Lucky you. I've just been informed by my real estate agent that our final plea for an exception based on hardship has been denied by the city, just a few days ago. It means that the city has crushed our last hopes of avoiding foreclosure. (Wells Fargo sent us the foreclosure notice a few weeks ago, and the city knew about it when it denied the plea).

At this point, my family only wants this nightmare to end. A very sad end for our years in Duluth, which had been, until this point, some of the best years in our lives. The bitter irony is that the worst abuse against our property rights had to happen, among all countries, right there in America.

You can read more about our case in my blog:

The 300 Foot Rule, or How the City of Duluth is Helping Me to Lose My House to Foreclosure

I'm pretty sure banks foreclose on properties, not the city. I'm also pretty sure that they only do so long after you've stopped making payments on the mortgage. 

How about taking some responsibility for your actions, or at least acknowledging that there are other issues at play in the real estate market before placing all of the blame squarely in the city's lap? To say that the 300' rule is the ONLY reason you are unable to sell your house is just you making the city into a scapegoat.

I'm not blaming the city for foreclosing on my house - you're right, it was the bank and my lack of funds that provided the foreclosure.
However, the inability to rent out my home (providing me with short-term income in order to prep it for sale) was a major factor in loosing my house.

However, on the bright side, someone bought the house cheap at auction and spent a lot of money fixing it up -- I'm glad it didn't just add to the empty-home ghetto in the area.

At $900 I will be subsidizing the mortgage and taxes (which come to about $1200/month). I'm not trying to make money here, just trying to reduce how much I am losing since the house has not sold in the current economic climate and I am no longer living in the house.

@mr. Albuquerque:  was going to ridicule for chastising others for hiding behind  a pseudonym, but clicked your profile.  Oops.  Your C V is stellar.

Mr. Behrens, thanks for your considered response.

We're unable to sell the house for a price above mortgage balance, and renting it, even if for less than actual mortgage payment, at least would allow us to keep the house. Apparently there's strong demand for renting in the city, in part because people can't sell their houses in their cities of origin, and in part because of reduced rental units supply. So the city killed our only hope to maintain our house and our only connection left with the Northland.

What is even more interesting is that, by helping to force us into foreclosure, the city doesn't help itself nor its citizens. The City will lose tax revenues permanently since the house will surely sell for a much lower price than the previous estimate and will produce a lower stream of revenues not only for our house but for all other houses in the area. Once our house is sold by the bank (after foreclosure), it will displace another house that could have been sold otherwise, so the fall of the dominoes will be pushed one domino further. An the City (and the country) loses another stakeholder that could be adding to the maintenance of the City's and country's capital stock.

To this we must add that a family of, let's say, an accountant, a professor or a physician would otherwise be able to live in a nice house and neighborhood of Duluth. Obviously, this hypothetical family will be able to rent another house from somebody else, but this will displace another family that would like to rent that house, etc. The fact is that there will be one less house to rent in the market, and one more house to sell, this time by bank lawyers. How will this help the citizens of Duluth in the aggregate?

In the Public Finance course that I used to teach at UMD this would have been a perfect example of what's called a "government failure." The worst is knowing that, after it's over for us, the housing market may be back on its feet, or the 300-foot rule may have been put down by a new administration. Begs the question: why, oh why?