Category: Eminent domain

Nobody home?

27 August, 2009 (10:00) | Compulsory purchase, Eminent domain, Local issues, London, Real estate taxes, Rental, Speculation | No comments

Why would you buy an expensive home in a tony London neighborhood and then leave it empty?
 

Vacancies even in my tony neighborhood?
That concerns me.
 
Leave it to the Wall Street Journal to peep through Mayfair’s lace curtains:
 
LONDON — At an abandoned home with yellowing newspapers on its front stoop, Paul Palmer peeks through a mail slot [...]

Condo-ing mobile home parks: Part 3, who decides?

13 August, 2009 (14:04) | California, Eminent domain, Local issues, Mobile homes, Tenure, US News | No comments

[Continued from yesterday's part 2 and the previous Part1.]
 
Two days ago, we looked at Santa Rosa’s Country Mobile Home Park, whose owner wants to condo the land (at least as reported in the San Francisco Chronicle; the owner wouldn’t talk to the newspaper), and yesterday we saw that in a forced condo conversion, land value [...]

Condo-ing mobile home parks: Part 2, at what price?

12 August, 2009 (10:29) | California, Eminent domain, Local issues, Mobile homes, Tenure, US News | No comments

[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]

Yesterday we encountered Country Mobile Home Park, an estate in Santa Rosa whose park owner is adamant about converting the land to condominiums, and selling the individual plots to those whose homes rest atop those plots.

Plots? I love plots!

[Editorial note: park owners persist in calling the land 'spaces', [...]

Condo-ing mobile home parks: Part 1, unofficial affordable housing

11 August, 2009 (15:11) | California, Eminent domain, Local issues, Mobile homes, Tenure, US News | No comments

You own a mobile home. The land is owned by a third party landlord who likes nothing better than jacking up your rents.

Legally, mobile homes that lack land aren’t real estate, and you can’t finance one as real estate; instead you get a chattel loan. You can’t avail yourself of the legal protections of [...]

Buying the farm

30 June, 2008 (08:19) | Eminent domain, Land use, Local issues, US News | No comments

Every now and then, somebody does it right. 
 
In the bold action of a man confident of his politics and his policy, Florida governor Charlie Crist has pulled the trigger on what looks like a long-term masterstroke.  As reported in The Washington Post:
 

In the stillness is the act …
 
In an ambitious maneuver to help restore [...]