STOCKTON - In an effort to fix the brown yards, broken windows and general disrepair of Stockton's spate of foreclosed homes, the City Council voted Tuesday to require banks and other property owners from out of town to hire contractors to maintain the vacant homes they own.

"This is a movement on our part to be proactive," Mayor Ed Chavez said.

The council's 7-0 adoption of an abandoned and vacant property ordinance is intended to pressure banks and other property owners to maintain houses that are vacant but in early stages of foreclosure, sometimes several months before a foreclosure is final, Deputy City Attorney DeAnna Solina said.

The ordinance is a revision of one Chavez proposed in February. A $107 registration fee for vacant properties that was part of that proposal - and objected to by real estate agents - was not included in the revised measure. For the city to administer a registration program would have required too great an increase in staff, Solina said.

The ordinance adopted Tuesday will cost the city nothing, officials said. The city intends to send addresses of blighted properties to companies whose business it is to research who owns them. Those companies would then tell the city's code enforcement arm who owns the properties. The companies would benefit from their ability to contact a property owner and, knowing City Hall is threatening, to attempt to be hired by that owner to maintain the property, officials said.

Property owners who fail to maintain vacant lots, houses or commercial buildings face daily fines of as much as $1,000.

Property Management Experts Inc.'s Terry Hull Sr., who was among those opposed to Chavez's initial proposal, said the revised ordinance is "outstanding," though not as aggressive as more direct enforcement by the city could be.

Leland Chan, senior vice president and general counsel of the California Bankers Association, did not return a telephone call Tuesday. He has previously said the association is concerned about the legal consequences of requiring lenders - organizations that have rights as lien holders but have yet to obtain control of a vacant house - to maintain properties. The requirements could expose a lender to liability for trespass, for example, he said.

The ordinance adopted Tuesday defines an owner as anyone who has a mortgage or deed of trust on a property, City Attorney Ren Nosky said.

"Whoever's responsible for that property has to maintain it now," he said.

A handful of other California agencies, including Riverside County and Chula Vista, have adopted similar ordinances.

Stockton has been one of the cities hardest hit by the national foreclosure crisis. There are 4,000 to 5,000 vacant properties in Stockton due to foreclosures, a city official estimated.

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