Lenders with neglected REO properties, take note: fed-up neighbors have got their sights set on making you clean up your act.
A new Web site, Lenderoffender.com, lets neighbors of REO properties in disrepair post pictures and comments about their neighborhoods’ eye sores.
The site was started by Mark McKinzie, a Murrieta, California homeowner tired of the increasingly decrepit condition of the REO properties in his neighborhood. McKinzie decided to do something about the neglected properties after he had to mow down 3 feet of dead grass and weeds from the foreclosed property next to his home.
By giving frustrated residents a voice and calling attention to the problem, McKinzie hopes lenders that own REO properties will be compelled to clean up their act.
“Lenders have been foreclosing on properties in record numbers and leaving those properties to sit vacant and neglected with dead lawns, dying plants, algae-laced swimming pools, and garbage piling up on the property,x” McKinzie said.

The site gives residents the ability to post the addresses of neglected properties, along with photos, the lender’s name, and comments about the home. The site also ranks lenders based on the number of neglected REO properties listed on the site.
Complaints range from brown and black lawns to broken windows, and garbage, and the comments can be pretty scathing, too.
“WAMU’s landscaping expertise is about as good as their management expertise – rotten, drained and withered,” wrote one commenter about a home in Wildomar, California.
A check of the Web site Monday showed US Bank, Fannie Mae, and Deutsche Bank at the top of the list, but the banks said frustrated neighbors are pointing their fingers in the wrong direction.
Representatives from US Bank and Deutsche Bank both noted that when their companies are the owner of record on foreclosed properties, they are generally the trustee of the mortgage-backed securities associated with the mortgage, and not the servicer responsible for the maintenance of the property.
“The function of the trustee is largely an administrative one; the trust company itself has no beneficial ownership stake or interest in the underlying loans of a securitization,” Deutsche Bank spokesman John Gallagher said in a prepared statement. “The trustee is not responsible for foreclosures or selling foreclosed property. In addition, the determination of whether or not to pay foreclosure-related costs such as property upkeep and property tax payments are also the exclusive responsibility of the servicing companies, not the trust company.”
A spokesperson from Fannie Mae declined to comment.