Tagged: foreclosures

Cleveland resident Cedric Cowan was asleep on an overcast spring morning when the roaring sounds of splintering wood and falling rubble jolted him awake.

Cowan lives in a neighborhood hit hard by foreclosures. He initially thought someone was moving into the house on the other side of Fairport Avenue.

Instead, he woke that morning to find a crew tearing down the two-family house.

Over the course of three hours, an excavator smashed, crushed and ripped apart the abandoned house while a worker sprayed the rubble with a hose to keep the dust down.

Cowan says he can't help but feel relief. He's been watching people moving into vacant houses, he says — and he doesn't like it.

A year ago, banks admitted to abusing the foreclosure process — using fake signatures to power through foreclosure documents — a practice known as robo-signing. Now, five major banks and more than 40 state attorneys general have agreed in principle to a broad settlement that they say will help homeowners.

But some states, including high-foreclosure states like California and Nevada, have been holding out and negotiating for a better deal. They're concerned that the agreement wouldn't help consumers enough, and banks would be immune from future lawsuits. Late Wednesday, there were wire-service reports that the holdout states were close to a settlement deal that could be announced as early as Thursday.