“I was kind of shocked,” says West Side resident James Hoven. “I mean, listen to these numbers!” He looked down at a list he has in his hand-
“230 Potomac Ave… $19,900. 132 Gelston… $20,000. 369 Herkimer… $9,900! A four bedroom house for under 10 grand should be a deal!”
Hoven is a first-time home buyer; and he’s looking for a place on the West Side. But there was something odd about the prices- they seemed almost too low. Then Hoven discovered what he thinks dropped the property value.
“I looked at a few of them yesterday- nice homes but there’s a boarded-up, dilapidated house next door. That’s the only problem.” He says, “These houses are all perfectly good houses but because they’re in undesirable locations, the values are well below $30,000.”
Just in the past year alone, there have been almost three-thousand home foreclosures in the city of Buffalo, about a third of which reside west of Richmond Ave. City officials then determine what properties can still make a profit and which properties need to be destroyed. According to the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency, most homes are put up for auction but sometimes they don’t even get a bid.
“Some of these homes are owned by the city and waiting to be torn down,” says Century 21 realtor, Paul Pinizotto. “But they sit there for months or years because the city doesn’t have the cash to demolish them now and they bring down the value of homes around them.”
“It doesn’t make for a good Christmas card shot if there’s a run-down house next door to your new home,” says Hoven. “And that’s really the issue here- there’s way too many houses on the West Side with plywood windows.”
“Everything is affected,” says Jim Militello of JR Militello Realty. “The West Side property has always been depressed; whether or not the economy has turned down- it’s an area with population decline and that’s going to leave a lot of empty homes and businesses.”
Militello Realty specializes in commercial buildings and has been working with businesses and property hunters for the last 30 years.
“What’s affecting the market place is the unavailability of financing and then a reduced demand- and with a reduced demand, there aren’t that many purchasers. When there’s a thinner amount of purchasers, they tend to shy away from the lower quality product which is that geographical area,” says Militello. “But the primary problem isn’t the economy as much as the poor quality of the assets being sold.”
According to Militello, businesses aren’t coming to the area because the West Side as a whole has declining property values. Pinizotto and Hoven add that people aren’t buying homes either because the city isn’t taking care of the properties they legally own either.
“It’s all a big vicious circle,” says Hoven. “Again, these are good houses. But the problem is this: I could buy this house at $10,000 and sink another $20,000 into it and make it a mansion- but the value would barely go up because of the houses around you. It’s the city’s responsibility to demolish or sell these houses and they aren’t doing that, so it drives buyers away.”
But there still may be light at the end of the tunnel for West Side residents and more importantly, businesses. According to Pinizotto, this could be the beginning of a slow shift in the property values and the commercial market.
“The houses that aren’t vandalized and are taken care of, they’re [selling] pretty good… I think it’s going to creep [from Richmond] more and more toward Grant street as we go along here- I mean, it’s not going to happen overnight but I think it’s going to be a good area.”
A lot of potential buyers- home owners and businesses could come to the area because of the low prices. But again, it may not happen overnight and according to Hoven, there are a lot of X-factors involved as well.
“Sure, the low prices are attracting some eyes such as mine and along with the people will come a spike in business," Hoven said. "But are the buyers going to be the right people for the area or are these buyers going to be slumlords? Is the city ever going to clean up the homes they can’t sell? There are way too many questions that still need to be answered and until these questions are answered, the West Side is going to be a haven for eye-sores in both the residential and commercial districts.”