Immigrants Hit Hard By Repossessions

The rosebushes at the house on Bayshire Lane in Herndon have died. Plastic wrappers and empty crates are visible through the windows of the otherwise vacant house. A breeze riffles the pages of a weather-beaten copy of the Nuevo Testamento on the front porch.

Watering his own roses and looking across at the empty split-level house across the way, airport maintenance worker Oscar Alexander says the family that lived there left two months ago lost the house to foreclosure.

"The bank is getting a lot of houses," he said in Spanish. "Now there's not anyone to take care of it any more."

The rise in foreclosures is particularly pronounced in Herndon, a town of 22,000 in western Fairfax County. According to Realtytrak, a real estate information firm, 75 houses were advertised as foreclosures in a single Zip code, 20170, up from nine in that same period one year earlier.

"We have a lot of vacant homes out here now," said lawyer Michael O'Reilly, the former mayor.

He said local residents have become increasingly aware of property owners struggling to keep current on their payments, because many try first to stave off foreclosure by renting out rooms, which he said can lead to overcrowding.

"The community as a whole keeps an eye out for them," he said. If homeowners are "having trouble making payments, they start renting out rooms -- and that's a problem."

Now many immigrants who bought homes in Herndon are walking away from the properties, said Miguel Martinez, a real estate agent with Prosperity Realty. He said the good-paying jobs they had in residential construction have disappeared, and they can't make the payments any more. Many undocumented workers also fear anti-immigrant sentiments in Herndon, Martinez said, and worry that they or their relatives could be deported if arrested for other infractions.

"Now everybody wants to leave Herndon," Martinez said.

So far the increase in vacant houses has not been "terribly noticeable," said Lisa Gilleran, a Herndon zoning official, but "there does seem to be some property maintenance issues," such as uncut grass, loose gutters and siding falling off. Town officials call owners and inform them of the problems at the property and send them a bill if the town has to pay to have the repairs done.

-- Kirstin Downey