I can't find this mentioned anywhere, but if you heard Maggie Thurber, or Fred glance over on WSPD this morning, they talked about the proposed empty house ordinance. Here is what I know/remember:
1. If the house/property is empty for a certain amount of time, owners need to board up the windows.
2. Owners must register and pay a fee to register the empty house.
3. The registration fee goes up the longer the house is empty.
4. Owners must put a sign up, which is visible from the street saying the house is empty and have the phone number and address of the owner.
What do you think about this?
Yeah, what happened to the recall attempt El Mahico? Not trying to prod you, just curious.
gotta say, all this talk of Captain Hirams had me checking out their website.
Menu looks pretty damn good. I'll take the grilled yellowfin, some oysters and a couple of iced-down Budweisers.
You guys buyin'?
El Mahico is wrong in making allegations and Brian is wrong for taking the bait and beating a dead horse with the responses. This is strike two.
The city does, although I cannot say for sure all of the time.
There is an empty house on Lagrange, one of many, that has a lot overgrown with weeds and grass.
Sent in a complaint, was told owner is dead, within a few days there was plywood up on the house.
But yet, other properties are wide open and being torn apart or stripped of the siding.
I made the city aware of two, 404 Arcadia for one, that is being stripped all the way round, many months ago and it is sits being peeled like a banana.
Either way, we have people who abandon the houses and fail to properly secure them or we have a system that is alleged to being considered that has little if any in the way of enforcement.
Heck the Mayor and some council members seem to be in denial still about the people leaving and the abandoned and boarded up house.
... or the policy of bulldozing. Note that destroying housing just keeps the prices TOO HIGH on all the other housing per supply and demand. In fact, destroying housing like that only says that it has value as long as a financial transaction is involved. Revolting.
Given a choice from destruction, I'd choose forcing the "owners" (in reality, bank-renters -- these people don't own SHIT but a huge debt) to either take care of the property or lose it to the city.
Of course, the city is not a repository of responsibility. Properties left in its care are not properly redistributed. What SHOULD happen is a lottery for such properties -- opened only to the disadvantaged, not some fucking flipper or developer -- and the winners must present back taxes + maintenance fees, with minimal use of financing (i.e. bring mostly CASH, not another MORTGAGE which will just present another FORECLOSURE and therefore another ABANDONMENT). Naturally, the price of the house would be reset to ZERO for a time, but that's just to be expected, and as a bonus for the nominally poor person it would result in ZERO property taxes for about 3 years (the assessment interval). After time, as the now-advantaged homeowner (yes, a home OWNER at that point, with the use of CASH) can only have improved the house from inhabiting it, the assessment would go up to a more rational home value, and finally property taxes start rolling in.
To the first and reasonable approximation, everyone would win under that sort of plan ... except the scumbags like banks who want everything routed through mortgages. We've seen exactly how damaging it can be when you try to get more people to carry mortgages. It's currently crashing the already weak US economy.
What SHOULD happen is a lottery for such properties -- opened only to the disadvantaged, not some fucking flipper or developer -- and the winners must present back taxes + maintenance fees, with minimal use of financing (i.e. bring mostly CASH, not another MORTGAGE which will just present another FORECLOSURE and therefore another ABANDONMENT).
Poor people with enough cash to buy a home out right? Never going to happen.
Believe it or not, mortgages are not a bad or evil thing and the majority of those of us with them know how to pay a mortgage...
Poor people with enough cash to buy out the amount of back taxes and maintenance fees, only. Yes, I do believe that's possible. The base price of each of the houses in question is ZERO.
As for the mortgage issue, by the time you're buying the house with 100% financing you're in as much evil as you can get. Knowing how to overpay for a house -- affordable or not -- is also not something you should be proud of.
Americans have gone on a buying binge that has doubled the size of the average American home since 1980. Not only can't Americans really afford all that, but they can't afford to heat and cool such larger spaces, either. This all has a limit, and we've reached it ... and having reached it, we must now RETRACT.
Not all of us need to contract. My family likes rattling around in 2300 sq feet. I took a 15 year loan at 5.5% and will have it paid off in 8 years. I'll be just into my 40s with no house payment.
What is evil is the banks giving 1-2% loans for a few years with rates at adjust to 10-15% with early pay off penalties and then turning around and selling the loans as securities to investers. that's evil...
The suggestion seems to be to take from one and give to another through some means other than a buyer to seller transaction.
The properties are lost to the city and by the time they are lost to the city they are in such disrepair that they are best bulldozed and the lot cleared, but then we have an empty lot that is too small by today's standards to be built on.
Lagrange Development Corp, was rehabbing some houses before they fell into disrepair and had to be rehabbed and from what I understand the process is still underway, but the number of vacant houses is growing and number of buyers is shrinking.
It is a novel idea that a disadvantaged person, who is struggling to make ends meet would have enough liquidity to bring cash at such an event.
Burn the place down. After all we are short on fire protection so it'll be totally gone by the time they get there and we're short on police protection so the investigation will be botched.
Just don't light it in view of a red light camera. That's the only way we catch criminals here.
MikeyA
MikeyA
of starting a new business....looks like I should go into copper.