Fewer Registered Vacant Buildings

Currently according to the City of Saint Paul Web site there are 1775 registered vacant buildings in St. Paul. The list is far too long but it is down from last September when it hit 2031. The last time it was at 1775 was in April of 2008. Either we are making some progress here or the city has gotten behind on updating the data base. I want to believe that there are fewer vacant buildings so I am going to go with that for now.

No one really knows how many vacant homes there are in the city because registration is only required under some circumstances.  For example building that are vacant and have numerous code violations is one type of vacant home that requires registration.

As I was driving around the city last week I did notice that some of the vacant homes have been fixed up a bit and I saw one that had a fresh coat of paint and a for sale sign on it. Some neighborhoods are hit worse than others when it comes to the number of vacant buildings.

Over the weekend I showed homes to a couple of buyers and most of those homes were vacant. Not registered but vacant.

Where are the previous owners?  it is hard to say but some move in with relatives, and others now own two homes and have moved out of one of them and others are renting. There is no shortage of apartments.  there are plenty for rent. 

Locally the number of foreclosures on the market has gone down but I am noticing an up tick in the number of short sale properties, some of those will end up in foreclosure.

I will revisit the vacant building list in a couple of months and who knows it may shrink some more before the year is over.