Half-Built, Abandoned Homes

From the Chicago Tribune:

Half-built homes have popped up all over Chicago and the suburbs, a jarring leftover from the real estate market meltdown and ongoing foreclosures. Many were tear-downs of existing homes, replaced by skeletal structures that neighbors fear will lower their property values.

The languishing construction site on the North Side is a glaring case study of the difficulties that frustrated residents, communities and lenders face in grappling with abandoned, half-finished homes. Though numbers are hard to measure — no one seems to track them — experts say there are plenty of examples. And there is little, they say, that can be done to remedy the dilemma other than put pressure on the owners, which are often banks.

“It is a national problem, especially in the Midwest and particularly in Chicago and the suburbs,” said Eli Lehrer, senior fellow at The Heartland Institute, a nonprofit research organization in Chicago.

Unfinished houses pose a new challenge for many communities because they have few options for how to best deal with them.