The township hopes owners would be persuaded to fix, rent, sell or demolish the properties to avoid increasing yearly registration fees.
Evesham Township Council has passed the first reading of a new ordinance that would create a vacant property registration program to help the township deal with vacant properties.
Township manager Tom Czerniecki said the township would require the owners of every vacant property in town to register those properties with township officials for an initial registration fee of $500 for each building.
In following years, the township would then require those owners to renew that registration for an increased amount, starting at $1,500 for the first renewal, $3,000 for the second renewal and $5,000 for any subsequent renewals.
Czerniecki said that rather than sit on vacant properties, owners would be persuaded to either fix, rent, sell or even demolish the properties to avoid the increasing yearly registration fees.
According to the ordinance, the term “owner” is defined as every mortgagor, mortgagee, trustee, agent, real estate agency, property manager, executor or administrator of an estate or interested parties who have legal or equitable title to any dwelling in town.
Nancy Jamanow, Evesham’s director of community development, said when properties go into foreclosure, the township receives a notice. If council approves the new program, Jamanow said entities listed on those foreclosure notices would be notified they have 30 days to register their property as vacant.
“In the majority of cases, the entity is a bank,” Jamanow said.
Since 2009, Czerniecki said the township has received foreclosure notices for 844 properties, 201 of which are vacant.
Czerniecki said fees collected from the program would help pay for the ongoing maintenance and repair the township conducts on the properties.
“These vacant properties are problematic because they start having gutters hanging, they start having windows broken, and what we are going to do with these funds is start addressing some of these issues which are very difficult to deal with,” Czerniecki said.
Czerniecki said as other towns start adopting similar programs, he believes banks will prioritize selling vacant properties based on towns that have registration fees.
“We don’t want to be left out of that,” Czerniecki said.
Czerniecki also noted vacancies exist in every area of town, including some of the township’s more expensive single-family neighborhoods where there are multiple foreclosures and vacancies in a block or concentrated area.
According to Czerniecki, the township fears two or three such vacancies in one neighborhood could artificially suppress property values for the entire area.
With that in mind, Czerniecki said the township would also be proposing to set aside about
$500,000 in this year’s capital budget to target some of those clustered properties so the township could buy them, clean the title and then auction them. The township would then use the proceeds as a revolving fund to purchase more properties when needed.
“I think the faster we can get these back on the market, the faster we can start collecting property taxes and the faster we can start improving property values in the whole neighborhood,” Czerniecki said.
