
Albany City is in Dougherty County in Georgia State, USA. It is the most important city in the Georgia metropolitan region. In 1988 it hit the headlines as the “Murder Capital of America” for having the highest number of murders. Albany is surrounded by rich agricultural regions that produced cotton. The crop was transported by steam boats. Later Albany became an important railway centre. Albany has been focused as symbolic of an Afro-American rural town. Intense cotton cultivation has ruined the quality of the soil. Once it was bustling with cotton bales and sweating slaves but from 1800 the decline started with the beginnings of the Civil War. Albany has remained a sleepy town in the south.
During the last few decades Albany has been expanding but it still retains the stamp of a southern town. The city is encircled by green trees and plantations but very few of the city residents are engaged in agriculture. The largest employers in Albany are health care units, education centres and the Marine Corps Logistics Base. The economy of Albany is also founded on transportation, manufacturing and retail business.
But the number of Albany bank owned homes indicate that things are getting worse. In December 2008 Cooper Tire and Rubber declared that it was shutting down its local manufacturing unit. This will mean about 1,400 workers will become jobless within the next 12 months. Without money in their pockets the house owners will not be able to pay their mortgages and this will lead to foreclosures and ultimately more Albany bank owned homes.
By bank owned homes are meant those units that have been repossessed or taken over by the banks after having gone through the foreclosure process. Albany bank owned homes are causing problems for the community. These properties have set off a chain reaction. The banks are unable to quickly sell these Albany bank owned homes as there are hardly any buyers in the market. Consequently these Albany bank owned homes are lying vacant and attracting vagrants and vandals.
Georgia ranked seven in the foreclosure rate numbers in the nation in May 2009 as per the findings of RealtyTrac. In Georgia there were 10,516 foreclosure postings – the term broadly referring to all the stages of foreclosure. It was less by 1.27% from that of May 2008 and by 8.72% from April 2009. In April too Georgia had ranked 7th. In May the foreclosure rate was 1:377.