Pittsburgh Taxing Bodies Agree to Give Land Bank Power to Move Along Blighted Properties
One Community Update
November 20, 2025
Source: wesa.fm
The battle to reclaim vacant and abandoned tax-delinquent houses and lots in the city of Pittsburgh scored a long-awaited victory. The city, the city’s school district and the county — the three entities that can tax property in the city — signed an agreement last week that lets the Pittsburgh Land Bank get a priority bid at sheriff’s sale.
In the past, when tax-delinquent properties come up for auction at sheriff’s sale — the last stage of the foreclosure process — the Land Bank gets outbid by private developers with deeper pockets. This agreement allows the Land Bank to get a first pass at a property when it goes up for auction and only pay what it costs to process the sale, which is about $3,000, according to Sally Stadelman, acting executive director of the Pittsburgh Land Bank.
A land bank is an organization that takes vacant or abandoned properties, particularly when they’re mired in debt and legal limbo, clears their titles and returns them to productive use.
The agreement signed last week slashes the amount of time it takes the Land Bank to clear the title of a tax-deliquent property from about two years to nine months, according to Stadelman.
“Every day that goes by with a vacant structure there, the chance that a hole develops in the roof, you get water infiltration,” Stadelman said. “And now you’ve quadrupled your cost to save that structure if you can even do it at all.”
The Land Bank was able to start work in 2023 after it received $3.5 million from the federal American Rescue Plan. Since then, they’ve acquired property already owned by the City of Pittsburgh and turned it into affordable housing projects or other community-led projects. This year, they’re on track to sell 80 properties and expect to make a similar amount next year, Stadelman said.
With the new agreement, Stadelman said, they will continue to prioritize nonprofit and affordable housing projects.
“We removed the barriers to the land access, so it will really be dependent on funding sources for entities to be able to complete those affordable housing projects.”
The agreement also adds two more seats to the Land Bank’s board — one for the county and one for the school district. It also guarantees that the Land Bank gets half of taxes generated on anything the Land Bank sells for five years after the property is sold. This is critical to its financial health.
Federal funds are set to run out in 2026 and the Pittsburgh Land Bank still lacks dedicated, consistent funding. The Land Bank is able to generate some revenue from the sales of property they clear but only has funding to operate at their “current capacity through 2027,” Stadelman said. They’re applying for grant funding from the state and city officials have organized a task force to find funding solutions but there’s no money set aside for the Land Bank in the upcoming city budget.
The city of Pittsburgh has anywhere between 5,000 and 20,000 properties that are tax- delinquent. But there’s only about 1,000 that need a land bank intervention, according to Stadelman.
“It’s not an endless problem,” Stadelman said. “Once you are able to turn over the worst of the worst properties that allows your market to stabilize and decrease the overall number of blighted properties. We don’t have to intervene with every last property. We just need to address the ones the market can’t, so that other owners who may be willing to sell, may want to come back and fix their home up.”
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