Imagine a county agency that doesn’t rely on taxpayer dollars to operate. And not only that, but it also generates wealth and helps revitalize struggling neighborhoods.
This may not seem like a lot, but the land bank began acquiring properties two years ago with just a $4.5 million grant and a landscape of more than 51,000 abandoned addresses throughout the county—one main result of the subprime mortgage crisis.
The nine land bank properties that have thus far completed the “full cycle” from abandoned to inhabited are located in Avalon Park, Grand Crossing, South Shore, Chicago Lawn, and in suburban Hillside. According to Rose, each home appreciated in value by at least $100,000 between its transfer to the land bank and its resale, in rehabbed form, to a new owner.
Now, smaller local real estate developers and rehabbers (including non-profit entities) can afford to invest in vacant properties. Rose says that the land bank selects the middleman buyer carefully: “I would hate to see us do all this work with a [property] and two or three years later it’s closed again.”
In 2015 Williams sold the house to a family for $220,000. Since then, he has purchased two more properties from the land bank, both located in far-south-side Washington Heights.
Gainer explains that the demolition of old factories and warehouses can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and their rehab is rarely viable for modern needs. “We do that stuff so differently now that the cost of rehab far outpaces the the cost of resale,” she says.
