The top housing officials in Baltimore and Maryland walked a tightrope at a Tuesday meeting.

They gave the good news first. Then, the bad.

A wave of foreclosures rippling across the city is directly tied to a few “bad actors,” they said, and there’s no evidence of similar scenarios playing out.

But the damage from a spike — and subsequent collapse — of home values could spread to Baltimore’s most vulnerable neighborhoods and potentially upend a plan to solve the city’s vacant housing crisis, officials said.

The discussion took place Tuesday at a regularly scheduled meeting of the Baltimore Vacants Reinvestment Council, about two weeks after The Banner published an investigation into New York investors who quietly built a small real estate empire in pockets of East and West Baltimore.

The Banner traced the failing portfolio to Benjamin Eidlisz and Eluzer Gold of Spring Valley, New York. They have not responded to requests for comment.

Using an array of limited-liability companies, the investors bought more than 700 homes at prices often double or triple their prior sales price. They used a kind of loan that is newly popular and less regulated than a traditional mortgage to borrow more than $100 million, The Banner found.

Two LLCs connected to the buyers have declared bankruptcy and many of the homes in the portfolio are entering foreclosure. At least five Wall Street-backed financiers blacklisted the buyers, as well as some of their associates and affiliated entities, and paused lending starting this spring.

“We have an obligation to acknowledge and address this influencing factor on mortgage lending in Baltimore,” said Maryland Housing Secretary Jake Day.

But how big of an impact does it have? That’s unclear, Day said, calling it an “evolving situation.”

“We’ve got to measure that, report on it, discuss it,” he said.

Of more immediate concern, Day said, is making sure any renters living in the homes connected to these investors are protected from improper evictions.

However, many of them appear to be unoccupied or have been showing signs of vacancy, according to a Banner analysis of water billing data.

Baltimore Housing Commissioner Alice Kennedy said 89 of the homes are on the city’s list of vacant and abandoned properties.

If a property has unpaid taxes or water bills that exceed the assessed value of the home, the city can use a legal process known as in rem foreclosure to take ownership. The homes bought by the investors from New York owe thousands of dollars to the city, but none qualify for in rem foreclosure, Kennedy said.

Altogether, the portfolio of properties had racked up more than $1.5 million in unpaid water bills as of early September, The Banner found.

Kennedy said one of the companies involved had been “on our radar” since the beginning of the year after some purchases in McElderry Park in East Baltimore.

City officials, however, were unaware then that the LLC was part of a “larger scheme,” Kennedy said.

“There may be some activities there that require additional attention from law enforcement and others,” she added.