Quick Update: Tax Liens
Pulling out sections of the Herald-Sun this morning, I happened upon what I initially thought was their Friday entertainment section, but what turned out to be the county's required advertisement of tax liens - i.e. folks who didn't pay their property taxes. And I thought - hmmm, it probably makes me rather odd to be more intrigued by the latter than the former...
But what is interesting in the mass of listings is to identify our frequent flyers - many of the usual suspects. While life would be a lot easier if I had an Excel file of this, it appears that our quantity winner is Durham's own James "Fireball" White, who, in the combined listings for himself and Haskell Properties, appears to have 56 tax-delinquent properties out of about (best I can figure) 230 total properties (they are listed under at least 4 different names, making it a challenge to get an accurate figure.) I don't have time right now to enter all 56 in a calculator and average them, but it appears that the average bill is probably around $500-$600, which would mean that Fireball, at our big Durham Dinner, is the guy who didn't put in his ~$30,000 for tip.
Other notables - including some names you will probably recognize if you have read earlier posts:
Ronnie Sturdivant: 3 properties
$16,752.78 for "We Want Oprah" on Corcoran
$6449.38 for the "Urban Merchant Center" on W. Chapel Hill
and $823 for his own house.
Expect to see Ronnie at the courthouse minutes before the foreclosure auction again this year.
Bill Fields: 12 properties
$3836.79 for the Medical Arts building
$2275.02 for The Eloise
Gold Leaf Development: 29 properties:
Average bill $1000 = ~$29,000
Vinston Braswell: 13 properties
Edgewood Properties: 15 properties
Toll NC (Toll Brothers?): 14 properties
Maxine Owens : 26 properties
Harold Noell Jr: 18 properties
Excelnamics: 38 properties
Anyway.. that could go on for awhile - that's a highly unscientific sample. What is impressive, if not surprising, is how much the list is dominated by owners of multiple properties. Folks with double-digit downtrodden properties shift their costs onto us in so many ways, and this is another.
Can we not change this? Even if it might displease the powerful rental/realtor lobby in Durham? This is off-the-cuff, but what about some kind of homestead exemption for 1 property - or two, if you own your momma's house. Everything else? $250 a day delinquent fee per property for the first two weeks, $500/day the second two weeks, etc. Something with teeth.
Obviously there are holes in that, but why don't we create policy to address this problem seriously? I don't have any sympathy for anyone who owns 30 properties but costs me money by costing the county money pursuing their tax money. Can't pay your bill? Sell some property. I think, right now, it is more lucrative for these folks to do other things with their money until sometime just before the properties go to auction. We need to change that equation.
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14 comments:
Gary -
This is a great idea. Do you think INC would bite, and maybe bring it up to Council for consideration? Are there other issues with the tax foreclosure process as it stands that would make this hard to implement?
- kat
I didn't know where to post, but I am huge fan of your blog. I work in the ATC downtown and have a love for this area (even though I've only been here a year and a half). Keep doing what you are doing.
Thanks.
Kat
Thanks - I'd like INC to bite on something along those lines. The immediate problem that cropped into my mind was how to deal with owners who then increase their current practice of putting properties under ownership of different member of their family, different LLCs, etc. If it is one person on one property and they jointly own another property, who does that count against.
As I said, though, it's just an off-the-cuff idea. Policy makers with some guts and vision could deal with the above problems.
GK
mcwhitson
Thank you! It's great to hear that you are loving the area. It's wonderful that we have so many people working/playing in what was, when I first moved here, a big bird-poop-covered abandoned property.
GK
This is just as good as any other form of entertainment. The tax list leads to laughter, tears, romance, power, politics, family, drama, and so on. (maybe even murder mystery) I understand your attention to it completely.
I hope there are durham officials paying attention the list and to your suggestions too.
Thanks coco!
Terrific idea, Gary. It's unconscionable to me that these major landowners would so negligently allow their properties to go into hock. Remember the story in the paper a few weeks ago about sheriff deputies showing up to lock businesses that are delinquent on taxes? Love to see them locking up Bill Fields' 24-hour laundromat (they could lock up the "Urban Opportunity Center" on Chapel Hill, but who'd notice?)
True story: was driving some out-of-town visitors to the ATC, down Gregson. We were talking about why Durham was the City of Medicine, just as we were going under the railroad overpass. One of them pointed to Fields' Medical Arts building and said, "That doesn't look like world-class medicine to me."
Kevin
Yeah, I guess it's hard to figure out how to lock up a boarded up building...
Great story about the Medical Arts building. Makes me think about doing a mashup of a COD logo with "City of Medicine" and the disheveled building.
