Watchdog News/ CITY OF ST. PAUL CANʼT SELL HOUSES FOR $1.00
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posted by Bob at Sunday, March 14, 2010
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Sunday, March 14, 2010
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8 Comments:
CITY OF ST. PAUL CANʼT SELL HOUSES FOR $1.00
Recently the New York Times declared the city of St. Paul to be the toughest city in
America to rehabilitate residential property.
The past month, the city of St. Paul tried to sell 11 vacant properties. The prices ranged from $50,000.00 down to $1.00. The properties offered received three offers. It looks as if only one of the offers will result in a closed sale.
You have to wonder why this could happen. St. Paul is not under a nuclear cloud like Chernobyl, Ukraine. Neither is it a crime riddled jobless cesspool like Detroit.
Well, I have spent 40 years in the real estate business. I have done over 100 projects ranging from new construction, moving existing houses, fire rehabilitation etc., I have worked with both Minneapolis and St. Paul officials. I feel qualified to point out the flaws of this fiasco.
Councilman, Dan Bostrom and other well intentioned city officials have voted for a process that makes rehabilitation overly
complex and the costly code compliance procedure next to impossible. The city claims to be protecting novice investors from buying a property and getting
in over their heads. How does the city plan to prevent this from happening?
1. The city does not allow a sale until the property has been inspected by the city inspectors for a $500.00 fee.
2. The city has forced potential buyers to have a licensed contractor give them a repair estimate. There will be no more
sweat equity.
3. Then the prospective buyer must prove to the city that he has the funds available in the bank for the total repair estimate. No
more pay as you go will be allowed.
All of these demands make most of the rehabs out of the reach of the average handyman investor. This makes affordable housing for tenants scarcer and results in
more vacant properties. Obviously, all of
the city owned properties are paying no property taxes. This results in the city raising
property taxes on the already overly taxed city residents.
Houses for $1.00 is a totally flawed plan.
The actual cost can be exorbitant.
~Jim Swartwood
It started out simple enough.
St. Paul decided to run the riff-raff out of town.
(riff-raff being defined as anyone who is not white, not DFL ultra-liberal, and not making $70,000 per year).
But they couldn't come right out and say that.
Instead they said and did a number of covert things.
OH what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!
It's ended up with a basket case of a city and a bureaucratic nightmare. That's why they can't sell houses.
I have talked to a lot of contractors who do not even want to do any work in St. Paul because of the hassles with inspectors. What would interesting is to see how much money it would take for the city to give to people to make them willing to buy something there and rehab it.
In reality they could not pay me enough to buy a home in St Paul let alone have to deal with the inspections dept.
The houses for sale are all homes that the City is looking to have owner occupants.
So... in order to do the deal you had to find someone that wanted to rehab the house and could get a construction loan to do a complete rehab of the house and commit to live there... ...and all of the houses are on one block on 4th street.
The number of people interested in living on that one block, who will commit to live there for x number of years and can pull a construcion loan to do the rehab... pretty small number.
Time for plan B.
But, the City wanted to see what was out there using that approach.
Chuck Repke
Plan B fire up that bulldozer!
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