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There has been an argument recently about tearing down abandoned houses, mostly in the city of Cleveland and in some parts of Cleveland Heights. Personally, I think that tearing down abandoned houses is only necessary if a house is almost completely rotted out, has extreme damage, is in the worst possible shape and has had expensive parts stolen from it.
I have seen many abandoned houses in Cleveland, and I have to say that some of them look like they are in good shape. Some have good paint on the house, new windows and no cracks in the house or anything like that. Sometimes, houses like these are torn down. It's a shame that such a good historic house can just get torn down. Really, if a house becomes vacant in Cleveland, it's considered abandoned and gets boarded up. I think that it doesn't give the house a chance. Would you buy a house that's boarded up? I wouldn't.
There are some people and companies that flip these houses, and I think that it's a very good thing, but I think that the city of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County are just tearing down as many houses as they can, without taking some time to decide if it's in savable condition. If you want people to live in your city, don't you want more houses?
Now before you start saying "It's beneficial and it's a good idea", one house on a street of occupied houses is ok to get torn down. It wouldn't make too much of a difference to a neighborhood, and it can be turned into a garden or a yard for a neighboring house or something, but when there are several abandoned houses on a street, which is a common sight in the city of Cleveland, and almost all of those houses are torn down, what will that leave? A bunch of uncared plots of land and one house in poor shape?
A house like this first one should be torn down due to the bad condition of the house. Considering it's probably rotting from the inside, there's probably no point in fixing it, so tearing it down is a very good idea. But rather than leaving an open lot that isn't going to be taken care of, an exact copy of the original house should be built on the same lot.
A house like this appears to be in good shape, with good paint on the house and the windows are in good shape. A house like this can be easily fixed and can be occupied by a family. Unfortunately, these types of houses get torn down very often because the city of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County don't take the time to discuss if a house should be torn down.
A lot of people claim that tearing down houses is beneficial to the street it is on and it somehow raises the value of the other houses on the street, but a lot of people don't want to live on a street with vacant abandoned houses. That causes them to move away, making their house abandoned, causing more people on the street to move away, making all of the houses abandoned. Then the city of Cleveland tears down these houses because they quite frankly don't care about them. Eventually, most of the houses in Cleveland are going to be torn down, and then nothing will be left. Rather then first try to tear down the houses, which is a never ending chain, why doesn't the city of Cleveland try to rebuild or fix more houses at the same time as it is tearing other houses down?
It makes me sad that houses like these that are worth around half a million dollars in Chagrin Falls, where all the houses are occupied and in good condition, are worth less than $50,000 in the city of Cleveland and most are in bad condition or are abandoned. If someone could answer me why the city of Cleveland and Cuyahoga county aren't doing a good job at the abandoned houses issue, that would be great.
Last edited by reretarff; 04-20-2014 at 11:03 PM..
Dude, I work in this industry, I see probably 25 foreclosed houses per week. Trust me, the ones that are in decent shape are not the ones you have to worry about getting torn down. They can't even afford to tear down the houses that aren't in good shape. Just the other day I was on a street where there were several houses in a row that were abandoned. One was completely boarded, had most of the siding stripped, graffiti on the siding, the front porch had fallen down. Inside, the kitchens and bathrooms were gutted, the plumbing, furnaces, hot water tanks, and electric were stolen. The house next door was in even worse shape. It had NO ROOF. It was literally raining into this house. The ceilings were caving in, floors were completely ruined, etc. It costs about $18,000-$20,000 for a city to tear down a house. Do you know how much it would cost to fix many of the ones that get torn down? Into the hundreds of thousands. Where is that money going to come from? The city does have programs to restore houses, with neighborhood development groups like Northeast Shores and Slavic Village Development Corp., but these houses are in salvageable condition. Many of the houses in the city are beyond repair, and many are in neighborhoods where any restoration will be stolen or vandalized in a few days. My company repairs houses for the banks. Sometimes the furnaces/hot water tanks are gone the day after we install them. Those houses are never going to sell, because even if they make it to market, the cost to repair them would be greater than the value of the house.
In many cases the houses are donated to the Cuyahoga County Land Bank, which decides to either demo the house, or put it on the market for very little money and they require you to renovate it. This is how I bought my house. The ones that get demo'd are the ones that they have determined are beyond repair and/or in neighborhoods where the cost to repair them would vastly outweigh their value. If you are so sure that these houses could be repaired, why don't you buy one and fix it up? All you do is complain about what's not being done. Let's see you do something for once.
