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Dewar, Margaret and Kris Wernstedt. "Challenges in Reusing Vacant, Abandoned,and Contaminated Urban Properties." Land Lines. April 2009. 2-7. This article explores the limitations, challenges, and potential for non-profit and community developers to successfully reuse vacant, abandoned, and contaminated land.

Follain, James R., PhD. "A Study of Real Estate Markets in Declining Cities." 1-84. Washington, D.C: Research Institute for Housing America of the Mortgage Bankers Association, 2010. From Executive Summary: "The "Great Recession" of 2007 to 2009 has taken a great toll on housing markets in most cities and metropolitan areas in all parts of the country. Though the pace and extent of the overall economic recovery of these markets is still far from certain, many places will likely resume growth and fully recover within the next decade or so. This is almost certainly not to be the case for all metropolitan areas. In fact, a number of large metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) experienced severe recessions during the latter half of the 20th century and prior to the Great Recession and never fully recovered or took many years to do so. Even among those metro areas with relatively bright long-run prospects for growth, certain submarkets within them may remain well below recent house price peaks for many years to come. What is a declining city? Simply put, a declining city is one in which the people have left, but the houses, apartment buildings, offices and storefronts remain. At the extreme, think of a ghost town from the Old West, a town that lost its reason for being. Are there cities or large metro areas in the United States at risk of disappearing back into the desert (or the swamp) today? Probably not, but there are certainly neighborhoods and submarkets within metro areas that have passed a tipping point, and have little prospect of returning to anything close to their previous peaks. Lastly, another type of declining city may also be emerging - places that grew substantially during the housing boom and are now experiencing unprecedented declines in house prices and increases in foreclosures. The primary goal of this paper is to offer insights on the potential future evolution of real estate markets in cities that are in the midst of a severe and persistent

De Sousa, C., Wu, C. and L. Westphal. 2009. "Assessing the Effect of Publicly Supported Brownfield Redevelopment on Surrounding Property Values." Economic Development Quarterly 23(2): 95-110. Abstract: "This study measures and compares the impact of publicly assisted brownfield redevelopment on nearby residential property values in Milwaukee and Minneapolis. It also examines the influence of land use, neighborhood characteristics, and other redevelopment factors on this impact. The research approach incorporates a hedonic method to quantify nearby property value effects at more than 100 brownfield projects, and stakeholder interviews are used to assess perceived impacts to real estate conditions. The results reveal that the spillover effect in terms of raising surrounding property values is significant in both quantity and geographic scope, as redevelopment led to a net increase of 11.4% in nearby housing prices in Milwaukee and 2.7% in Minneapolis. It also reveals that project size, value, and the amount of public funding have minor impacts on this effect; factors such as proximity to major roads, distance from rail, and higher incomes have greater positive impacts."

Mallach, Alan. "Meeting the Challenge of Distressed Property Investors in America's Neighborhoods." 1- 91. New York, NY: LISC, 2010. Introduction: "The mortgage crisis that has gripped the United States since 2007 has resulted in property owners losing millions of properties through foreclosure, with a loss of hundreds of billions of dollars in individual and community assets. Through the foreclosure process, the majority of these properties have been taken back by the mortgage lender and become 'real-estate-owned' or REO properties. For the first year or so after foreclosures took off in 2007, with lenders unprepared to deal with these properties and few buyers of any sort in the marketplace, REO properties often went begging. By the end of 2008, however, that was no longer the case. Private property investors - from "mom & pop" investors buying one or two properties to Wall Street firms and consortia of foreign investors buying entire portfolios - had moved back into the market in large numbers. Since early 2009, the ranks of investors have steadily grown, while it has become less accurate to refer to them as 'REO investors'. Rather than waiting for properties to come into lenders' REO inventories, distressed property investors - as they are more appropriately known - have been increasingly buying houses through short sales, buying non-performing mortgages, or bidding against foreclosing lenders at foreclosure sales. Today, their presence is a major factor in the marketplace of nearly every metropolitan area experiencing large numbers of foreclosures. Their activities are having a powerful effect on neighborhoods generally and on the neighborhood stabilization efforts of cities and non-profit community development corporations (CDCs) in particular. Their effect, however, is a matter of considerable disagreement and even controversy. The purpose of this report is twofold: first, to offer insight into how distressed property investors operate, and how their activ

Madar, Josiah, Been, Vicki, and Amy Armstrong. "Transforming Foreclosed Properties into Community Assets." NYU Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, 2009. The report reviews the main issues discussed at a roundtable hosted by the Furman Center and supported by the Ford Foundation on May 2, 2008. It describes market issues for foreclosed properties, as well as opportunities for purchasing, reselling, and rehabilitating foreclosed properties. Additionally, the paper includes case studies that describe successful strategies that have been employed by various cities and local governments.