The Bloomberg Administration and housing advocates are asking bank regulators for help in fixing up deteriorating apartment buildings, according to an article in today's edition of The Wall Street Journal by Eliot Brown.

The advocates maintain that hundreds of New York City buildings are falling into disrepair because their owners took on too much debt to buy them in the boom years leading up to the recession and the advocates have in recent months been pressuring the lenders to sell troubled mortgages at discounts so the new owners will be able to afford repairs, the article said, adding that "they've also been pressuring lenders to fix up the properties themselves."

"Lenders, however, have rejected the nation that they should sell the foreclosed properties or distressed mortgages for less than what buyers will pay," the article continued, adding that "they say they have an obligation to maximize returns for their investors" and "the onus is on buyers to pay a price that makes sense, they say."

The advocates and Bloomberg officials met earlier with month with Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation officials to convince them to intervene but the FDIC didn't make specific commitments on the issue, the article said.

A spokesman for the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development said the agency was encouraged by the initial talks with the banking regulators and it expects to follow up in coming days. Still, it is unclear how much ability and willingness regulators have to interview in this regard. In a statement, FDIC spokesman Andrew Gray didn't comment on specific properties and he noted that the agency has requirements for banks to mark loans to their actual values, and standards for banks to make new loans based on 'prudent' expectations. He said that "the standards require prudent underwriting, including consideration of the borrowers' ability to repay personally or through cash flow from the property."

The meeting with FDIC officials followed a news conference held by community groups and elected officials including City Council Speaker Christine Quinn in which they criticized large multi-family lender New York Community Bank. The bank, they said, owns a large set of foreclosed properties in which physical conditions have deteriorated, with more foreclosures in the works. "By holding banks accountable now, there is a change that the next landlord might actually be responsible - not just out to make a quick back," Mrs. Quinn said in a statement.