MuniReg Blight Alert

Good Evening,

Please see below for recent developments and national best practices around vacant and abandoned properties.Please feel free to share with colleagues or anyone you feel would find of interest.

**For those new to these alerts. These are released bi-monthly (maximum). Emerging issues affecting one community may affect yours and creative solutions developed elsewhere could easily help you.

MuniReg seeks to understand a community's pain points in regard to "blight", and help to protect from and address the issue as needed.

This alert is for informational purposes only, to learn more about MuniReg’s solutions to assist local governments please contact?[email protected]

Disclosing LLC Ownership?

The City of Rochester announced their progress in implementing June 2022 Housing Task Force recommendations.

Included is

"LLCs will be required to disclose names and businesses of all members, managers, and any other authorized persons when submitting to the Property Management Portal."?

Independent of whether it can be enforced (i.e. will copies of the formation and operating agreements be needed to be provided), and though LLC's owners often like to "hide behind the corporate veil", these agreements are private agreements. Can a municipality require that this information be disclosed? What if there is no real need (i.e. their properties are maintained, the registered agent is responsive, etc)?

For more information, please click here.

One vacant lot is a real estate opportunity, hundreds are a worry, tens of thousands make a crisis

The The Wall Street Journal shines a light on the various issues impacting the ability to transform vacant lots into affordable housing and other productive usage.

"Despite a national housing shortage, tens of thousands of empty residential lots in Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh and elsewhere are beyond the reach of developers or kept vacant by owners because of legal and government obstacles that cities are now trying to knock down".

To view the article, please click here.?

Hand Written Note and One Extra Step Delivers Results MuniReg has long advocated for changes in the notification process (i.e. not to mail certified letters for code violations to the known abandoned property). However in this example we see the benefits of a hand-written note (and going beyond what is required)

"Although not legally required, Sokolowski and Getman send out letters with handwritten notes to property owners who still owe taxes in February. Sokolowski said that this measure caused more than half of the people on the delinquent list to pay their back property taxes."

Kudos to Schuyler County, NY!

For more information, please click here.

Publicizing Vacant Property Lists OpenGov and transparency have many positives, but looking holistically MuniReg generally opposes publicizing vacant property lists. In the below article discussing an increase in real estate fraud, we find this telling quote. ("Fraudsters today have the ability to fake driver's licenses, change records in databases, and more easily pinpoint properties that are ripe for the taking.:) "Spotting a vacant property is fairly effortless when perusing online databases"

These lists make it easy for them.

To view the article, please click here .?

Zombie Companies vs Zombie Properties

Getting rid of zombies is usually a positive, especially zombie properties or zombie foreclosures. However as this recent article suggests the struggles of zombie companies to survive can have a devastating impact on our communities.

To view the article, please click here.

Leveraging the Private Sector

In addition to the positive response to the Westmoreland County Redevelopment Authority & Land Bank's new Whole Home Repair Program, they continue to think outside the box! Utilization of all resources outside of your organization, regardless whether from the public sector or private sector is so critical to success. The Redevelopment Authority & Land Bank is now "exploring a potential partnership with local commercial realtor."

For more information, please click here.