SEATTLE - More and more homes are going into foreclosure and the longer they sit the worse they look. The grass grows, the leaves fall, the house starts to deteriorate. And now neighbors may have to start doing some of the dirty work.
Bob Davidson takes in the view from his backyard in DesMoines. Nothin' to see here, unless you're into knee-high weeds, mildewed siding, and the beginnings of rot. Not to mention the dead tree looming overhead.
It wasn't always this bad, when people actually lived there.
"Once everyone moved out no one was keeping up with the lawn, there were cars in the driveway," says Davidson.
The home next door to Davidson's is one of thousands in Western Washington in foreclosure. It's been vacant for the past year. The owners left everything behind, even a child's bicycle. And once a home's in foreclosure, forget about banks managing the upkeep.
Richard Hagar is a Real Estate Appraiser and educator.
"They don't have maintenance crews sitting around saying, OK George, you're mowing grass in Des Moines today," he said.
That job, according to Hagar, may now fall to the neighbors.
"Go over and mow the lawn, pick up the garbage, rake the leaves. Don't let it look like it's an abandoned house because if it looks abandoned you're probably going to see squatters move in," he said.
The people who owned the house bought it with no money down. They had no equity and nothing to lose. So when they couldn't make the payments anymore they just walked away, and neighbors were left to pay the price.
"It's an eyesore. So yeah, we lose the value of our house," says Davidson.
Davidson and his neighbors are pitching in where they can. In the meantime, he's growing a green fence to block the eyesore. Because nowadays, good fences and good green thumbs make good neighbors.
This year we've seen about 300,000 foreclosures a month nationwide. Just three years ago it was 65,000.