Dude, I work in this industry, I see probably 25 foreclosed houses per week. Trust me, the ones that are in decent shape are not the ones you have to worry about getting torn down. They can't even afford to tear down the houses that aren't in good shape. Just the other day I was on a street where there were several houses in a row that were abandoned. One was completely boarded, had most of the siding stripped, graffiti on the siding, the front porch had fallen down. Inside, the kitchens and bathrooms were gutted, the plumbing, furnaces, hot water tanks, and electric were stolen. The house next door was in even worse shape. It had NO ROOF. It was literally raining into this house. The ceilings were caving in, floors were completely ruined, etc. It costs about $18,000-$20,000 for a city to tear down a house. Do you know how much it would cost to fix many of the ones that get torn down? Into the hundreds of thousands. Where is that money going to come from? The city does have programs to restore houses, with neighborhood development groups like Northeast Shores and Slavic Village Development Corp., but these houses are in salvageable condition. Many of the houses in the city are beyond repair, and many are in neighborhoods where any restoration will be stolen or vandalized in a few days. My company repairs houses for the banks. Sometimes the furnaces/hot water tanks are gone the day after we install them. Those houses are never going to sell, because even if they make it to market, the cost to repair them would be greater than the value of the house.
In many cases the houses are donated to the Cuyahoga County Land Bank, which decides to either demo the house, or put it on the market for very little money and they require you to renovate it. This is how I bought my house. The ones that get demo'd are the ones that they have determined are beyond repair and/or in neighborhoods where the cost to repair them would vastly outweigh their value. If you are so sure that these houses could be repaired, why don't you buy one and fix it up? All you do is complain about what's not being done. Let's see you do something for once.
Well I'm sorry that I don't want to spend time and money doing something I don't specialize in when I have my own job. Did I complain? No. I was just wondering. You need to learn a little respect.
I think the ones that do look decent on the outside that are demo'd usually have some internal issues that make them unsalvageable (or unlikely to be salvaged). Usually that means someone has come through and stripped out the plumbing and electrical systems, many times by ripping them straight through the floor, ceiling, and walls.
In that scenario, you've got houses that probably aren't going to sell for more than $30,000 if you could even sell it and you have the prospect of finding someone willing to install new plumbing, new electrical, a new furnace, a new hot water heater, install new floors, walls, and ceilings, and then paint, on top of whatever else may be missing and then the risk of whatever else may be messed up on a 100 year old house. And of course there are the ample duplexes Cleveland has, so you make that 2x furnaces, 2x water heaters, etc.
It's much easier just to pay $25k for a house that is still in one piece and save yourself the headache.
In addition, there are some that have been rentals that look aesthetically appealing, or at least decent, but have functional issues that to correct exceed what the value of the house would be and/or that lenders will not lend against without being corrected first. A big, glaring one is foundation issues. Real estate investors that are buying low value houses in cash don't always care about those things as long as they are livable but they are not resalable on the general market because of it.
It's amazing what vinyl siding, some paint, and new fixtures will do to make a house that is structurally a piece of crap look great to rent out.
In Akron I've seen plenty of houses torn down that on the outside don't necessarily look like they need to be in league with those houses that have bare openings where windows and doors used to be but looks can be deceiving.
As far as why don't they build a matching house to go where houses were demo'd, it all goes back to supply and demand. Demand is low because the neighborhoods suck (you know this one, high crime, bad schools, etc.) and the cost of building a new house is fixed. Short of some sort of subsidy, a new house would immediately be underwater because the value of even a new house in a truly terrible neighborhood is less than it costs to build it.
And THEN you're likely to be just poaching people from other properties in nearby areas, leaving other properties to rot instead.
I think an even bigger issue is that the type of jobs that employ people who would buy smaller, inexpensive but neat houses continue to be decimated. Look at who lived in them through about 1970 and describe what they did. Not many of those folks left.
The best thing Cleveland can do is build on the success they've had with certain neighborhoods and move outward like rings on a tree and hope that at some point they are able to make those neighborhoods more appealing than some of the dumpier suburbs. Of course, then you leave the suburbs rotting instead.
So, to fix that we need more jobs to draw more people to the region to live in the excess housing stock we have, and while we are doing that we need to ban all new construction so we don't add any more excess housing stock to the supply.
I'm being serious on all this too. It's crazy how everything is interconnected to serious underlying economic issues when you sit down and think about it.
Last edited by SquareBetterThanAll; 04-21-2014 at 02:01 AM..
Well I'm sorry that I don't want to spend time and money doing something I don't specialize in when I have my own job. Did I complain? No. I was just wondering. You need to learn a little respect.
Ever hear the phrase "be the change you want to see"? You keep talking about the problems and what's not being done, but you're doing nothing to change it. That is a pointless waste of time... for all of us.
Ever hear the phrase "be the change you want to see"? You keep talking about the problems and what's not being done, but you're doing nothing to change it. That is a pointless waste of time... for all of us.
