Cook County selling 3,200 properties, mostly on South Side, for a song

Cook County officials are looking to unload almost 3,200 properties at below market rates in hopes of finding buyers who will get them back on the tax rolls.

The Cook County Land Bank is offering up the properties in its latest round of efforts to spruce up city and suburban neighborhoods, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Most of the properties are in areas hit hard by the 2008 foreclosure crisis and are delinquent on taxes. The land bank program clears the back taxes and offers up the properties at bargain prices — sometimes as low as a few thousand dollars — to developers and others willing to acquire them and begin paying taxes moving forward.

The latest round of properties involves more than 2,400 in the city — the vast majority on the South Side — and more than 750 in the suburbs.

“In these neighborhoods, without this sort of intervention there is no market force that allows for a reset of these properties,” Rob Rose, executive director of the land bank, told the Tribune. “We have properties that are vacant and the tax burden is increasing every year and new taxes owed every year. The thing that makes them unattractive in the first place is the taxes are higher than the value of the property.

“At one point there’s never a way for these to be turned around. We are resetting these properties and allowing these neighborhoods to receive investment.”

The city of Chicago has a similar effort, known as the Large Lots Program, that allows residents to buy nearby distressed properties for $1. Participants in the program have used it to create community gardens, side yards and even for redevelopment. [Chicago Tribune] — John O’Brien