Making Collaboration Work: Four Lessons from Chicago CDFIs

by Alexander von Hoffman
and Matthew Arck

Although many in the housing and community development field are excited by the idea of collaboration between organizations, such partnerships are often easier said than done. In practice, as our new case study of a partnership in Chicago shows, effective collaboration requires the partners to be thoughtful, nimble, and flexible.

The case study analyzes the work of the Chicago CDFI Collaborative, a partnership of the Community Investment Corporation (CIC), the Chicago Community Loan Fund (CCLF), and Neighborhood Lending Services (NLS). In 2014, the collaborative received a 3-year, $5 million grant from PRO Neighborhoods, a $125 million, 5-year grant program of JPMorgan Chase & Co. that supports community development financial institutions (CDFIs) pursuing innovative collaborations. The Chicago CDFI Collaborative used the money to restore abandoned and dilapidated housing in economically depressed neighborhoods, such as Englewood and West Woodlawn, which were particularly affected by foreclosures in the financial crisis. To do so, it provided loans and technical assistance that helped small-scale investors and owner-occupants purchase and rehabilitate one-to-four-unit buildings, which comprise nearly half of the affordable rental stock in Chicago.

The Chicago CDFI Collaborative helped a small-scale investor acquire and rehabilitate this home in the Chatham neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. (Photo by Nathan Hardy.)

By 
By early 2017, the collaborative had lent nearly $25 million, acquired or financed the acquisition of 430 properties, and helped to preserve almost 600 housing units in low-income communities.  In interviews, leaders of the Chicago CDFIs identified four important lessons that emerged from their work.

1. Try new approaches

Although each member of the Chicago CDFI Collaborative is a well-established community lender, none of them had focused extensively on abandoned one-to-four-unit buildings. The new partnership enabled the officers of these groups to tackle this vexing problem on a large scale. The lesson, according to Robin Coffey, Chief Credit Officer of NLS, is that instead of “trying to play it safe” by simply expanding the volume of their current lending practices, collaborating CDFIs should imagine “how can we work together to change the way that we’re approaching something” so they can better aid residents of troubled low-income communities.

Some CDFI leaders might be wary of this approach because they perceive other CDFIs as rivals, but participants in the Chicago collaborative said that is not the case. In the CDFI field, Wendell Harris, Director of Lending Operations for CCLF, asserts, “there is so much work that needs to be done, there really is no discussion of us being competitors.”

2. Pursue many lines of attack

CDFIs must develop and carry out a multi-faceted strategy to overcome the multiple and systemic obstacles to revitalization in depressed neighborhoods. One way to do this is by targeting neighborhoods that have other revitalization programs already in place. For example, the Chicago CDFIs prioritized lending in seven neighborhoods where their organizations already were working.  Moreover, since NLS’s parent organization, Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, also dispersed grants from the City of Chicago that help low- and moderate-income homeowners improve the exteriors of their homes, NLS was able to direct some of those outside grants to the same neighborhoods targeted by the Chicago CDFI Collaborative. According to Coffey, this reinforced the coalition’s revitalization efforts. When a potential buyer saw improvements being made to other buildings, the NLS leader explained, he or she would conclude that the neighborhood was “not as bad as I thought.”

In addition, the neighborhoods selected by the Chicago CDFIs were part of a larger set of neighborhoods that received funding from the City of Chicago’s Micro-Market Recovery Program, which supports a variety of revitalization efforts. Adding the PRO Neighborhoods funds to these other tools, such as financial assistance and community organizing, Coffey noted, “made it that much more effective.”

3. Communicate regularly and in-person

Leaders of the collaborating CDFIs stressed that regularly scheduled, in-person meetings were a key to their success. Monthly meetings facilitated open communication, which in turn helped create an effective, adaptive partnership. Doing so in face-to-face meetings rather than conference calls meant that the partners had fewer distractions and were more likely to focus on the work at hand.

The face-to-face meetings also helped partners discover issues sooner than they might have otherwise, and, according to Coffey, gave them a “sense of urgency” to solve the problems that emerged in their discussions. Conferring in person, Harris added, encouraged the partners to share information about their networks of people in the field as well as details about properties that were under discussion. In one meeting, for instance, CIC’s representative told the group that it had acquired a building in a particular neighborhood, and NLS’s representative suggested an owner-occupant who would likely be interested in acquiring and rehabbing it.  

