Vacant homes getting new life in US recovery

Newburgh, United States

BOARDED-UP homes became a ubiquitous symbol of the US housing crash, with once-prosperous neighbourhoods left to decay as mortgage defaults soared and no new buyers emerged.

Some 10 years later, the national picture has improved and many places have boomed. Although the bricks and mortar of abandoned properties scar the streets of many states, suitors are lining up in some places where tumbleweed long ago outgrew the market.

Newburgh, in the Hudson Valley two hours north of New York City, is a minnow compared to cities in Florida and California that fell apart when the subprime mortgage bubble burst, culminating in a global recession.

The once-thriving area of 30,000 people succumbed to rising interest rates, falling prices and local tax hikes all the same. Many families upp…