Cleverfield, thanks for that...I am a native Clevelander, currently residing in SW Ohio, and my wife and I are leaning STRONGLY toward returning to Cleveland soon (next say 3-5 months)
I stop here often to see what's going on in the old hometown, and with all due respect to the OP, what I DON'T need is some person sitting in a suburb with a pirahna-filled moat, a drawbridge, and bowmen with flaming arrows lining the walls, constantly nattering on about Solon and Beachwood and points east, as if the core city of Cleveland is some evil, ghetto-ridden black hole waiting to suck in the unwary
Newsflash...I wouldn't be coming back here if I bought in to all that negative-nancyism, trust me on that...are the winters in Cleveland a big hairy booger-bear? You bet, because I lived through many of 'em...but I think the reward outwighs the risk, and I know there are like minded folk who share my outlook
If you want to be some overgrown Chicken Little yelling 'buck-awk! buck-awk! Cleveland drools! The suburbs rule!' then knock yourself out, but I don't buy all that hot air...whether I buy in the core-city, or even an inner-ring burb like Cleveland Heights, Shaker Heights, South Euclid, or even Warrensville Heights (y'know---some of those places that are behind that wall protecting Solon and Beachwood from the encroaching ghetto-creep {give me a break with that junk, already]), then I will do so because I believe in those places and want to see them succeed
And I won't be stopped by folks who have some diaper-wetting fear of anything/anyone not like them
Cleverfield, thanks for that...I am a native Clevelander, currently residing in SW Ohio, and my wife and I are leaning STRONGLY toward returning to Cleveland soon (next say 3-5 months)
I stop here often to see what's going on in the old hometown, and with all due respect to the OP, what I DON'T need is some person sitting in a suburb with a pirahna-filled moat, a drawbridge, and bowmen with flaming arrows lining the walls, constantly nattering on about Solon and Beachwood and points east, as if the core city of Cleveland is some evil, ghetto-ridden black hole waiting to suck in the unwary
Newsflash...I wouldn't be coming back here if I bought in to all that negative-nancyism, trust me on that...are the winters in Cleveland a big hairy booger-bear? You bet, because I lived through many of 'em...but I think the reward outwighs the risk, and I know there are like minded folk who share my outlook
If you want to be some overgrown Chicken Little yelling 'buck-awk! buck-awk! Cleveland drools! The suburbs rule!' then knock yourself out, but I don't buy all that hot air...whether I buy in the core-city, or even an inner-ring burb like Cleveland Heights, Shaker Heights, South Euclid, or even Warrensville Heights (y'know---some of those places that are behind that wall protecting Solon and Beachwood from the encroaching ghetto-creep {give me a break with that junk, already]), then I will do so because I believe in those places and want to see them succeed
And I won't be stopped by folks who have some diaper-wetting fear of anything/anyone not like them
Cleverfield, thanks for that...I am a native Clevelander, currently residing in SW Ohio, and my wife and I are leaning STRONGLY toward returning to Cleveland soon (next say 3-5 months)
I stop here often to see what's going on in the old hometown, and with all due respect to the OP, what I DON'T need is some person sitting in a suburb with a pirahna-filled moat, a drawbridge, and bowmen with flaming arrows lining the walls, constantly nattering on about Solon and Beachwood and points east, as if the core city of Cleveland is some evil, ghetto-ridden black hole waiting to suck in the unwary
Newsflash...I wouldn't be coming back here if I bought in to all that negative-nancyism, trust me on that...are the winters in Cleveland a big hairy booger-bear? You bet, because I lived through many of 'em...but I think the reward outwighs the risk, and I know there are like minded folk who share my outlook
If you want to be some overgrown Chicken Little yelling 'buck-awk! buck-awk! Cleveland drools! The suburbs rule!' then knock yourself out, but I don't buy all that hot air...whether I buy in the core-city, or even an inner-ring burb like Cleveland Heights, Shaker Heights, South Euclid, or even Warrensville Heights (y'know---some of those places that are behind that wall protecting Solon and Beachwood from the encroaching ghetto-creep {give me a break with that junk, already]), then I will do so because I believe in those places and want to see them succeed
And I won't be stopped by folks who have some diaper-wetting fear of anything/anyone not like them
Ever hear the phrase "be the change you want to see"? You keep talking about the problems and what's not being done, but you're doing nothing to change it. That is a pointless waste of time... for all of us.
That's kind of ridiculous. You're saying people can't have views or care about a problem unless they're personally out fixing it? You just finished saying how buying and fixing homes is expensive, and probably beyond the financial means of most people.
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A house like this first one should be torn down due to the bad condition of the house. Considering it's probably rotting from the inside, there's probably no point in fixing it, so tearing it down is a very good idea. But rather than leaving an open lot that isn't going to be taken care of, an exact copy of the original house should be built on the same lot. 
Let Me Say Amen To This
give me a break with that junk, already]), then I will do so because I believe in those places and want to see them succeed
You Would Be Correct
