Guest post and photos by the Hawthorne Hawkman
I was driving past a vacant property in Hawthorne today and noticed two new regulatory stickers posted. This particular house, shown above, is of particular interest because it is a vacant house, for sale, and clearly salvageable. Since I've been watching this one fairly closely, I pulled over to see what was there...
The two notices posted here are regarding the property not yet being properly winterized. The city claims they will winterize it in roughly two weeks if it has not yet been done. Like a housing version of an avid ornithologist, I thought I'd discovered some rare new breed of stickers. But I drove around a bit more and saw these two placed on several other properties as well.
It turns out the city is putting these up on quite a few properties. It's disappointing to see this many bank or other absentee owners not even doing basic maintenance on their properties, but at least the city is being proactive in assuring that they'll survive the Minnesota cold.
Finally, I had to see if either of these stickers were now posted at the House of the Regulatory Rainbow.
Turns out it's not, but look closely at this photo compared to the link. There were five stickers in the link and now there's EIGHT. I don't know what kind of competition John and I might have going here, but that's two points for me: a new kind of sticker and a new record for signs at one address.
Actually, I am pretty sure this house is already winterized, given the fact that it's a listed REO.
ReplyDeleteMy impression (unverified at this point) is that PPU is just placarding homes on the 249 list with this winterization program stuff.
Which, frankly, strikes me as rather dumb. Given how long most of these places have been vacant, odds are that they're either already winterized or have already suffered freeze breaks.
Just sayin...