I found this article about "Block Busting" in the Edmonton Sun. If you haven’t heard of this practice before, the article basically claims that certain neighbourhoods in Edmonton are being targeted by shady individuals who artificially lower property values, only to buy up the homes and sell them later for more money.
The article specifically refers to speculators who buy homes and rent them out to drug dealers, who then cause havoc in the neighbourhood forcing home owners to sell. Property values in the neighbourhood drop, and as more homes sell, the speculators continue to buy them up, filling them with more shady characters and further lowering values.
Eventually they flip the land for re-development and make a fortune.
Const. Ryan Lawley of the Edmonton Police Service said that noneighbourhood is immune from the practice…"This is a real issue," he told Sun Media. It’sbecome so prevalent, that this spring the EPS will hold a trainingsession so cops can spot the signs of block busting before it destroysa neighbourhood."
I have to admit, I find this difficult to believe. There would be a high level of orchestration required, plus a lot of patience and capital.
"Michael Walters, who used to work with the Community Action Project,which hands out the dubious Slum Landlord of the Year award, said thatwhile block busting has caused serious problems in some neighbourhoods,he wasn’t aware of anyone successfully buying up entire city blocks yet."
I tried to find some more information on this but couldn’t. Wikipedia has an entirely different definition of blockbusting that relates to racial demographics.
To be honest, I’m not sure who to believe, but it is certainly believable that property values can be affected when undesirable neighbours move in.
Haven’t there been a few movies made with this plot? Where New York slumlords hire goons to harass old tenants in the hopes of emptying a building to create a new skyscraper?
Batteries not included…
Urban Myth in Suburbia. May happen in some of the more in demand downtown areas.
But I did have a neighbor that lived across the street, use to call him hillbilly R***. Would burn anything he had in his fireplace. And I mean anything, microwaves, treated wood, etc. He more or less lived outside in the summer like he was at the lake. One time he brought home this 1972 delipitaded Winnibego and parked it in front of his house. Someone complained and the city told him to move it off city streets. So what does he do, he parks it sideways on his double car garage driveway, perfectly legal.
Last week, I went to take a look at Open Houses in the Alberta Avenue area, not to buy, but to expand my knowledge about real estate in different parts of Edmonton.
I took a friend along who knows the homeless and gang scene very well.
Although the houses on some streets looked well taken care of, he went straight into the back alleys and pointed out the graffiti on the garage doors that reflects gangs competing about territory.
He explained how many of these back alleys come alive, at night, making some neighborhoods very unsafe for the average home owner.
It appears that one would not need to buy up houses to bring property values down. A few cans of spray paint could create the impression of gang activity in any neighborhood and scare prospective buyers away….
Sounds like an episode of ‘The Sopranos’ that I saw a couple of years ago….
Perhaps a strech for little ole Edmonton, but no outside the realm of possibility…
You don’t need gangs or grafittie.
My next door neighbour has two of those yappy little corkie dogs that brought me to the brink of selling.
As a “friend” I don’t call bylaw, but I know we can’t be friends, because what “friend” would let their dogs yap none stop. You should have to pass some sort of personality test before your allowed to have pets.
Sorry I degress
thank you for letting me vent!
Hello from Vancouver!
I have posted my inventory charts for Greater Vancouver if you follow that market. Inventory up 17%
http://paul-northvancouverhomes.blogspot.com/
Starting to look like change is in the air…
This sounds a lot like the King of the Hill episode that ran on Sunday night, where Peggy Hill first sold a bunch the houses in a Mexican-American neighborhood to the local hipsters, and then drove them all back out by having Hank Hill and his neighbors pose as homeowners until the hipsters got alienated and moved back out.
Well, a friend that is an RCMP says this sort of thing is fairly common and pointed out the situation behind a house that I own. Basically, someone bought up the 3 homes closest to the main road in the area and let them run down incredibly. One of them wasn’t even locked and appeared that squatters had taken over. When an architect approached the neighbourhood group to build a new upscale condo/townhouse style complex starting at est. $300 +, people did go along with it as they thought it was better than the status quo, even though some allowances had to be made for the footprint and number of units. I think the overlay allowed something like 9.5 and 12? were requested. Our neighbourhood has had a number of developers to battle with and this was one they decided not to waste their resources on. Only one rather odd duck neighbour filed a complaint and went to city hall to put across her points, which were pretty weak. I too went there with a few comments about density, the difficulty parking, as we are in a zone that requires permits, and some concerns about the potential for rear end collisions due to increased traffic slowing to turning into the back alley off a very busy street. When I mentioned the squatters, the board looked surprised and disgusted. Bryan Anderson was on the committee and I have to say I was a bit disappointed with their decision. I had to leave to go to work as the hearing had started very late and went well into my afternoon. The dark haired woman who was transcribing (I believe it was) was very kind and informed me that I would be notified of the results. I have never received anything, perhaps because I was not the complainant. The hearing was due to start Thursday at noon and the houses had been bulldozed when I returned home Monday evening. We now have a new complex there.