Vacant buildings cost owners

But critics, including a number of real estate agents, say the laws are more about raising money than restoring vacant properties.

“It’s a sign of desperation,” Snellville Mayor Jerry Oberholtzer said. “It basically says we can’t fix the problem, so we’re going to live with it and try to make some money off it. That’s socialism right there.”

Local jurisdictions say the registries are intended to help solve a long-standing problem amid the collapsed housing market: locating the person or financial institution responsible for an abandoned structure and, in many cases, forcing those owners to fix shattered windows or mow foot-high grass.

Officials say such properties, both residential and commercial, are breeding grounds for crime, accidents and fires, and that they lower the value of nearby residences.

“We feel it’s a detriment to our city,” Mayor Ray Nunley of Loganville said.

In January, Loganville city leaders adopted an ordinance requiring owners of vacant structures to register their properties with the city and pay a $100 annual fee.

That fee would go toward recouping the cost of tracking down owners of abandoned buildings, code enforcement officer Tim Prater said. Last year, Prater said, he and another code enforcer logged more than 500 hours hunting down responsible parties, many of them banks.

“The way the banks are now, it’s nearly impossible to track them down because they have so many subsidiaries,” he said. “It takes hours and hours to get to the right person.”

He said a recent inventory showed the community of six square miles has 120 vacant residential properties and a yet-to-be-determined number of empty commercial structures.

DeKalb County’s ordinance, approved in July, requires creditors to register foreclosed properties with the county and pay a $175 fee. The registry applies only to properties foreclosed on or after Oct. 27.

Those who violate the registry face a $1,000-a-day fine. The fines, along with the $175 fee, were used to hire more code enforcement officers.

Since November, 849 properties have been registered, and the county has collected $148,575 in fees, spokesman Burke Brennan said.

In 2010, DeKalb had 18,781 foreclosures, and 1,534 foreclosures in January of this year, Brennan said.

Fulton County started requiring vacant property registration Feb. 1. Owners pay a $175 fee.

Tony Phillips, assistant director of Fulton’s Environment and Community Development Department, said properties that comply with county codes are exempt from registration.

“This is not designed to be a burden upon good property owners,” Phillips said. “It’s designed to help us address what everyone acknowledges is a problem.”

Gwinnett is the latest county to consider fees for vacant buildings. The county Planning Department recently proposed a $100 annual vacant house permit fee, with a $50 renewal. It also proposed a $200 annual fee for boarding up buildings, with a $100 renewal.

“We’ve got to be able to have a mechanism to address this problem,” Commissioner Mike Beaudreau said.

Nonetheless, the Gwinnett County Commission tabled the proposal last month after some residents objected.

Real estate agent Mark Lackey said the fees would penalize people who are relocating or trying to rent properties even if they maintain them.

“I don’t believe all of those individuals who are doing the right thing should be penalized,” he said.

Lackey’s sentiments are shared by the Atlanta Board of Realtors. Robert Broome, the group’s government affairs director, said local governments already have laws that allow them to address nuisance properties.

Broome said registries and fees don’t work and are more about generating revenue than addressing blighted properties. Local governments already know who owns vacant properties, he said.

“When the county wants to send you your property tax bill, they don’t have any trouble tracking you down,” he said.

Some governments have rejected vacant-property fees and registries.

Barrow County considered a registry but abandoned the idea after officials discovered the costs involved. Director for storm water management Shannon Navarre, who oversees code enforcement, estimated a $200,000 price tag for the software and additional hires for inspections and clerical duties.

“When you really sit down and do the math, if you caught this as the housing crisis was just beginning, [the registry] would be a great thing,” she said. “But you can’t go and back-charge the properties that have been empty. You have to get the new foreclosures that are coming up. So if you’re catching it at the tail end of the crisis, it’s not so good.”

Still, given the magnitude of the foreclosure crisis, some see a need for registries.

Lawrenceville real estate agent Rodney Camren said a registry would make property owners accountable for building upkeep, which in turn would make neighborhoods more attractive to prospective buyers.

“When I take a buyer out to neighborhoods, if they see other homes in that neighborhood not taken care of, they won’t go look at the house we’re supposed to look at,” Camren said. “It’s almost like a disease. If neighborhoods don’t protect themselves, that one bad home will spread to other streets.”