Detroit Land Bank deed restrictions

[Jivonna B.]

Hello, has anyone ever worked with Detroit Land Bank deed restrictions? The owner says that its a 3 year restriction, I've heard of landlords renting them out until the time is over but has anyone worked around a sale? 

[Greg Scott]

I'd be very careful.  Detroit bureaucracy is still a mess of red tape and poor record keeping (and possibly corruption).

I have a friend who bought a house in Brush Park, back when you could buy them for almost nothing.  He spent years trying to buy the abandoned lot next door.  He would take days off of work so he could talk to various people at the city trying to understand the process for buying it.  After 4 or 5 years of doing this he confirmed that the only way to buy it was at auction and he was on a list to be notified when that happened.  Not much later, he learned the city had sold it to some developer that was going to build condos ther.   Then he got a foreclosure notice because his neighbor across the street didn't pay the taxes on the property across the street.  That took 6 months to straighten out.

After all that mess, they decided to abandon their plans to live in the city.  They sold last year and moved out of state.