“I think it’s a great program,” Hurd said. “It’s beautiful. It’s something we were hoping for, that we could get a deal on that land.”
He plans eventually to have “an extended yard with a fence, until we can figure out what to do,” he said about his South 4th St. property. “I’ll be cutting a lot of grass.”
Even more than those 60-80 neighbors have expressed interest in making such purchases.
“We’ve been working through a lot of them this year,” said Lauren Nelson, a business development specialist for the city. “There’s lots of interest.”
Some of the properties were places where the Butler County Land Bank tore down houses to eliminate blighted buildings using state funds. Afterward, the properties were turned over to the city.
“Others may have been nuisance demolitions and properties that eventually were acquired by the city," Nelson said. “Some of them have gone through the foreclosure process and eventually were forfeited to the state of Ohio.”
Still others have been in the city’s ownership for decades.
To purchase such a property, the neighboring buyer must be a homeowner who lives in the house. Many of the properties are being sold for $100, plus the promise that the homeowners will maintain them.
“I think people are excited to be able to take on the space that’s next to their house,” Nelson said. “A lot of times, these lots are in our very dense neighborhoods, so the homeowners don’t have a lot of greenspace. So it affords them to have some extra yard space to fence off and utilize, or put up a play set for their kids.
“In other areas, people are excited to be able to maintain it so they can put in a garden."
In other cases, homeowners don’t like people walking across the empty lots and want to stop it with a fence. Or, people have been parking vehicles on the properties or driving across them, so the neighbors are able to take control over what happens there.
City officials recently estimated it costs $1,000 per property for the city to pay for its upkeep . City Manager Joshua Smith said the unloading of those expenses — about $80,000 a year if 80 properties are sold off — helps city finances.
The savings can be used instead on other general-fund expenses, such as police, firefighters and street repairs.
Homeowner/occupants living immediately next door to a lot who are interested in buying a property can email Nelson at lauren.nelson@hamilton-oh.gov.
“We get a lot of inquiries from others who are looking to just purchase a vacant property in town, or they may own a property next door, but it’s an investment property for them, they don’t actually live there,” Nelson said.
Many of the properties, being in dense older neighborhoods, are too small to build a house upon because of modern-day zoning requirements.
“The case for most of these parcels is that they’re too small to build a new house on, which is why we have the sidelot program, to all people to utilize that space,” Nelson said.
The $1,000 represents "the cost that’s been put together based on the Quick Strike Team and the guys who are out there mowing the lots, and the ongoing maintenance costs for the properties,” Nelson said.
“There’s a lot in the pipeline, but there’s only a small handful that have closed” so far, Nelson said.
“Most everyone just wants to have extra yard space,” she said.
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