Foreclosures Causing Unkempt Lawns In Neighborhoods

December 11th, 2007

Unkempt lawns can be a serious hole in the reputation of a certain suburban neighborhood. A foreclosure crisis has affected the suburban Prince William County and this has left a sorry picture of the forgotten backyards and lawns in most of the neighborhoods here in this county. It is a fact that when a neighborhood loses a house because of the foreclosure crisis, the damage is evident in the reputation of the neighborhood. The tall grass and the unkempt nature of the lawns present us a picture of a county where houses are fast being sold because of the soaring foreclosures. What is really important is that the supervisors in the county have prepared themselves to arrange for maintenance crews who work would be to fix up the lawns and get back the beautiful look the Prince William County is known for. The reason as to why they want to do this is because of this image of the county is not only ruining the neighborhood’s reputation but also decreasing its property values.

Michelle Casciato, chief of the neighborhood services division, presents us with a startling report which says that there have been more than 800 homeowners in the last two years have left this neighborhood. The report says that since 2006 the lawns the county has cut has tripled from 30 to 135 in 2007, the reason being “there’s no one there.” The current law states that until the length of the lawns in the unoccupied homes would at least have to be 15 inches high after which information has to be passed to the owner notifying him of the situation which generally takes a month or two. What this does to the lawns is make fields out of them.

“When a lawn becomes a field, it affects everybody,” Prince William County Executive Craig Gerhart said. “This is increasingly important, with the number of foreclosures we have been seeing.”

There has been a change proposed, if approved would set the height at 12 inches regardless of whether the property is owned. As Casciato pointed out, the proposed change “makes it clearer for citizens and reduces the aggravation when we know the property is vacant, we know it’s going to grow another two inches and can’t cut it yet.”

County officials said that more than 80 percent of the county’s 1,157 foreclosures through Aug. 17 are for houses that had been bought in the last two years, dropping the property value to 14 percent countywide.