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Ingham County Tax Auction Gives Blighted Homes A Second Chance

A crowd of people gathered in the Lansing Center Tuesday morning to participate in Ingham County’s tax auction.

 

 

The goal of the auction is to address blight and bring tax-foreclosed homes back on the tax roll and into productive use.

Ingham County Treasurer Eric Schertzing says that since the Great Recession in 2007, the incidence of tax foreclosure has doubled and is still elevated. But in recent years, things have been slowly improving.

“The most interesting thing happened 3 or 4 years ago when the quality of the auction investors, the auction buyers, really seemed to change, the economic spigots of access to money and capital improved so we started to see higher prices for the properties,” he says.

About 200 properties were involved in Tuesday’s auction. Three of them are historical covenant homes that must be rehabilitated in accordance with governmental standards to maintain their historic integrity.

Houses that didn’t sell will be on the list for the second auction of the year on August 29th.

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