Mahoning County Land Bank Launches New Website
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- The Mahoning County Land Bank has launched a new website that provides information, tools and resources for anyone interested in restoring vacant, tax-delinquent land to productive use. Debora Flora announced Friday.
Flora, executive director, says the site is a source of all information needed to identify, locate and acquire distressed properties in the county. “At www.MahoningLandBank.com, our land acquisition policies and procedures, as well as application forms, are available,” she says.
The site lists links to sites for related organizations such as the Center for Community Progress and the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp.
A valuable resource, says Flora, is the link to the Mahoning County auditor’s office where parcel numbers, lot numbers and other pertinent information can be learned by using the “Property Search” function.
After four decades of job and population losses, and the foreclosure crisis, Mahoning County has thousands of forgotten, neglected, parcels in arrears in their property taxes that lower the values of neighboring properties and increase maintenance costs for cities, townships and villages.
Land banks can acquire these distressed properties and clear the titles that should make it more attractive for new owners or users to acquire them.
The county land bank asssumed the activities of Lien Forward Ohio Regional Council of Governments, which facilitated the transfer of more than 900 vacant properties in Mahoning County to new, responsible owners from 2006 to 2012.
Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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