Vacant Property Research Initiative

Kromer, John and Christopher Kingsley. "Vacant Property Reclamation through Strategic Investment." Philadelphia: Penn Fels Institute of Government, 2010. "Neighborhood Stabilization and Safety in East North Philadelphia, 1998-2010 provides evidence of improving social outcomes for a section of North Philadelphia that lies east of the Temple University main campus. During the past decade, one of Philadelphia's leading community development corporations, Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha, the Association of Puerto Ricans on the March, or APM, has developed hundreds of well-designed sales and rental housing units and a new supermarket on formerly vacant parcels within the area. A greening program undertaken in coordination with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, PHS, has also brought well-tended grass and trees to once-neglected lots."

Dewar, Margaret. "Selling Tax-Reverted Land: Lessons from Cleveland and Detroit." Journal of the American Planning Association 72, no. 2 (2006): 167-80. "Property abandonment is widespread in many northeastern and Midwestern cities. Some cities succeed better than others at moving abandoned properties to new uses. Comparing Detroit and Cleveland, where indicators of demand for land look similar, reveals that Cleveland's land bank has been an effective approach to selling tax-reverted land for reuse, while Detroit's method of land disposition has been less successful. Cleveland integrates its approach into the mayor's agenda for housing development and supports redevelopment with many complementary efforts. Cleveland's land bank conveys land with clear title, has an accurate property inventory, "banks" property, and sells for predictable, low prices." (from article)

Mallach, Alan and Lavea Brachman. "Ohio's Cities At a Turning Point: Finding the Way Forward." Metropolitan Policy Program, Brookings Institution, 2010.

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.

A slow process of out-migration, loss of jobs, loss of population and the recent housing crisis has left cleveland with a host vacant homes, approximately 13,000. Due to rehabilation costs exceeding potential sales prices and a mis-match in productive (land/economic) uses, nearly 80% of these vacant homes make fiscal sense to demolitish. This has left the city and remaining neighborhoods to explore untraditional ways of redeveloping. It has also lead to a growing trend of foreign investment in it's neighborhoods, from Israel to the United Kingdom, all hoping the real estate market will stabilize.

Virginia Local Initiatives Support Cooperation, "The Ripple Effect: Economic Impacts of Targeted Community Investments." Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. (2005) http://go.clientapp.com/vacantproperties/production/resources/ppts/Ripple%20Effect.pdf Abstract: "This publication illustrates how to create neighborhoods of choice and opportunity, when resources are limited and maximum results are desired. It summarizes the results of a Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond study, examining the Neighborhoods in Bloom program in Richmond. Only five years after the program was initiated, the study reports some significant economic impacts of the policy, including increased home values. By targeting public and foundation resources to specific distressed neighborhoods, Richmond was able to attract the much-needed market capital. This targeted strategy premised on process, political will, and partnerships, enabled Richmond to transform some of its most disinvested neighborhoods."

Brophy, Paul and Vey, Jennifer, 2002. "Seizing City Assets: Ten Steps to Urban Land Reform," The Brookings Institution, October 2002. http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/reports/2002/10metropolitanpolicy_brophy/brophyveyvacantsteps.pdf Introduction: "One of a city's greatest assets is its available land for development. Unfortunately, many cities have land and properties that are vacant, abandoned, or under-used, with few policies and regulations in place to convert these assets into valuable, revenue-generating sites. This brief outlines ten action steps that state and local governments can follow to facilitate the development of urban land and buildings. Compiling an inventory of vacant parcels, planning for the assembly and reuse of land, and working to eliminate the many legal and administrative barriers to acquisition and development are just some of the actions the authors recommend for creating a more transparent, efficient, and effective system for private-market land development. The brief will discuss these and other proposed steps, and will highlight examples of successful practices implemented in states and localities throughout the U.S."

Robinson and Cole, 2007. "URBAN BLIGHT - An Analysis of State Blight Statutes and Their Implications for Eminent Domain Reform," REALTOR, October 2007. Available at: http://www.cdfa.net/cdfa/cdfaweb.nsf/pages/NARBlight.html/$file/blight_study_revised.pdf

Been , Vicki and Voicu, Ioan, "The Effect of Community Gardens on Neighboring Property Values" (2006). New York University Law and Economics Working Papers. Paper 46. http://lsr.nellco.org/nyu_lewp/46 DRAFT PAPER - PLEASE DO NOT CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION Abstract: "Cities across the United States increasingly are debating the best way to use vacant "infill" lots. The community garden movement is one of the major contenders for the space, as are advocates for small public "pocket" parks and other green spaces. To allocate the land most efficiently and fairly, local governments need sound research about the value of such gardens and parks to their host communities. At the same time, cities are looking for new ways of financing the development and maintenance of public garden and park space. Some have turned to tax increment financing to generate resources, other are introducing impact fees or special assessments to cover the costs of urban parks. In order to employ such financing mechanisms, both policy concerns and legal constraints require local governments to base their charges on sound data about the impacts green spaces have on the value of the neighboring properties that would be forced to bear the incidence of the tax or fee. Despite the clear public policy need for such data, our knowledge about the impacts community gardens and other such spaces have on surrounding neighborhoods is quite limited. No studies have focused specifically on community gardens, and those that have examined the property value impacts of parks and other open space are cross-sectional studies inattentive to when the park opened, so that it is impossible to determine the direction of the causality of any property value differences found. The existing literature also has paid insufficient attention to qualitative differences among the parks studied and to differences in characteristics of the surrounding neighborhoods that might affect the parks' impacts