Quoted from TakingItBack

McMaster owns 2 single family homes in the city.  Does he rent one out or is one vacant? If it is vcant does he pay the vacant home fee?

If it's vacant, doesn't city rules require the windows be boarded up?   Take a drive at night sometime

Speaking of vacant homes, that rather nice two-family right next to Central Park school finally got the roof covered after having a gaping hole open to the elements most of the winter. Remember, it had a fire quite a while back? It really looked salvageable to me, I've seen houses that had fires just asbad returned to useable condition. If the owners didn't feel that they could pay to fix it, couldn't some contractor have it for a dollar? Two large flats would surely bring in enough rent to make it worthwhile. Instead it has been sitting and rotting. Next to a school. It will probably end up an eyesore parking lot for the non-taxable school. Right at the top of the hill, overlooking the park. I don't get it.

Some recent examples of housing prices I've learned of:
Garner Avenue, across from that one that's been mentioned on here before, three houses sold over the winter, 79,900 and 42,500 at auction, but I found out that those prices are misleading because the purchaser pays the auction fees which are a percentage of the selling price like when you buy through a realtor you are paying the commission. So a house I thought was assesses roughly triple the selling price wasn't actually that high. The 42,500 house, that city thought it was worth $124,000 (!) last time around so the taxes are around $6,000. I know values have been falling but no way was that house that valuable ever. Assessments are much too high overall, but they are all over the place as well. Another house just down from the two auctioned houses closed for $30,000 recently, I heard, but I haven't verified that. I've noticed that some other houses in the neighborhood had their for sale signs taken down, but now they have been replaced by signs from different realty companies. Curiously, if you look up some of these houses, they've been on the market longer than a year, but the asking prices have dropped maybe $4,000. It doesn't work that way!
There is no justification for not doing a revaluation in the city. I know the REASON we aren't doing one, but it isn't justified. Can you imagine trying to tax people a quarter of the assessed value of their homes yearly? I mean, being open about it? The way it is being done now seems to be fooling some people.

Quoted from Madam X

Speaking of vacant homes, that rather nice two-family right next to Central Park school finally got the roof covered after having a gaping hole open to the elements most of the winter. Re

Actually I think the semi-permanent hard-covering got added before thef irst major snowstorm, but after the tarp covering that area had been loose for months.

I believe there is some demolition work going on inside, but not entirely certain.

I do think someone is going to try to rehab it.

I live around the corner from that house, the roof was open most, if not all, of the summer. Has to be some major weather damage in there. No sign of any work being done there at that time, will check again