Buyers may reduce crime rates by filling vacant homes

In some communities, vacant homes create blighted communities that are havens for drug users, copper thieves, violent gangs and prostitutes. By receiving loans from a Utah mortgage company, buyers can help fill these homes and diminish crime rates.

According to The New York Times, the Queens section of New York City has become a hotbed for this problem.

"They're becoming a magnet for criminal activity," deputy inspector Miltiadis Marmara told the newspaper. "They hang out in these abandoned homes that may be foreclosed, or the owners walked away. Every day we respond to something to that effect."

In response to similar problems that have been arising in Michigan and Ohio, 16 state lawmakers have appealed to President Barack Obama to tear down abandoned properties. Local governments of the communities in these states and others throughout the Midwest have attempted to tear down many of these abandoned properties to salvage communities that are in danger of slipping away into the grasp of criminals.

One reason these states are so vulnerable is that population growth has stalled locally, so many foreclosed and vacant homes simply are not being filled. The most recent U.S. Census Bureau data pegs Ohio's population growth as 1.7 percent between 2000 and 2009, while Michigan's rate was 0.3 percent. In stark comparison, Utah's population growth came in at 24.7 percent – the second highest in the nation behind Arizona.

Still, Utah is not without its problems. Its foreclosure rate – one in every 43 homes – is the fifth highest in the nation, according to the newest RealtyTrac data. This suggests that there could be a significant amount of vacant homes in the state if borrowers buying a home in Utah do not step forward at a faster rate. Acquiring home loans in Utah, and making communities safer in the process, is made more simple when a borrower has a real estate expert on his or her side.

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