Ever put an offer on a Sacramento Bank Owned Home that had code enforcement issues?

I wanted to share with you some of my notes from our meeting last night at the Elk Grove Real Estate Investment Club.

Now I want to stress to you these are my notes... In fact I am leaving the Sr. Code Enforcement Officer's name out of this post because I don't want to misrepresent what he said...so read at your own risk!

So if after that disclaimer you are still in... let's get started!

Mr. Sacramento Code Enforcement Officer said that he has seen an improvement over the last six months with the responsiveness of the banks when dealing with properties with code enforcement issues. He thinks this is due to banks hiring local agents to sell their assets who keep better care of the homes since they are actually in the same town...imagine that!

I wondered what would trigger the Sacramento code Enforcement crew to be called to a particular property. Mr. Code Enforcement Officer said that 95% of the issues they investigate are due to consumer complaints. These complaints mostly involve break-ins and vandalism to vacant properties. He estimated 60% or so of the complaints involved Sacramento Bank Owned Homes.

The first step when a complaint comes in is to investigate who is responsible for the subject property. So they will pull from several different database sources to try and tract down the owner's contact information. I would imagine that when dealing with a Sacramento bank owned home, it may prove to be more difficult to track down contact information for the asset manager (if not currently listed on the market).

Once the owner has been identified, they make an attempt to get the owner involved to secure the property.He stressed that they would prefer that option rather than the alternative. If they cannot get the owner on the phone, they will order the home to be boarded up (if a health and safety issue) at a cost to the owner. This cost is passed down in the form of a lien called a NOPEA (Notice of Pending Enforcement Action) against the property. This lien will cloud the title so that the county can be paid back at the time of sale. He estimated that the cost involved would be approximately $3,000 -$4,000 by the time you add up all of the staff time. I was really impressed by his concerns of keeping the costs down for the owner. He said it does not help anyone if they slap the property with outrageous fees. Their goal is to get the property fixed and habited, not create a bigger problem by hindering the sale of the home. I could't agree more!

We asked him about homes that are purchased with a second unit that was potentially non-permitted and not on record with the county. We referred to it being grandfathered in... He called it legal non conforming use. He mentioned if the structure was fairly new (less than 5 years) you could have issues. If it was older than 5 years old, as long as you left the unit alone and did very little rehab to it (check with the county for the actual percentages) there would be no issues.

If you would like to run your questions by a Sacramento Code Enforcement officer you can call (916) 874-7908 and speak with the officer of the day.

Another fact I found interesting... There are currently 90,000 units in the County of Sacramento. Yet there are only 6 enforcement officers on staff!

One last tidbit of information...

Did you know that the county of Sacramento will adopt a new rental inspection property as of the first of the year? Yep that is right! This really is a post of its own so subscribe to this blog below to make sure you get the details about this new program in my upcoming blog. You can receive any new posts to our blog via email by clicking the link below.

If you own property in the unincorporated areas of Sacramento County this new ordinance will affect you! I can tell you on its surface, it appears that this new ordinance will be much more landlord friendly when compared the City of Sacramento's rental inspection program. This is my opinion by the way!

I would recommend that you check my notes directly with the county at (916) 874-6444.

This blog by:

Team Newington
Sacramento Mortgage Planners
First Priority Financial
(916) 687-6868

	Subscribe to our Blog Feed! >>
	Follow us on Twitter.com! >>
	Visit Our Website! >>