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LCCC students inducted into honor society

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Capuano getting back on track

Joe Chacke was pumped about the chance to acquire a condemned Pittston house at Luzerne County&#8217;s free-and-clear tax auction in August 2013 as part of an ongoing neighborhood revitalization plan.A magnet for repeated break-ins, the house with a peeling stucco facade at 19 Carroll St. was a thorn for years after the prior owner moved into an elderly facility and couldn&#8217;t keep it up. Chacke, executive director of the city&#8217;s Redevelopment Authority, had up to $3,000 for acquisition, which would leave enough funds to level it.The target seemed within reach because bids started at $810. He expected other bidders to pass because the property was so far gone.But that&#8217;s not what happened.Harrisburg area resident Jeremy Hunter swept into the Luzerne County tax auction for the first time and drove up the bids, forcing Chacke to rest his bid card on his lap and drop out.Hunter and fellow investor Lawrence Hodges acquired 19 Carroll St. for $4,500. In all, they left the sale with 17 properties purchased for around $161,000.Pittston officials recently held up the Carroll Street property as an example of why the new blight-attacking North East Pennsylvania Land Bank Authority may need to exercise its trump bid power in future tax auctions to shut out prospective buyers and acquire properties.This power to prevent others from bidding would be used only for severely blighted and vacant properties that are hurting structures around them, officials said.The Carroll Street property has continued to deteriorate under Hunter&#8217;s ownership, officials said. The city has been forced to secure it several times to keep out trespassers, and multiple citations were issued, said city Code Enforcement Officer Harry Smith.The owner recently cleaned up most of the debris and weeds and removed a collapsing chimney, but significant work is still required to comply with city codes, Smith said.Chacke said 19 Carroll St. is &#8220;in deplorable condition.&#8221;&#8220;It&#8217;s one example of what we are up against. The goal of the land bank is to get properties like this in our neighborhoods, demolish or rehabilitate them and to save our neighborhoods and improve the quality of living of our friends and neighbors,&#8221; he said.Need for reform?Hunter said he purchased 19 Carroll St. based on an older photo of the exterior and did not know the structure was condemned.Municipalities should be required to publicly disclose in writing on tax sale listings which properties are condemned or have numerous unresolved code violations so bidders are fully aware, he said. Tax sale buyers are prohibited from entering properties on the auction list before the sale.&#8220;You never know what you&#8217;re going to get, and you get the good, bad and ugly,&#8221; he said. &#8220;In this case I took a chance.&#8221;Hunter said he believes the Carroll Street structure could be saved but decided not to invest in repairs because he is negotiating with a nearby property owner who is interested in assuming ownership but not paying to purchase the structure.He said he is considering the option, even though it means he will lose his original investment. He also complained the city is trying to force him to pay $3,000 in fines related to code violations on the property.Some jurisdictions quickly pounce on tax sale buyers with citations for inherited violations, sucking up time and money that could be invested repairing properties, he said. Hunter stressed he is not suggesting leniency for buyers who walk away and refuse to communicate with municipal officials about problems with their properties, but he said he&#8217;s always been accessible.Most of the properties he purchased in the 2013 sale have been renovated and are occupied by tenants who have rent-to-own agreements &#8212; relieving the burden on municipalities that can&#8217;t afford to acquire and tear down all blighted structures in their borders, he said.His work included renovations on a mold-infested home on Wood Street in Harveys Lake, a trash-filled house on West Union Street in Nanticoke and a cottage on Lincoln Street in Conyngham Township that was caked with mud and packed with toppled belongings deserted by the prior owners after record September 2011 Susquehanna River flooding.&#8220;Most people would have walked away from some of the properties I&#8217;ve purchased and fixed up in Luzerne County,&#8221; he said. &#8220;At the end of the day, we fixed up a lot.&#8221;Hunter said he has purchased properties from tax auctions throughout the state to renovate and sell them through his business, Hunter Property Services LLC.Landing treasuresThe prospect of landing treasures keeps him going, though he plans to focus on sales closer to home in the future to reduce travel time managing his holdings. The upfront investment required to obtain properties that may not result in a return down the road is also a challenge, he said.