Hey everybody. Good morning. I’m out here at one of the properties, we just found at MetroPlex Cash Homes. I’m Christopher Campbell. Just wanted to walk you guys through vacant houses and abandoned houses. We found this property about two weeks ago out on the market. If you guys didn’t know roughly one in 10, one out of every 10 homes on the block are typically vacant houses. They’re not necessarily this bad, where the roof is caving in or… We’ll go inside in a second, where people have come in and torn out the inside, but roughly one in 10 homes on your block are vacant houses.
These houses and properties, they have been part of the neighborhood for so long, and nobody really recognizes what they used to be. The owners have either abandoned the vacant houses, they were not able to fix the vacant houses, the owners do not live in town, and I think it’s become more of a burden than anything. In this case here, as you can see, you could see the roof, people have come the house and tore it up and removed all the wiring out. The vacant house has been empty about a year and this happened within that year. So, at MetroPlex Cash Homes, we’re neighborhood experts where we try to work with property owners to make sure that this doesn’t happen to their property. It can happen to anybody. This person here lives about a little over an hour outside of town, inherited the property, and they had some people in here renting it out and they left and ended up leaving the door open. People just came in and tore the inside the house up, made it exposed to the elements. And now we’re here to repair it.
So at MetroPlex Cash Homes, vacant houses and abandoned houses, we want houses to continue to be useful to the neighborhood and not a property of, how you say, like a derelict property or property of disuse. We don’t want the city or county to come in and tell you that the property is not able to be occupied. Once the city gets involved, you get citations, and then it’s more and more bills. We work with people with citations on the properties. We work with people with mortgages still on the property. This one still has a mortgage, but with vacant houses and abandoned houses in your neighborhood, we don’t want them to be a blight on the neighborhood. Again, like I said, you can see clear to the outside.
So in MetroPlex Cash Homes, we work with the abandoned houses. And like I said, about 10% in Cook County that’s one in 10 properties. So, if you walk down your block it’s typically about 20 houses on one side. Out of 20, two of those are probably vacant houses and you don’t want them to end up being like this. So, I’m saying all that to say at MetroPlex Cash Homes we try to work with property owners as soon as possible to get on top of these citations, to get on top of these situations where your property is useful and continue to be useful. I know from time to time it just becomes too much. We just don’t have anything left to put in it. So, just give us a call. If you see these houses on your block, you seen Mr. Smith down the street. He lived here. And you’re like, “Whatever happened to Mr. Smith? And that house has been vacant for about a year or so.”
Give us a call at MetroPlex Cash Homes. Like I said, we’re neighborhoods specialists. We have experts, with over 50 years of experts working with the cities, working with the counties. If you’re in Cook County or you’re in Lake County, Chicago, Illinois, Zion, Illinois. We also have people out in Maryland, over there in Anne Arundel County, also PG County in Maryland. And also we have people in DC. They have about a one and 10 rate as well of vacant houses. And you wouldn’t think that in the Capitol, but Chicago and DC are pretty much on the same level. So, at MetroPlex Cash Homes, we like to help property owners make sure that their vacant properties don’t get to the point of where they become abandoned houses and become not habitable for occupancy.
Again, like I said, this house here had a citation on it and they were sent to demo it. The city was going to come in and demo it and we had to go in and stop it and be able to start fixing on it immediately. There’s all kinds of rules that come with that. So again, in MetroPlex Cash Homes, we focus on property owners that need our experts. Again, we’re neighborhood experts to try to make sure your neighborhoods stays beautiful for you. We’ll talk to you soon again. I’m Christopher Campbell. Thank you for your time.
Check out what Washington D.C. is doing about vacant houses: https://dhcd.dc.gov/release/dhcd-announces-progress-vacant-vibrant-dc-initiative