For the last 10 years, I have been working with & in support of organizations putting vacant property back to productive use. I started out consulting with eProperty Innovations, helping the company think about how clients can use (their) data and (our) software to restart a property's lifecycle. Our clients were/are tackling vacant and abandoned property challenges.
The last decade, I've been witness to - and had my hand in, the slow and steady evolution of how we intervene to break the cycle of disinvestment using land banks. They've evolved from distressed property depositories to innovative community revitalizers. I see a ton of innovation and creativity in this space and I am happy to still be a part of it.
Today, I run eProperty Innovations and do my best to apply my passion for community revitalization, my affinity for the underdog, and my influence over our software to deliver useful improvements that can hopefully "move the needle". I am fortunate to have a small, but capable team and lots of community partners who inspire and push us to be better.
We had an accomplishment this week that I think is pretty damn cool. It's a new auction function built into our ePropertyPlus portfolio management system that's helping the Region 1 Land Bank in Northern Illinois manage two county property tax sales. Some might question is that a good thing? Don't tax sales stink?
Yes, they do, but at least in part because of how they operate in most parts of the country. A property tax sale is a blunt-force object designed to recover unpaid property taxes. How and from whom is less a concern as compared to simply getting taxes paid up. Tax sales attract speculative investors profiting on someone's hardship. Dealing with the repercussions of the lousy tax sale process falls on everyone else: the person risking losing their home, the city dealing with a blighted property, and a community experiencing continued disinvestment, as the tax sale process just kicks the can down the road.
Land banks try to break that negative cycle. Region 1 is the only land bank I am aware of that actually runs their county tax trustee sale. (Mind you, they are not selling tax liens and helping displace people out of their homes. The properties they are selling are long-vacant, many are vacant lots, and most have been collecting debt and dust for years). Region 1 is affirmatively reaching out to find willing buyers who will purchase those properties and hopefully put them to constructive reuse- as community gardens, side yards, sites for infill housing, or who knows what. We're able to help, because we modified ePropertyPlus so Region 1 can run their auctions from within ePropertyPlus.
This is our way to say kudos to Region 1 for asking "can it do that thing?" It did not before. Now it does. https://zurl.co/TtSL