In an aggressive approach to “zombie foreclosures, at the request of Alderman James Martuscello, Amsterdam NY Common Council members unanimously voted against removing a property from the tax auction list and accepting a payoff payment from the mortgage holder. Alderman Martuscello. said he is concerned about mortgage holders that obtain properties in the city and allow them to sit vacant for years at a time.
“If they don’t clean them up and sell them, they are just going to go to waste. We can’t let the banks do this anymore. We have to send a message out to them that if they don’t sell them, we are going to sell them for them.”
“If we give it back to the bank, you know what’s going to happen? It’s going to sit there again for another two years, because it has been sitting there. The bank has done nothing to this property. It’s a zombie property.”
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