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Milwaukee continues to ratchet up its efforts to prevent foreclosures from becoming neighborhood nuisances. The city Department of Neighborhood Services now plans to conduct regular inspections of homes facing foreclosure actions. The Milwaukee Common Council approved a new fee earlier this week intended to offset, in part, the cost of the inspections.

The legislation, sponsored by Alds. Michael Murphy, Bob Bauman, Willie Wade and Milele Coggs, requires banks and other lenders to register residential properties with the city within five days of filing a foreclosure. Previously, lenders were only required to register if a property was vacant.

DNS Commissioner Art Dahlberg says the city is collecting the information “on an earlier basis” so it can perform regular exterior inspections of homes beginning soon after a foreclosure is filed.

If the home is located in “crime reductions zones” designated by the department, DNS staff will conduct an external inspection every 30 days.

There are two such zones. The North Side zone is located between Holton Street to the east, 54th Street to the west, Lisbon Avenue to the south and Capitol Drive to the north. The South Side zone is located between Sixth Street to the east, Layton Boulevard to the west, Becher Street to the south and National Avenue to the north.

Homes outside the zones will be inspected every 90 days. Dahlberg says there are some 6,400 pending foreclosures in the city, and that number is always changing. “The foreclosure problem is not a static problem. You’re continuously having a stream of properties running through,” he says.

In the past couple years, the number of new foreclosures filed each month in Milwaukee County has slowly declined from more than 600 per month in 2009 to about 500 per month in 2010 to slightly less than that so far this year.

DNS isn’t adding new staff other than several new interns to deal with the “large workload” brought on by the new inspections, according to the commissioner.

Dahlberg says all houses that become vacant will be even more of a priority – they will be referred to the department’s Vacant Building Registry, where they will get external inspections every 30 days, regardless of where they are located, and internal ones every six months. According to department spokesman Todd Weiler, the internal inspections check for security, safety and exposure-to-the-elements issues, such as broken windows.

Moisture can lead to mold or water damage, adding to the damage often inflicted on vacant homes by looting and vandalism. “It’s not unusual to see the value of the house reduced to at least 50 percent of its pre-foreclosure value,” Dahlberg says.

Earlier this week, the Common Council also approved giving DNS the authority to order the owners of vacant buildings to board up even second-story windows. Previously, the authority was generally limited to those at ground level, but Dahlberg says broken second-story windows have been a problem, allowing access for more athletic looters and causing weather damage.

New legislation also requires lenders, upon filing a foreclosure, to post “a sign on or adjacent to all entrances to the building” identifying themselves and providing contact information for whomever is responsible for the day-to-day maintenance of the property.

Dahlberg says other cities have had success with neighborhoods self-policing foreclosures, and the signs will allow neighbors in Milwaukee to contact a responsible party if problems arise. (The new ordinance also requires the responsible party to be located in the seven-county Milwaukee metropolitan area.)

These are just the latest changes in city policy designed to combat nuisance properties. In December, the Common Council approved new fines for owners who fail to register vacant properties with the city or maintain them. Dahlberg says DNS recently sent letters to the owners of known vacant properties who haven’t registered them, noting the new fines, which can run into the thousands of dollars.

And last year, DNS, the city Department of Public Works and the Milwaukee Police Department conducted mass inspections of about 4,000 properties not registered with the city but suspected to be vacant (because they had no active water service). According to Dahlberg, about 200 needed boarding up, about 500 had trash problems and about 300 were referred to the DNS condemnation section.

Those are still being processed, he says. The city plans to raze about 175 buildings this year. The number of razings is limited by funding.

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