After taking a tour of several dilapidated Bronx apartment buildings, officials from the city’s Department of Housing and Preservation vowed to take more aggressive action in getting the properties repaired and livable.

The 10 buildings, scattered through the northwest Bronx and including 2505 Aqueduct Ave., 2500 University Ave., and 75 W. 190th St., were formerly owned by Milbank Real Estate, and have been in worsening states of disrepair since they went into foreclosure last year.

LNR Property Corp., the Florida-based firm that is the servicer to the mortgage on the properties, has repeatedly ignored pleas—from tenants, city officials and one Bronx Supreme Court order—to put money into repairing the portfolio’s 3,000 housing violations. LNR has also been looking to sell the properties, along with the $35 million loan debt that’s attached to them.

HPD Commissioner Rafael Cestero took a tour of three of the buildings in October, with tenant leaders and organizers from the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, and said conditions there are some of the worst he’s ever seen.

“I have to say, in my 21 years working in the affordable housing industry in this great city, I have never been more shocked, angered and frustrated,” he told reporters.

Cestero and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced last week that the city will more aggressively address Milbank’s plight by making thorough inspections, issuing violations and starting repairs on the most health-threatening problems, like apartments with lead paint in them.

HPD normally sends out inspectors to look at an apartment when someone lodges a housing complaint with 311. But officials said that taking this “proactive” approach with Milbank — going in to make an inspection in an apartment even if no one has complained about it yet — will make the difference in turning the buildings around.

“That should send a message to any potential buyer,” Quinn said. “HPD is going to be on the owner 24/7.”

The potential buyer is Chestnut Holdings, a Riverdale-based company that’s been in talks with LNR. Housing advocates warned that a mortgage that high, combined with an expensive repair to-do list, is too much debt for a new owner to handle.

Neither LNR or Chestnut Holdings have returned calls seeking comment.

City officials have met with LNR, but say the company has “no clear sense of how much they need to put in to make these buildings livable,” according to Quinn. LNR has proposed spending about $5 million to $7 million on repairs, she said, which is nothing close to the $24 million that her own assessment, conducted by an outside architecture firm, estimates it will cost.

“They understand how bad things are,” Jonathan Levy, a lawyer from Legal Services-NYC, said of LNR. “They just don’t think it’s their responsibility.”

A Bronx Supreme Court judge thinks otherwise: at the end of September, the court ordered LNR to pay $2.5 million in repairs on the properties within 30 days, though tenant advocates say they have yet to see a penny of that.  LNR is appealing the judge’s order.

Milbank tenants have long complained about leaking ceilings, rotting floors, mold infestations and permanently broken elevators.

“We shouldn’t have to live like this,” Sergio Cuevas, of 2785 Sedgwick Ave., said at a prayer vigil the tenants held last month. “I don’t invite anyone over to my home.”