See it burn from 11/2/2006
“Fire companies in the West End district got an early morning workout at this 2.5 story wood frame 25 X 25 vacant multiple dwelling located at 69 Althea Street on November 2, 2006 at 07:45.”

* source: Providence Citywide Fire Network

No houses yet photographed. Take a picture if you find one.

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.

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Abandoned prior to 2004. Picked up flipped in 2005 for $161K. Foreclosed on in 2006, banked owned and traded between two investors in May 2008 for $28K.

Still vacant.

Near site of The Donk.

Revisit June 2009

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Foreclosed upon in 2006. Sits in purgatory for a few years. A part-time-local buys(/tries to rescue) it in 2008, neighbor says puts about $40K into renovations. House then sits empty for a few months while owner is away in Florida (he’s a lawyer). Waiting for rental tenants.

The tip came in from Phil like this:

Another long time abandoned house at 136 West Clifford St in South Prov.
house is the first one in where W. Clifford crossed Somerset St

The back door has been kicked in and the house is a magnet for the local
kids where they hang out at night and vandalize the adjacent community
gardens…

A good neighbor corroborates the exact same story. He says he chased kids out of the house many times and was repeatedly in contact with the owner to get someone over to shore up the house or get someone living in it at least temporarily.

None happened. And after the first window was broken, they all went. 40 panes in total. Two new furnaces, gone. New bathtub, destroyed. Mid-day, mid-week, the day I was standing there talking to the neighbor taking these photos, a local elderly man stumbled around the street, first carrying a random piece of furniture away from what looked to have been a nearby eviction.

I went to shoot the photo from the rear, and the good neighbor followed to check on the joker. It was a scene played out many times before (minus the photog), and the neighbor was clearly exasperated. The elderly man was too weak to even open the busted back door, so as he tried, neither of us even confronted him. He was literally harmless, and besides, the house has already been stripped of all it’s worth. Why even make a scene?

Startled, the old cager finally turned around and in an aged, slow drawl, exasperated:

“Well excuse me gentlemen, I was not even meaning no harm. I wasn’t up to no nothing, just checking around to see if there was anything…I might happen to be able to acquire.”

Indeed, there are a slew of community gardens in this area. SWAPs marking are all around. This neighborhood has seen badness, but it would take someone with longer Providence perspective than I to determine if it’s seen worse.

The good neighbor—born and raised in his house across the street, now in his late 30′s, says neigh.

“I’ve lived here my whole life, and I’ve never seen anything like this.”

The old man babbled his way onto the street, and the neighbor left to go work in his yard. The city (!) even has been out to badger the remote-owner as well, and if the house is not on it’s way to being secured by Monday, a fine is coming down.

Revisit June 19, 2009

No houses yet photographed. Take a picture if you find one.