GK
What local government can and can't do with regard to collecting delinquent taxes or punishing deadbeat taxpayers is governed by State statute. So even if the city and county wanted to impose the sort of penalties you suggest, they wouldn't have the authority to do so. The rate at which delinquent taxes accrue interest is pitifully low, less than 1% per month. Getting the State legislature to at least raise the rate to something a little more meaningful would be a start.
The County might be able to eliminate a couple of positions in the Tax Administrator's office if there were no delinquent taxpayers, but the costs of collecting on delinquent accounts are taxed to the owner of the property. If he or she doesn't redeem the property, those costs are factored into the minimum bids when the properties are set for auction. So it's not really costing us honest taxpayers much money to collect from the delinquents among us.
Great blog. It's become essential reading.
Anon
Glad you enjoy the blog, and thanks for the additional info. I didn't realize that enforcement costs were levied as part of the collection process. I suspect there are still uncounted costs of dealing with some of these people, who are generally not easiest people to track down/get in touch with.
Good to know that we would need state-enabling legislation for something like this, although a rate hike sounds more politically feasible.
GK
Indeed, some of the biggest deadbeats are elusive characters, but they're not terribly hard to track down if one has the right tools, and I'm certain that the local law firms that handle these cases for the county don't have much trouble finding them. And, of course, the costs of doing so are taxed to the property and ultimately recouped, one way or the other.
To tie into another entry here, one of the things that troubles me is the strong correlation between the buildings being condemned and demolished and the owners being tax delinquents, and the vicious cycle of one with the other. Derelict buildings are bad enough, but demolishing them not only further blights neighborhoods but also, by destroying what value remains, reduces the tax base. It's unfortunate that there isn't some legal mechanism to get these sorts of properties out of the hands of people like Fireball White before they get to demolition, other than tax foreclosure. I can scarcely imagine why guys like White hang on to properties that they otherwise don't value (is there some sort of federal tax break to be had by owning vacant houses?), but for some reason they do.
I talked with two different parties last year who were interested buying the big old boarded up house White owns in the 500 block of Holloway (I think it's 520) to rehab for themselves, and they both told me the same story - they couldn't get White or his representatives to return their phone calls. Likewise, I know that last year the St. Theresa Neighborhood Assoc. was writing to an absentee landlord of a couple of distressed and uninhabited houses in their neighborhood with a proposal to buy the properties. The letters that went unanswered. Instead the guy let them fall to mortgage foreclosure. I don't get it.
One last thing: you were lamenting that there is no publicly available list of properties slated for demolition. Yet typically the city will file a lis pendens, a notice of a pending civil action essentially, with the Clerk of Superior Court, early on in the condemnation/demolition process. Those filings can be searched in the courthouse by owner name. If one wanted to take the time that would be one way to identify properties that might be subject to future demolition orders.
Anon
Indeed, it is a vicious cycle. I've been advocating at the state and local level for vacant property receivership. We, again, would need state enabling legislation, but as you probably know, we might be able to get city/county specific legislation more-easily as a 'test-case'. It is basically similar to corporate receivership, except the house is what is placed in receivership. You can search for a paper by Allan Mallach for the National Housing Institute "Receivership as a Problem Property Strategy: Issues and Opportunities" for detail.
You've summed up the major recurrent theme of this blog nicely - that our neighborhoods are harmed by the combination of speculator/slumlords who create externalities, demolition that creates more externalities and a lack of adequte government tools for addressing the problem.
Believe me, I've invested (as have many others I could name) much time in trying to pry 520 Holloway away from the clutches of Fireball. Unfortunately, many of these folks are simply not rational people. I did initiate a 'demolition-by-neglect' process through the planning department on this property several months ago - the closest thing we have to a proactive ordinance that potentially provides for a wider array of remedies (for structures in local historic districts only). But it has never been used before, so we'll see.
Thank you for the tip on the property list - good source, but sounds cumbersome given the changing nature of the list. The difficulty I've found even when now-NIS is willing to provide the list, there is no sense of process timing. I supposedly received a complete list quite recently, but 2021 Angier, demolished last week, isn't on it. Given the amount of public record we are fortunate to have online at this point, there is no reason for this essential information to not be readily available as well.
Thanks for your comments.
GK
Hello Gary,
As an FYI, Excelnamics (one of the delinquents on your list) can be traced back to Michael Jeffrey and Gail Mulligan, living in Willowhaven at 5325 Lake Vista Drive in a home tax valued at $270,635.00 (paid of course).
Thanks for the blog.
Too bad it's not like some states do with abandoned vehicles ... anybody can put a lien on an abandoned vehicle, and if it's not challenged within a certain amount of days and has been properly and publicly announced, and the proper papaerwork is filed, the car/truck/van is yours!
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