Ah Detroit, never a dull day. It seems now that its emerging that roughly half of all the home fires in Detroit are caused by arson. Most of them due to desperate homeowners seeking to avoid foreclosure hassle from the corporate banks and then collecting on fire insurance payments.
Many are starting to refer to it as Detroit’s version of a mortgage modification.
“As the city has been plagued with first time buyer mortgagedifficulties, massive foreclosures and an unemployment rate above 28 percent, fire officials have said that some despairing owners are risking prison to get out of debt, and vacant, foreclosed homes are being torched,” the Detroit news reports.
Arson is up 27.8 percent since 2004, with 6,486 arsons investigated by the Detroit Fire Department’s Arson Squad last year. Arson-related insurance fraud in Detroit is up roughly 40 percent from 2005 to 2008.
Detroit has the nation’s worst delinquency rate, at 10 percent of all mortgages.
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