Forgotten Providence

 
Big old dis-used industrial mill-type building. Sure could think of a lot better ways to use this space than letting is sit around like this.

Ever wonder where Waldo Street is? My advice is to steer clear of it. No bespeckled cap-wearing guys around here!

1107 Westminster - West End

1107 Westminster Street - West End

No windows left, totally boarded up. A banner on the side of the building states that live/work condos are “coming in 2004″, but a worker at the body shop behind the building says “It’s been like this for 15-20 years!”. Property card # 032-0050-0000

Well isn’t that cute. On 3/11/09 80 Waverly St. in Providence, RI—located in the city’s west end neighborhood—was sold by Greenpoint Mortgage Funding (they’re in Georgia) to SB Holdings LLC (Tulsa, OK) for only $9250. It was then immediately listed for sale to the public at $40K.

SB Holdings LLC is a wonderful institution helping banks “dispose” of “unwanted” “assets” throughout all 50 American states.

Do you have code and zoning violations…tax foreclosures? At SB Holdings we work effectively with numerous major banks, servicers and outsourcers to help them dispose of problem assets. Whether the assets are aged, have negative equity, title issues, low value or a combination of these problems; we offer a disposal strategy that is both fast and economically feasible for all parties involved.

We are committed to full service buying of your excess or unwanted REO inventory. We can assume inventory fast and help your division meet months end qouta’s or end of quarter/year goals.

High sale in 2004 at $200K, foreclosure in 2006. Flopped, traded, dealt, flipped, packaged, and disposed of several more times between ’06 and ’09. If the paper trail is right, this is the second time Greenpoint Mortgage Funding has had its paws on this property since 2006.

Oh, and as of last week, 80 Waverly St. was just listed by the Rhode Island Department of Health as making the state’s worst-of-the-worst list for premises at the highest risk of lead poisoning. This makes it officially inhabitable for children under six. There are 30 homes on the state’s inhabitable list; 27 are in Providence, 26 of those are on the west side, 14 of those in the West End neighborhood (02907) just like 80 Waverly.

Wonder if fixing that lead problem is what SB Holdings LLC means by being the solution to foreclosed properties with code violations.

Yeah, they’ll probably fix that. Everything will work out just fine.

*Stump has seven more abandoned houses to post on just one block of Waverly St between Cranston and Dexter—we’re just getting started unfortunately.

Sold for a whopping $335K in 2005. Foreclosure in 2007.

Update 6/3/09

Back door wide open.

Multiple time boarded loser here—at least once since 2001. Currently wide open to the breezes or whatever else blows in. Someone has started work on the interior—you can see the plaster tore down to the studs. New wiring too.

But no one to call it home.

Update 5/03/09 by Funsickle

Graffiti inside and out!

Hey, don’t scoff at the picture. That was a $360,000 house in 2005.

Three suggested foreclosures here since 1998. Most recent in 2007. And there’ might be another one still waiting to hit the books.

The tips to check out Hanover street, specifically the houses making up four corners of suck at 215, 217, 214 and 218 came in from Forgotten Providence’s cycling survey pal, Phil. After spending an hour on Hanover snapping photos, and another several looking back at paper-trail*, future historians—if they exist, will boldly proclaim the rise and collapse of the American housing market from 2004-2008 (and counting) as nothing short of criminal.

The damage is staggering. The theft is staggering. This photographer, just short of a hundred houses in, is staggered. I don’t know how much longer I can keep looking at the evidence.

The scrappers running in to bust down these houses after neighborhood kids bust ‘em open; I gotta side with ‘em. As a neighbor, if my only choices are white collar pillaging vs. precious metals pillaging, call me comradé and the guys pushing stolen shopping carts Robin Hood(s).

Heavens to Murgatroyd, people. The faux-inflation of our home prices in the last half of this decade was pure, adulterated, insanity. I could care less if the scrappers or hoppers tearing these houses apart are using them to get high. The mortgage brokers, lenders, property assessors, appraisers, title companies, bank managers, and real estate agents still driving Lexuses are the chaps needing to get locked up.

It will take someone far stronger than I to tackle that order. And I haven’t even yet gotten to my Waverly photos…

_{*e-paper trail, which in Providence doesn’t mean much}

Missing a wholelotta’ windows.

No juice. No foreclosure data either—likely missing owner then. Graffiti and boards appear new to 2009.