The Foreclosure Report

Dominion 'Tosses Salt On Wounds' In Ohio

The Columbus Dispatch reports on the ongoing Dominion Homes disaster. "Some homeowners in the embattled Galloway Ridge neighborhood say it’s as if their new management company is tossing salt on gaping wounds. Foreclosures and bankruptcies have ravaged the Far West Side subdivision of about 650 houses built by Dominion Homes. Property values have plummeted, leaving most residents owing more on their mortgages than their houses are worth."

"Yet a company Dominion hired Nov. 1 to run the Galloway Ridge Homeowners Association, is cracking down on privacy fences, landscaping, unpaid dues and other conditions spelled out in deed restrictions."

"The management company’s president, David Dye, made no apologies for the hard-line approach. 'You chose to buy a house in a subdivision with deed restrictions,' Dye told a crowd of about 200 Galloway Ridge residents at a sometimes emotionally charged meeting at Westland High School last night. 'Our job is to read the deeds..and enforce them.'"

"Dominion can’t let go, Dye told the crowd. The Dublinbased builder still has about 150 lots to sell and needs to protect its investment. 'They want it to look good,' Dye said."

"Dye deflected questions about the neighborhood’s most pressing problems: declining property values and foreclosures. Those, he said, aren’t 'homeowner-association issues.'"

"In the past three years, 110 Galloway Ridge homeowners have faced foreclosure, bankruptcy or both. Property values have dropped below what residents paid for houses."

"The subdivision’s woes were featured in a four-part Dispatch series in September that detailed Ohio’s lax oversight of the mortgage-lending industry and Dominion’s high default rate. Its troubles now are at the heart of an investigation of Dominion Homes by the Ohio attorney general’s office."

posted by Ben Jones @ 12:45 PM