I can't blame the moon. I am just behind in replying to postings.

Mike 

The primary cause of abandonment of property is that it was never OWNED in the first place.  Fraudulent bunkos since 2001 have been making "loans" of money stolen from the elderly interest income dependent retired devoid of payment of rightful income to the owners of the money thus stolen.  Those "loans" have been used to put freeloading frauds into property who then "borrowed" more more more against the fraudulently obtained property without ever intending nor having the capacity to repay any of the money stolen from humans via the bunko system.  Slightest downturn in the criminally rigged perpetual escalation of housing costs began to result in walkaways when the freeloading frauds could no longer "borrow" more to maintain their profligate lifestyles.  Few if any of the freeloaders ever had anything of their own into the rigged price properties, i.e. they never OWNED the property at all but were mere shills for the price rigging criminals in the bunko business taking supply off of the market.

I have looked into some of those "short sale" properties.  A "short sale" is one where the expected selling price is less than what the fraudulent bunko/other "lender" has advanced to the previous occupying freeloading fraud, that is, the total proceeds of the sale are "short" of what the current liens amount to.  The fraudulent bunkos refuse to unwind their original criminal rigging of prices.  Doing so might result in them having to "mark down" some of their other criminally rigged property "valuations".  So what they do is to stall and futz and snarl any potential buyer into endless rounds of meaningless "negotiations" to perpetuate the criminally rigged pricing on which they were "lending" the money they were stealing for unwilling real lenders of the money to finance the frauds.

Further compounding the abandonment situation is the very involvement of those fraudulent "homeowners associations" many of which have "at whim" criminal theft clauses which facilitate wrongdoing managers of the "associations" engaging in outright theft of real property by inflicting forecloseable liens for "infractions" of rules which are at best vulture clauses for the *purpose* of criminal theft of real property.  Then too there are the official goofermint agencies, cities and counties and such, who are using the criminally corrupt Supreme Court's Kelo decision to arrange use of eminent domain to steal property from anyone who might otherwise want to redevelop an area for the benefit of "campaign contributing" bribiery paying gangs who then use the entire area, including those properties previously still owned by human beings, for purposes having nothing whatever to do with public purposes but only with fattening the wallets of the criminal goofermint officials.  So bottom line is that all of the "higher powers" involved, Frauderal Reserve Bored rigging interest rates, criminally corrupt goofermints on all levels, freeloading frauds brought into previous occupancy who were never any better than the non rent paying homeless moving in to the abandoned properties, are part and parcel of the abandonment problems.

Boy, wonder if it's a phase of the moon or something! Yours is the 2nd reply I received today, in response to a post that was OLD. I don't even remember the conversation from last January! Abandonned buildings are very bad for a neighborhood, because they make it more difficult for other people to sell nearby properties.

In my urban community the big problem is not necessarily rental properties, but abandoned properties. These abandoned properties are not maintained and are subject to break ins, occupancy by the homeless and fires of suspicious causes. I understand there are some neighborhoods that have only one occupied properties along the street in the block. The city recently passed an ordinance permitting the city to take possession of the abandoned properties to deal with the problem. Whether these properties will be rehabilitated and sold or destroyed remains to be seen.

Mike

New Jersey has another level of complexity, because of the requirement for municipalities to provide housing that's affordable for THAT town. Not to get into too many details, but if a developer is building a complex with even a few of those affordable units, it absolves him of some zoning requirements for the entire complex. While not safety-related, they are requirements that protect & give a town its individual flavor. For example in the town where I used to live, garages were a requirement .. but not in the development that had a few affordable housing units!

Although the town expected the development to be townhouses for sale, the developer also decided they'd just be rentals, and because of the affordable housing units there, the town had no jurisdiction to insist they be for-sale units!

I had a townhome with a mandatory owner-occupied clause & think it was fine.  I understood that when I purchased the home; we also had limits on the number of occupants per unit and the type & size of pets.

Small associations (our had only 18 units) sometimes do this due to limited parking/common areas or in an attempt to keep dues & maintenance costs low.  Ours also required that the association be named as an additional insured on the homeowner's insurance.   It protected all members as the association could require repairs/rebuilding in case a unit was damaged so it would not hurt the property value of others members.  You also could not conduct a business or have signage of any sort displayed, including "For Sale" signs.

It is important to understand restrictions on what you are buying as well as the terms before you sign on the dotted line.  Townhomes & condos are not apartments and have obligations beyond just paying the mortgage.  It was not  our town that banned rentals in our small complex it was the contract with the association.  If you needed a short term waiver you could partition the board and make your case.  The association did not want bank-owned units falling into disrepair either.

That said I don't think rules should be changed after the fact without a grandfather clause or at least a phase-in period.  I've also rented a townhome but it was in a much larger development with many units so I've seen both sides of this issue.

The situation of people being transferred for a short/few year period has been around a long time, and often affected people in more affluent areas, because corporations tend to transfer their upper management & fast-trackers, to give them a more overall experience with the company. Those are probably first first occasions of homes in such good areas being rented .. and no one stopped that, nor did it hurt the neighborhood.

When I was working, the plant was in an area with very few rentals available, and extremely few nicer ones. When we had a large changeover in upper management, those people had virtually nowhere within a reasonable distance, to bring their families until they could become familiar with the area & buy a place.

This also wouldn't be the first time that municipalities did something that was eventually deamed to be unconstitutional. For example "eminent domain" is another problem area. Long Branch, NJ is a beach town, far north enough on the shore to be a very convenient weekend spot for the whole New York City area. There were smaller, older homes in what became a very expensive area, and developers pressured the municipality to allow them to "redevelop" the area & "remove the blight" .. which would obviously significantly increase the town's ratables. The town declared it a blighted area, and "drug infested" (not true), and took the land by eminent domain. Instead of giving the people money to buy like & kind homes elsewhere, they paid them off based on outdated assessed values. Then the developers built huge integrated residential & commercial complexes along the beach area. There was such an outcry against what they'd gone to "the little guy", Long Branch had to back off, and many municipalities took the extra step of creating ordinances about their respect for private property ownership & against the use of eminent domain.

 Astraea

Thank you for sharing this.  Wow, does this put a wrench into the wheel - and add a whole new dimension to the real estate crisis.

On the positive side, it would tend to put a floor on rental prices driving them up (fewer homes to rent).  

On the negative side:

• It would also force selling of houses because income streams would be lost.  housing prices will fall more percipitously. 
• If it  is not unconstitutional - it sure is a restriction on individual rights.

I do not know if the local governments are thinking this through.  Personally, renters usually do not make good neighbors.  But what happens if your neighbor is transferred to a few years to another town - is he now forced to sell his house?  This proposed resolution opens Pandora's Box.