Imminent Demolition by Codes Dept. Loss mitigation/Loan recovery

[Daniel L.]

I have a property under contract of which the adjacent lot has a dilapidated home scheduled for Dec 5 demo by codes dept. Codes chief tells me neither the homeowner nor the lender USAA I believe in this case have reached out to him for any remedial effort. Codes chief says he'd have to see bids from licensed contractor & POF to halt the demo. I believe there's compelling value in my purchasing the adjacent property to package together with mine & sell to developers (my structure is worth demoing also). My situation seems a bit like this

http://shortsalesuperstars.com/group/spsselectporfolioservicinginc/forum/topics/sps-matt-hollingsworth-ceo-and-the-investors-of-deutsche-bank

Since the adjacent property is most valuable to me demolished should I allow codes dept to demolish it and only then pursue the bank/property owner or to my surprise would it somehow be better to try & make a concerted effort to get hold of a loss mitigation person at the bank tomorrow on some crazy premise the owner might have no recourse to keep the property? I don’t know much about the laws surrounding laying waste of the collateral being a violation of the standard deed of trust. Am I correct to think the scenario would still be considered a short sale or might there be a different legal process in lieu of “laying waste of the collateral”? Best I can tell, the mortgage only has 70k to payoff and the dirt for this property may actually be worth 65k (tax assessment of 30k for structure & 65k for dirt). I’m retrieving the mortgage docs later today to make sure the $70k isn’t just a 2nd mortgage. If the borrower is current on payments, can one even be sure the lender would even initiate any action?

[Wayne Brooks]

A bank won;t respond fast enough to acom[plish anything, if they would talk to you. And, it seems trying to halt the demo would be foolish. Since you'd rather have the bldg. demo'd anyway, why would you try and stop it? Once it's demo'd, the bank would surely place less value on it, try and make your deal then.