Ingham County Land Bank has $56M impact on region, study says

Written by Lindsay VanHulle | LSJ

In its first seven years, the Ingham County Land Bank spawned more than $56 million in spinoff economic activity, created more than 400 jobs and helped boost the sale price of houses near its properties, a new Michigan State University study shows.

Land bank leaders and researchers from MSU’s Land Policy Institute today will release an economic impact report they believe is evidence the land bank helped prop up Lansing’s struggling housing market during the recession.

The study examined home sale price data from 2006 to 2012. MSU researchers determined that homes closest to a renovated land bank property sold for 5.2 percent more in that time period. Those farther away, between 500 and 1,000 feet, saw sale prices drop by 9.5 percent.

MSU included 2,350 home sales within 1,000 feet of 23 renovated land bank homes — a small number, it said, due to the bottoming market in the latter half of the decade.

“When you get a little further out, we couldn’t overcome the challenges in the broader marketplace as much,” said Eric Schertzing, Ingham County’s treasurer and land bank chairman. “We lessened the pain, if you will.”

Ingham County’s land bank is the collection point for tax-foreclosed properties. The land bank demolishes them, or renovates them in an attempt to sell them.

Since 2006, its first full year of operation, the land bank has taken in 919 properties, demolished 142, renovated 132 and sold 116, the study shows. Revenue, including from property sales, was roughly $10 million. That revenue, along with money from other sources — including federal dollars intended to stabilize neighborhoods — has been invested back into land bank-owned properties.

Schertzing said the land bank asked for the study to determine whether it was getting the results it wanted from taxpayers’ money. It paid MSU’s Land Policy Institute about $30,000 for the work, said Mary Beth Graebert, the institute’s associate director for programs and operations and a researcher on the report.

The report shows that the land bank generated $56.2 million in total economic impact and created 426 jobs, according to estimates based on a computer model. MSU researchers used the land bank’s total spending of $31 million during the seven-year window as a benchmark.

Local real estate agents say the findings reflect their experience marketing homes over the last several years.

“I would, frankly, expect the homes that are within 500 feet to have a greater appreciation than 5 percent,” said Bill MacLeod, president of Delta Township-based real estate firm Coldwell Banker Hubbell BriarWood Real Estate Co., who hasn’t seen the report. “If that’s all they had, it might be a reflection of the fact that over the last six years, the Greater Lansing area has had a major housing decline in value.”