And Wyvern, I might be ornery, but I'm not stupid. Apart from you insulting my wife, I would never fist-fight a person of your, ummmmmm, "temperament" 
I still help load after it is cut, and hand up from wagons, but I last held a knife and spear 30 years ago, and got in the rails 10 years ago. Never Again!!I will NEVER EVER cut tobacco again.
Apartment complexes are popping up everywhere in Louisville. Is the city population growing that fast or are more people renting?I believe in free markets. But the housing stock being snapped up by investors is bad, downright dangerous. When young people have no hope of getting a starter home, they become detached from the system, and soon become enemies of the system.
The case about the one room log cabin?I’m not surprised. Of the total nationally, most of them may be in smalltowns.
Kentucky passed House Bill 422 just 5 years ago, which gave small towns a constitutional framework to issue citations for neglected and abandoned properties.
One community with which I work has demolished twenty old houses, most of which were completely abandoned by owners/creditors. The total demolished is about 2 percent of the private homes within the city.
The biggest cause?
The economic crises of 2008-10 left many houses abandoned and in foreclosure . . . and then many of the “banks” holding the notes vanished completely, or were merged into other banking institutions, many failing to complete the foreclosure procedures, leaving empty houses in limbo.
Another main driver has been the abandonment of smaller, older houses by those who have moved up and out of dilapidated neighborhoods. As the neighborhood was rough to begin with, the first ten years a house was abandoned mattered little to anyone: then 15/20 years down the road, the abandoned house starts to lean or collapse into itself, creating an obvious public nuisance.
My largest municipal client was taken all the way to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in one case where we demolished a house that was causing “imminent danger” to the neighborhood. We won in Lexington Federal Court and in the 6th Circuit last Fall, establishing the first federal test case of the application of House Bill 422.
Dozens of intermediate and small towns are now considering adopting House Bill 422 in their communities, to deal with a problem that appears to be universal to small towns.
Drive through about any town of less than 20K people in Kentucky, and head to the poorer neighborhoods. You won’t have much problem finding abandoned houses, or houses that should be abandoned.
Our 2% rate of demolishment is well below the national average rate of 11/12 percent unoccupied, but we have many that are in limbo: unoccupied, but with vacant owners or neighbors keeping the grass mowed and the doors/windows shut, hence no public nuisance (yet).
There is. Multi-family and Residential can't be built fast enough right now. Most of the apartments we do work on in new construction are fully booked before they even have CO. That used to be unheard of now you expect it. Granted these are in the hottest markets in the US so that should be taken into account as well. But even then, places like Montana and Idaho are having their own booms with multi-family right now. They're getting the folks that can't afford to live in Cali or Washington from the incredibly high real estate prices combined with the incredibly high taxes.
Since the housing market collapsed, apartment rents have been going up. Now that single family has basically rebounded from the collapse of the housing market, apartment rents have increased to the point where it's not necessarily the less expensive alternative it once was.
Then you have trends and the trend of younger people is more to live, work, play instead of house with a big yard/maintenance. So multi-family is stuck in a perpetual shortage right now because they can't build fast enough to keep up with demand and the renter is out of options because they can't buy or rent a house for the asking price, either.
I don't know what this means going forward. We work with a lot of developers and they aren't showing any signs of slowing down. MOF- most tell us to be ready because they are buying more.
YesThe case about the one room log cabin?
“some of the tree-rings dated back to 1640”
There are two of you.im just glad to know im not the only person who has cut tobacco.
Yeah I would be interested in what they define as vacant for this count before I analyze it. I hate articles like this that throw a bunch of numbers around without defining what they are counting. As a data analyst it is very frustrating.This was from the lending tree article linked and what my guess is why there are high vacancies in FL. One of my biggest customers just got into buying up single family homes. The vacation rental market in FL is insane and only getting bigger.
On the flip side, high vacancy rates and high home prices can suggest that an area has unique characteristics, such as being a vacation hot spot or targeted by investors. Meanwhile, high vacancy rates and low home prices might mean an area is experiencing socioeconomic hardships.
There were times it felt like that was it. For the entire state.There are two of you.![]()
...and strangely.....overlooked?
Tampa News - Empty Houses
apparently a phenomena across the US with other cities showing similar statistics etc
i get the vague feeling this is actually pretty important - but i’m not sure why
We're getting ready to sell my father's house in Alexandria (Campbell County).
When we first met with the realtor back in Dec, she made some suggestions to make it more marketable... and she thought it might sell for $305m.
It will be listed next week at $380m... thats how much the market has moved.
380K?