Posted on 08/27/2008 8:46:59 PM PDT by Lorianne
BOSTON — As a wave of home foreclosures courses through the United States, some of the nation’s hardest hit cities think they have found a way to ease the blight left on their communities by the crisis.
Using taxpayer and private money, Boston, Minneapolis, San Diego and a handful of other places are buying foreclosed properties to refurbish and resell them to developers and homeowners in an effort to prevent troubled neighborhoods from sliding into urban decay.
The efforts so far have been taken on a small scale. But local officials say they can become an important pillar of any housing recovery with the help of $4 billion in FEDERAL grants that were part of a housing bill Congress approved in July.
Indeed, the sale of foreclosed homes — not just to city governments but more broadly to investors and homeowners — contributed to a 3.1 percent increase in existing home sales in July, the highest level in five months, according to data released on Monday by the National Association of Realtors.
That hardly means that the housing crisis is over, because the number of homes for sale climbed to another record level as more people put their homes on the market. But without buyers taking foreclosed homes at steeply discounted prices, the problem would be even worse.
Some advocates of free markets say those increased sales should address the rising heaps of distressed properties. But many mayors say the market is not moving quickly enough because lenders overwhelmed by foreclosures are not able to sell repossessed properties fast enough.
Many developers and home buyers are also not willing to take a chance on dilapidated properties in distressed neighborhoods. With some homes staying vacant for months or even years, the government, they say, needs to act as an intermediary.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Instead of making tax PAYERS buy these homes against their will, why don't they give a property tax waiver to people willing to voluntarily 'unblight' them.
You buy the home and fix it up in exchange for no property tax ... the city gets to look less 'blighted' ... no fed funds involved at all.
I know, I know ... I must be insane to think the federal government will ever stop the redistribution scheme.
Actually no far from me a high end Golf Community has stalled, there are two nice houses 3/4 of the way finished that have sat idle for a year.They are near the front, and are driving down the value of the occupied homes on the street. I am going to see if I can get my grubby little capitalist fingers on them by working out a deal with the bank which is sucking wind on them right now. The real estate market in this area is full of people looking for deals, and even overseas carpet baggers are trawling to snap up good ones.
No, no, that won’t do!
The ‘government’ must buy them first, with taxpayer money of course, and THEN sell them to you grubby capitalist types.
btt
Won’t be long until these communities decide to turn their newly purchased foreclosures into Section 8 housing.
Now that the assessments should go down, they are doing whatever they can to stop such claims.
I like that idea. Or you could farm the empty lot ... keep an nice kitchen garden.
I hadn’t even thought about the kitchen garden, but that idea would be great.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.