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Tenants would get to stay in foreclosed units under city-council measure
By adamg on Fri, 05/16/2008 - 3:08pm
Councilor Mike Ross reports the council passed a home-rule petition yesterday:
... When a foreclosure occurs on a rental property, this bill gives the renter the right to stay in their home, so long as they continue to pay the rent they were paying prior to foreclosure, and assuming they remain a tenant in good standing. This situation remains until one of two things happen:
1. The lender sells the foreclosed property to a new landlord or owner, who has the right to select their own tenants if they so choose; or
2. The lender still owns the property upon arrival of the law's sunset clause, which is two years from passage (with the possibility of a third year extension if approved by the council and mayor).
The lender is required to notify the tenants of the foreclosure, so the tenant doesn't continue to pay rent to the old owner - something which we have seen happen quite frequently. ...
The proposal needs approval of the state Legislature and the governor to become law. Ross says some 2,000 apartments in Boston have been affected by foreclosure over the past year and that he expects that number to rise, with Roxbury, Mattapan, Dorchester and Hyde Park being hit hardest.
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Comments
good luck
I'm sure the former member of Ameriquest's board of directors will hop right on supporting that.
Good idea in theory, but...
...would there actually be some sort of investigation to determine that the tenant is actually in good standing (beyond just paying the rent -- I mean actually following the conditions of their lease).
I have several friends who have obnoxious neighbors who rent from various slumlords who are about to have their property foreclosed. There are also a few landlords in my neighborhood who are about to lose their property and who don't follow up on neighbors' complaints about their tenants.
I'd imagine it's pretty common that the people who are about to lose properties are also not the best at ensuring that the lease is being followed and the tenants are behaving. I'm guessing that for a lot of these landlords, their process of screening tenants and drawing up the paperwork was about as thorough as their process of researching the conditions of their mortgage and planning how they'd pay for it.
If the tenants are behaving and not bothering anyone else in the building or neighborhood, then sure, it seems fair that they'd get to stay. But I'd really like to see some sort of screening process to ensure that they really are "in good standing." A standard Massachusetts lease contains language about not being loud/disruptive/unsanitary, as well as other conditions that most tenants probably violate at some point.