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Zombie Homes · New York

The Empty House on Your Block Has Rules Attached

Boarded windows. Grass to the knee. Mail spilling out of the box. Everyone on the street knows the house, and most people assume nothing can be done because nobody knows who owns it. That assumption is wrong. Since 2016, New York has required the bank to look after that property — and fines them $500 a day when they don't.

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Why these houses sit empty for years

A "zombie property" is a home the owner has already left — usually after falling behind on the mortgage, often after being told to go — where the foreclosure hasn't actually finished. The family is gone. The bank doesn't own it yet. Legally, it still belongs to someone who walked away.

That gap used to last years, with nobody responsible for the building in the meantime. Copper gets stripped. Pipes freeze and burst. A roof leak becomes a collapsed ceiling. And every house within sight of it is worth a little less.

Worth saying plainly: the family who left usually wasn't careless. Most were told, wrongly, that they had to move out when the foreclosure papers arrived. They didn't — you generally have the right to stay in your home until a sale is complete. Leaving early is what starts the decay.

What the bank is legally required to do

New York's Abandoned Property Relief Act of 2016 added sections 1308 to 1310 of the Real Property Actions and Proceedings Law. It put the duty on the mortgage servicer, and crucially it applies before the foreclosure is finished — which is exactly the window these houses used to fall through.

1️⃣ Inspect within 90 days of the borrower falling behind The servicer must complete an exterior inspection to work out whether anyone still lives there.
2️⃣ Post a notice with a phone number If there's reasonable basis to believe the home is vacant, they must post a notice somewhere visible, giving a number the owner or occupant can call.
3️⃣ Seven days later, the duty to maintain begins If nobody responds to say the house is occupied, the servicer must secure and maintain it — replacing locks, securing doors and windows, keeping basic utilities on, and preventing mold.
4️⃣ And keep doing it until ownership transfers The duty doesn't end when the foreclosure case drags on. It runs until the property is sold or transferred.
⚠ $500 per day, per property

That's the civil penalty for each day a violation continues. Both the Attorney General and the locality can seek penalties and injunctive relief, and the servicer must report the property to the state registry.

Which means the overgrown house on your street isn't a lost cause — it's very often a bank that hasn't been told, or has been told and ignored it.

How to actually report one

Three routes, and you can use more than one. None of them costs anything.

📋 The statewide registry and hotline New York maintains a vacant and abandoned property registry supervised by the Attorney General, with a toll-free number specifically for community residents to report these properties. Search "New York zombie property hotline" or go through the Department of Financial Services.
🏛️ Your local code enforcement office Localities can enforce the maintenance requirements directly, and a local inspector will often move faster than a state process. In Mount Vernon, Yonkers, New Rochelle and the boroughs, this is usually the quickest route.
📷 Document it first Photographs with dates, the address, and how long it's been like this. A complaint with a photo record gets treated differently from a phone call.
What to expect: not an overnight transformation. Usually the first visible change is the lawn being cut and the doors being properly secured. That's the duty to maintain kicking in, and it's the step that stops a house becoming unsalvageable while the paperwork grinds on.

Or just tell us about it

If you'd rather not navigate a state registry, send it to us and we'll look into who holds the mortgage and whether the servicer is meeting its obligations. There's no charge, and you don't have to leave your name.

One thing to be clear about: we're a real estate team, not a government office. Telling us doesn't start an official complaint. For that, use the state registry hotline or your local code enforcement — and we'll help you do that if you want. Often the most effective thing is both.
We need the address to look anything up.
Required.
Free. No obligation. You can report anonymously — we only need the address.
✓

Got it — thank you.

We'll look into who holds the mortgage on that property and what the servicer is supposed to be doing about it.

And then the house comes back

Eventually ownership transfers and the property returns to the market. This is the part of the cycle we work in, and it's where a block either recovers or doesn't.

A neglected house sold to someone who restores it lifts every property around it. The same house sold badly — to the lowest bidder, with no plan — sits boarded for another two years. The difference usually comes down to who it was marketed to and how honestly its condition was described.

✓ We list distressed and neglected properties accurately Including what's actually wrong with them. Buyers who restore houses want the truth up front; hiding problems just produces a failed closing and another year empty.
✓ We bring them to buyers who intend to fix them Renovators, owner-occupants willing to take on work, and local builders — rather than whoever happens to click first.
✓ We'll look at a property on your street for free If there's one near you and you want to know what's going on with it, call us. We'll tell you what we can find out, and there's no charge and no catch.
✕ We don't renovate houses ourselves We're a licensed real estate team and a referral platform, not a contractor or a buyer. When we say a house got fixed, it means someone else did the work and we helped them find it.

If this is your house

Some people reading this left a home behind and have been dreading what happened to it. If that's you, two things are worth knowing.

🏠 You may still own it Until a foreclosure sale is complete, it's generally still legally yours — which means you may still be able to sell it, and you may still be responsible for things like taxes and code violations. Worth finding out rather than assuming.
🤝 Nobody here is going to lecture you People leave for all kinds of reasons — bad advice, exhaustion, a marriage ending, fear. The call is free and we'll just tell you where things stand.

Last reviewed October 2026. General information about New York law — not legal advice. RPAPL §§1308–1310 and the regulations under them set out the full requirements.

Know a house like this?

Tell us the address and we'll look into what's going on with it. Free, whether you're the neighbour, the owner, or just someone tired of looking at it.

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