&#8220;I started this business when I had no kids and a lot more time. Now I&#8217;m a dad,&#8221; he said.His 2013 acquisitions included the former &#8220;Phoenix&#8221; nightclub on the 200 block of East Chestnut Street in Hazleton, which has been labeled as one of many problem properties by city officials. Hunter said he believed he was bidding on the previous property on the auction list and was informed he was stuck with the bar property. He said he is negotiating a possible transfer of that property to a city investor.He also bought an antenna tower atop a South Main Street residential building in Wilkes-Barre that is assessed at $145,900 and was originally owned by Nextel. A Jim Thorpe entity bought it at a 2009 tax auction for $6,195 and failed to pay the taxes, which returned it to auction in 2013. Hunter said most of the valuable equipment was stripped by the time he became the owner. He plans to market the space to entities in the cell tower industry.Records show Hunter owes 2014 property taxes totaling $37,500 on the 17 properties he purchased at the 2013 sale.He pledged to pay all back taxes soon now that he has negotiated purchase agreements on most.Hunter&#8217;s idea of publicizing which auction properties are condemned or strapped with code violations has merit, said John Rodgers, head of Northeast Revenue Service LLC, which oversees the county&#8217;s tax claim office and tax auctions.Rodgers said he is willing to distribute lists of such properties at auctions if municipalities supply them.Scranton policyScranton in neighboring Lackawanna County furnishes this type of list for distribution at city auctions handled by Northeast Revenue, Rodgers said.Smith, Pittston&#8217;s code enforcement officer, said his office tries to work with new property owners &#8212; including tax auction buyers &#8212; and said at least one warning is issued before the city advances to citations. Fines are treated as a last resort because they can eat up property owner funds that could be spent on making repairs, which is the primary goal, he said.About 75 to 80 percent of property owners sufficiently address violations at the warning stage, he said.&#8220;There are only a few that are still condemned in the city that have not been remediated and could use a lot of attention,&#8221; Smith said.Another example is a tiny commercial building sandwiched at 104 S. Main St., he said. The property has a leaking roof, collapsed floor and has been cited for code violations dating back years.David Keller had purchased it from tax claim for $3,000 in 2007 and sold it to Ethan Riley for $16,000 in 2010. The Pittston-based Flatiron Developers LLC bought it for $10,000 in May, county records show.Virtual viewCity Redevelopment Authority representative Mike Lombardo told county council in a recent briefing about the land bank that part of the problem is a lack of research by some buyers.Some use online search maps that allow them to virtually view a property as it appeared during the last time the data was captured and then buy that property &#8220;sight unseen,&#8221; he said.Lombardo told council it&#8217;s not just people outside the area who get in over their heads with tax-sale acquisitions.&#8220;Let&#8217;s not just pick on out-of-town. Our own people do that too sometimes,&#8221; he said.<style>
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<div class="neCaption">Pittston Redevelopment Authority Executive Director Joe Chacke released this photo of a condemned home at 19 Carroll St., Pittston, as an example of a property that would have been torn down if the authority hadn&#8217;t been outbid at a Luzerne County back-tax auction in 2013. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/web1_pittstonhouse.jpg</photo0><caption0>Pittston Redevelopment Authority Executive Director Joe Chacke released this photo of a condemned home at 19 Carroll St., Pittston, as an example of a property that would have been torn down if the authority hadn&#8217;t been outbid at a Luzerne County back-tax auction in 2013. </caption0><photoCredit0>Submitted photo </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/web1_Chacke.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Chacke </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/web1_Chacke.jpg</photo1><caption1>Chacke </caption1><photoCredit1>Submitted photo </photoCredit1></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta>By Jennifer Learn-Andesjandes@www.timesleader.com</bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta>Reach Jennifer Learn-Andes at 570-991-6388 or on Twitter @TLJenLearnAndes.</shirttailMeta></div>

Will authority’s trump power help clean up blight in Pittston area?