A slow-to-recover real estate market has trapped homes like the one in Taylorsville in limbo, caught between a homeowner who walked away and a mortgage company hesitant to step in. The who-is-responsible conundrum has left Lawler dealing with properties overrun with code enforcement violations and no one to correct them.
"I believe theses mortgage companies are dragging their feet about taking possession of these properties because they know they'll be responsible for them," he said, adding that one example included a woman who hadn't lived in the house for two years because she believed she had been foreclosed.
"I think that's the big problem -- people are thinking they're foreclosed on and just walking away from properties instead of actually being foreclosed on and put out of the property through the eviction process."
Currently the only full-time code enforcement officer, Lawler addresses complaints by visiting the property, taking pictures and placing the photos and pertinent information into a file, where he meticulously keeps track of phone calls and site visits.
"I try to go out ever seven to 10 days and check these properties, see if there is any progress, if anyone came by, if there is anyone to make contact with," he said.
The information is then passed to County Attorney Peter Olson.
"If code enforcement by warning or citation does not cure the problem, they turn the file over to us and we file a complaint in superior court," Olson said. "The superior court has broad injunctive powers to compel the property owner to comply with the ordinances. We can research the deed records to find owners, but if the record owner has abandoned the property and the bank has not recorded a foreclosure deed, we can't determine who owns the property." Last month, the county created a foreclosure registry based on one in DeKalb County that officials hope will cut down on the code enforcement violations surrounding empty properties.
"The registry is designed to require banks and other creditors who foreclose to notify the county when they foreclose," Olson said. "The difficulty is that some banks are foreclosing but not recording the deeds. The property owners move out, the property is abandoned, and yet the tax records do not reflect the ownership. So when complaints come in for the dilapidated and overgrown state of the property, the county can't find out who owns it to enforce county ordinances."
For code enforcement, the registry could mean an easier process and quicker turnaround time.
"I could be getting more done quickly if I didn't have to deal with the process we have currently," Lawler said. "I've got some more I started the first part of August when I moved over here and they are still dragging on. A couple of them have gotten cleaned up. And hopefully instead of taking three or four months, five months to work through all this, it will be something like we talked about, nothing more than an email, a phone call, a picture to a property agent and them saying, 'I'll have a crew out there to take care of that.' That's what I want to see."
Lawler said that, while winter will bring a slowdown in complaints, he's not sure the housing market has reached bottom.
"I see it probably getting worse, but I don't have a whole lot to base that on because I was not over here full time until Aug. 1 of this year," he said. "From looking at the number of complaints that we've been addressing, since Aug. 1 we have probably had in three months approximately 250 complaints ... In the first month I was here, it was probably 150 complaints because we were catching up on past complaints that hadn't been addressed. ... Last month we did about 40 complaints, and I expect the numbers to slow down in the wintertime, maybe 20, 25 each month."
While foreclosures in the U.S. increased in October, according to RealtyTrac, the 7 percent increase was down from a year ago. The same was true in Bartow County, with 818 foreclosures listed for the county on www.realtytrac.com Thursday.
"I'm certainly not an expert in the real estate market, but by all information I see, we are pretty close to the bottom," Olson said. "However, it's going to take a good while for things to start picking up again. There is such a foreclosure backlog that prices remained depressed. Persons who would like to sell and move are stuck because banks are selling foreclosed properties so very cheaply. Foreclosures also drive down appraisal values, making it hard to get bank financing. So we are in a sort of vicious cycle."
That cycle also creates headaches for code enforcement trying to hold someone liable for cleaning up.
"... Like on the foreclosed homes, I can't go to California and write someone with Bank of America a ticket for appearance of property. The budget don't account for me traveling there," Lawler said. "With those we have to get the county attorney to get them served, to take it through superior court and it costs the county even more money and drags out the problem even longer."
Olson echoed his statements.
"The most difficult aspect is when property owners abandon their property but the banks refuse to foreclose. Then the only record we have is the existing property owner, who has typically left the county and/or the state," he said. "The security deed shows who has the right to foreclose, but until they actually do foreclose, they have no ownership interest and can't be a subject of enforcement."
From a code enforcement standpoint, the problem is not limited to one area of the county, said Lawler, who addresses complaints first before ticketing violations he encounters.
"It's not a problem that's limited to Adairsville or limited to the Euharlee area or the Acworth area; it's all over. ... We get a complaint and I go into a subdivision; while I am in that subdivision, I am there to address the complaint. While I'm in the subdivision, I don't address every complaint I see because I would be in that subdivision all the time. I just don't have the time or the manpower to go into a subdivision and try to clean it up even though there are problems in there that need to be addressed."
Lawler, who hopes to have full-time help by January, takes the code enforcement situation seriously, treating complaints as though they were his own, but even he realizes the battle he is up against.
"You can't satisfy everybody and you can't be everywhere at one time, so you go to where the complaints are and do as much as you can, try to make as big a difference as you can and move on to another one."