Force. “We hear repeatedly that tax foreclosures throughout the state are doubling.”
The task force has traditionally focused its work on combating mortgage foreclosures, but could expand that to include tax foreclosure, which appears to be growing at a faster rate, she said. Continued economic struggles, particularly unemployment or underemployment, are the main sources of the problem, Delaney said.
Read more http://www.mlive.com/news/jackson/index.ssf/2011/08/tax_foreclosures_hit_record_hi_1.html
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