Vacant houses in Englewood priced as low as $5,000 to provide equity to potential homebuyers

An initiative pilot to promote homeownership in Englewood has discounted more than 100 vacant houses to prices ranging from $5,000 to $25,000.

Many of the properties need extensive renovations and are listed on the lower end of that scale.

The Cook County Land Bank Authority program began in June and runs until Sept. 14. All of the vacant homes available in Englewood — 113 residential properties — are listed for potential homebuyers on the organization’s website database, said Jessica Caffrey, executive director of the organization.

Prior city-backed initiatives to reduce the number of vacant lots and homes throughout the city’s South Side included the $1 lot purchasing program. It was replaced in 2022 by a similar program that required buyers to pay at least 10% of the market rate.

The land bank launched in 2013 as a way to combat and rehabilitate vacant, abandoned or foreclosed properties in Cook County.

Caffrey, who began her position at the end of 2022, noticed “most of (their) inventory” was in Englewood, and was inspired to do something special ahead of Juneteenth.

“We know the No. 1 way to build generational wealth is through homeownership,” Caffrey said. “This 50% discount is a way to help this neighborhood that has been harmed by all of the redlining, all of the predatory lending that has stripped Black wealth — in which white Americans have had an over 100-year head start.”

Also, a purchasers’ assistance program allows the agency to gift up to $20,000 — able to be stacked with other grants — to prospective buyers to put toward down payments, closing costs and inspections. It will be up to the homeowner to renovate the property.

“We have different partners who are able to offer ... loans and things of that nature, so you can get a loan to repair the house,” she said.

The homes were originally priced according to foreclosure market value, Caffrey said, and then marked down by the land bank. The 50% discount was added on top of that, she said.

In fewer than three weeks there have been 120 applications from interested buyers. The agency is finalizing 22 offers.

“By having them rehabbed either by the direct homeowner or by the developer who would sell it to a homeowner, you still put them back on the tax roll,” she said. “It increases the community’s wealth. … When you rehab one or two houses on a block, you just don’t affect that block, but you affect the neighborhood.

“When you provide equity to people, you meet them where they are, and the system may look different than how it looks for someone else,” Caffrey said.

The Resident Association of Greater Englewood and three other groups were each gifted a house to renovate and sell after assisting the land bank with homeownership programs for residents.

Asiaha Butler, founder of RAGE, said she wants to show RAGE members exactly what it takes to own a home.

“The ultimate goal is to land a new homeowner here in Englewood,” Butler said. “But I also think it’s important to use this as a demo house so that we can learn together the processes and what it takes and to teach people in real time.”

The land bank’s new pilot program is an innovative way for city organizations to help their communities, Butler said.

“It’s really difficult to sell a brand new home to someone when you have five vacancies on the block,” she said. “Just because we have land doesn’t mean you should just build something shiny and new and not preserve some of these structures that are really worthy of preserving.”