110-year-old foreclosed building razed; structure was in `excessive disrepair'.

• Position: LOCAL NEWS

Byline: Brian Lee

SOUTHBRIDGE - The town had a boarded-up bank-owned building near downtown razed yesterday.

An out-of-state bank washed its hands of the 110-year-old, 4,000-square-foot building at 185 Elm St.

With its condition in "excessive disrepair," the lender gave the deed to the town to do as it wished with the building, Town Manager Christopher Clark said.

Building Inspector Nicola Tortis and Town Counsel Robert Caprera were initially involved in the process.

It's uncommon for banks to give up properties to communities, although with rising foreclosures, an institution "trying to do damage control on their lending portfolio" might take this route, Mr. Caprera said.

The eventual holder of the mortgage with whom Mr. Caprera corresponded was in Texas, and he said he also dealt with folks in Minneapolis or South Dakota.

In the last decade or so there's been a lot of selling of mortgages as part of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

"The long and short of it was the people way, way out from this property weren't about to come in and try to market it and try to get their money out of it," Mr. Caprera said. "They just cut their losses."

The property was owned by Deutsche Bank National Trust Co., and before that Marie C. Mondesir, according to published records.

If the town opted to first tear the building down and then put a lien on it, the bank would then have lost both the value of the mortgage amount as well as the cost of the lien, the manager said.

"In terms of foreclosure I don't they were going to make any money because if we had a $25,000 lien against them for demolishing the house, and then they go and they're able to sell the...