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Final Vid part 6 of 6

Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124148169574985359.html

Victorville model homes being demolished.
BREAKING NEWS Developing: Another bank will begin the tear down of 20 Temecula homes in Southern California.

NEW HOMES DEMOLISHED
By Patrick Thatcher, staff writer for, Daily Press

Victorville- The housing collapse is taking a literal form for one bankrupt housing development.
Four model homes and 12 nearly finished spec homes at Bear Valley Road and Highway 395 are being demolished.
The developer filed bankruptcy about 18 months ago and the foreclosed property went to Guaranty Bank in Irvine.
A Guaranty Bank official, Real Estate Officer Dean Smith, said they were facing daily fines from the city of Victorville if they didnt do something with the homes and property that not up to code. He said it was a choice of pumping their own money into property site improvements and additional money to bring the home up to code or tear down the 16 homes.
Smith said the bank is not in the building or land development business and because of the current housing market does not see anything happening with the property for at least five years.
Our only option is to either proceed with putting more than a million bucks into the land, which weve already taken a huge hit on and lost a lot of money, or, we tear down the houses, Smith said.
He said the builder put up the homes before completing the site improvements and failed to have enough money to finish roads, walls, and other improvements that bring the community into code.
Everything just fell apart at that point and we cant sell homes that are not up to code, Smith said.
He said the city of Victorville fined the bank once because the home are out of code and would have faced daily fines if Guaranty didnt do something with the vacant houses.
There are still substantial dollars that need to be put into the land before the city of Victorville will give certificates of occupancy on the houses and the bank isnt willing to put forward that amount of money, Smith said.
He said the homes are a liability to Guaranty and that all of them are heavily vandalized inside and out with broken glass everywhere.
Our projections are that those houses would sit the way they are for at least five years, what would they be worth then? Smith said.
He said once the homes are demolished the property will be put on the market again. Calls to the developer were not returned.
Patrick Thatcher may be reached at 760-951-6227 or at pthatcher@VVDailyPress.com

Part 5 Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsgOaCZ2Lag

Duration : 0:1:4

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