Columbus Creating Vacant, Foreclosed Home Registries to Address Dangerous Eyesores
One Community Update
April 21, 2025
Source: The Columbus Dispatch
Is there an abandoned or vacant house in your Columbus neighborhood becoming an eyesore?
The city is moving forward with creating registries to track vacant and foreclosed residential properties to hold owners accountable for their upkeep. City Council President Pro Tempore Rob Dorans also hopes the registries can be used to push owners toward using their properties for housing again.
“It’s crazy to think that we have vacant property at a time in which we have this much demand for housing,” Dorans told The Dispatch. “Hopefully, we can push them to more productive use.”
The city is also creating a registry of residential wholesalers. Council President Shannon Hardin has said wholesalers are often predatory investors who make low-ball cash offers to homeowners and, without ever taking possession of the property, resell at higher prices.
The council approved these registries last year and they are part of the Housing for All package of legislation that the council has been working on since 2023. As Columbus Mayor Andrew J. Ginther noted in his State of the City, these registries are coming to fruition.
The Columbus City Council voted on Monday, April 21, to approve a three-year contract with Tolemi BuildingBlocks to manage the vacant, foreclosure and wholesaler registries. The first year, including set up costs, will total $178,000 and the annual price after that will be $149,000.
While owners of vacant properties will be required to register, this software is billed as being able to identify distressed properties early when owners don’t come forward. The software uses real-time information like utility usage, mail delivery and code violations to find properties that are not registered.
City inspectors can tell owners to fix issues at their empty properties. If they don’t comply with the ordered deadline, owners can be fined $150 for every day of noncompliance.
“We know that there’s not one solution to the housing crisis that we’re experiencing here in Columbus, but these registries are an important part of identifying with is going on in the current housing situation in Columbus,” Dorans said.
Ginther said the vacant and foreclosed properties registries will go online by June 1.
On the campaign trail, City Council District 7 candidate Kate Curry-Da-Souza has pushed for the city to develop the vacant property registry that was first proposed by the council two years ago. She has also proposed imposing a fee on empty homes to encourage owners to bring them back online by selling or renting.
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