AOL Real Estate has ranked Toledo the 10th emptiest city in the United States.
The team of reporters and editors, which posts real estate advice and information, cited rental and homeowner property vacancy rates for the list of the country’s 10 emptiest cities.
Toledo’s 11.5 percent rental vacancy rate and 3.8 percent homeowner vacancy rate landed the city behind Tampa, Fla., at No. 8 and Houston at No. 9 on the list.
Orlando, Fla., is the emptiest city in the country, according to the report, with 18.8 percent of its rental properties and 2.2 percent of its homeowner properties lying vacant. Dayton ranked second, followed by Memphis, Tenn., Detroit, Richmond, Va., Las Vegas and Atlanta.
On the other hand, a recent list appearing on The Daily Beast included Toledo among the best American cities from Minneapolis to Fargo in which to buy a home. Citing a median home price of $63,400 and the job growth rate at 2.1 percent, the news organization ranked Toledo ninth.
Demolitions and upkeep
The city enjoyed population growth from 1940 until 1970, reaching about 383,800. By 1980, the population sunk to 354,635. The trend continued; 287,208 residents were recorded in the 2010 census. Just 10 years prior, the census had recorded 313,619.
And so more than 2,300 houses in Toledo lie vacant today, according to the city’s 2012 vacancy registry.
The City of Toledo tears down about 300 properties a year, but the Lucas County Land Bank has identified at least 2,000 homes eligible for demolition. To remedy this, the county agency has secured a $3.6 million grant from the state attorney general’s office to tear down some 900 houses during the next 18 months.
After matching the grant, the land bank will invest a total of $6.8 million in the project, said Karen Poore, executive assistant to the Lucas County treasurer.
While the city pays to demolish these houses, it also picks up the growing tab to maintain their tangled lawns. Toledo’s $698,000 neighborhood beautification action (NBA) fund sends workers out with trash bags and lawn mowers to pluck glass splinters and trash from yards and cut unruly grass.
“When someone notices a property is vacant, all of a sudden someone realizes that’s a great place where you can clean your garage out to,” said Councilman Mike Craig. “You might havethree people there for three or four hours for most of the day cleaning up the trash and the debris in the yard.”
The city responded to 4,888 cleanup orders in 2009, 5,810 in 2010 and is on track to exceed 7,800 this year, said Jen Sorgenfrei, the mayor’s spokesperson.
Meanwhile, the budget for these clean up orders is getting more difficult to maintain. The NBA fund comes from Community Development Block Grant dollars. This year the NBA fund is at least $325,700 shorter than last year.
Banks and mortgage companies that foreclose on these properties do not have to transfer official titles with the county treasurer’s office, so county books often still list the foreclosed upon homeowner as the present owner of a vacant property, Sorgenfrei said.
This leaves the responsibility of upkeep and fines to the former homeowner, who is unable to pay.
City records list BAC Home Loans Servicing, LP as the single largest holder of the vacant properties, followed by American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc.
“So who ends up paying for that? Me and you,” Sorgenfrei said. “It’s a lose, lose, lose situation. But you can’t blame [the banks and mortgage firms] because, what are they going to do, send a mortgage agent out to mow the lawns?”
Craig said this adds just another element that pushes Toledo into that Top 10 list. The total assessed value for Lucas County properties has dropped by 20 percent since 2006.
From homeowner to renter
Anna Mills, the president of the Toledo Real Estate Investment Association, said the market is changing from homeowners to renters.
“I find that the people I used to be selling houses to are now renting from me,” Mills said.
This is a testament to the ailing job market, Mills said. People are more likely to rent properties to avoid being tied down to a given place, so they are free to take off to wherever the jobs are.
She mentioned the Chrysler Toledo North Assembly Plant revival and the new Hollywood Casino Toledo as hopeful venues to spark jobgrowth. But for the most part, she said, the jobs are not here.
“We’re in the ‘crossroads of America’, they’re saying. We’re on the water, on the lake, on the river and we have all this and there’s no development,” Mills said. “There’s no amusement-type things along the lake and it’s amazing how we’ve not done much with our assets.”
She also attributed Toledo’s shrinking population to capital gain taxes and other local taxes. She said she hasn’t sold any of her rentals in years because of the taxes she’d have to pay. The maximum capital gains rate in 2010 was about 15 percent for most people, according to the Internal Revenue Service.
The November ballot will be stacked with levies.
“And people wonder why we’re losing people and then we’ve got seven levies on the property tax?”