4. Expect the unexpected and adapt to it

Leaders of collaborating CDFIs must be prepared to respond to unexpected conditions on the ground. Going into the venture, the partners in Chicago initially thought the best strategy was to target long-vacant homes for rehabilitation. However, Coffey recalled, “we learned really quickly that getting people into homes so that they wouldn’t become vacant” was easier for the homeowner and better for the block. The partners also discovered that, despite the robust technical assistance provided by the Chicago CDFI Collaborative, many potential owner-occupants remained doubtful they possessed the expertise necessary to rehab long-vacant properties. To adapt, NLS’s leaders broadened their strategy to include run-down buildings that were not currently vacant, but were likely to become vacant if major repairs were not done in the near future.

The members of the Chicago Collaborative also encountered unexpected difficulty when they tried to carry out their core strategy to acquire and renovate large numbers of distressed properties in close proximity. In response, they expanded their efforts beyond simply acquiring foreclosed buildings to include buying tax liens on properties and purchasing and reconverting condominiums back into single properties. Without such changes, said Andre Collins, vice-president of acquisition and disposition strategy for CIC, the Collaborative would have rehabilitated fewer properties and preserved fewer affordable units than they did.

Taken together, these practices can help collaborative efforts succeed, which, Harris says, is particularly important because “it takes a collaborative effort to make things better.”

Are Renters and Homeowners in Rural Areas Cost-Burdened?

by Sonali Mathur
Research Assistant

As our latest report and interactive map illustrate, housing affordability is one of the biggest challenges faced by owner and renter households in most metro areas across the US. However, maps that use metro areas to display the local-level story miss the fact that cost burdens are also a major concern in non-metro/rural areas and are severely high for millions of low-income rural households. To address this gap in visibility, we created a set of interactive maps (Figure 1) using 2010-2014 American Community Survey (ACS) estimates. In doing so, we found that housing cost burden rates in some rural counties are significant. We also learned that rural counties of the Northeast and west, that are adjacent to high-cost metros, have even higher cost burden rates than those in parts of the Midwest.

 (Click to launch interactive map; may take a moment to load.)

Housing cost burdens are particularly stark for rural renters. Indeed, fully 41 percent of all rural renters are cost-burdened (meaning they spend 30 percent or more of their income on housing), including 21 percent who are severely cost-burdened (spending 50 percent or more of their income on housing). Among owners, 22 percent are cost-burdened including nearly 9 percent who are severely cost-burdened. Overall, nearly 5 million rural households pay more than 30 percent of their monthly income toward housing and more than 2.1 million rural households spend more than half of their income on housing.

And cost burdens have been growing in rural areas (Figure 2). Since 2000, housing costs in rural areas have increased over 5 percent and one in every four rural households is now cost-burdened. Comparing burden rates from 2014 to those from 2000 in the maps above shows the increasing cost burdens in many rural areas over the last decade, including areas in and around the traditional Black Belt counties of the Southeast and areas in the west and Northeast that are contiguous to areas that had high cost burdens in 2000.

Source: JCHS tabulations of US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2010-2014 and census 2000 for all non-metropolitan census tracts. 

Rural affordability issues tend to receive less attention due to a perception that housing costs are lower in rural areas, which is true as compared to metro areas. According to the 2013 American Housing Survey (AHS) the median monthly rent in metro areas is $800, while the median monthly rent in non-metro areas is $530. Monthly owner costs are also fully 43 percent lower in non-metro areas than in metro areas. However, low incomes and poverty are prevalent in rural areas. According to estimates from the American Community Survey, fully 15 percent of all households in non-metro area census tracts earn less than $15,000 annually and nearly 36 percent earn less than $30,000. Poverty is a widespread problem in rural areas, with 18 percent of population living in poverty compared to 15 percent in metro areas.

In addition to poverty and affordability, rural areas face several other major housing challenges. The share of housing stock that would be considered inadequate, as measured by the number of units lacking complete plumbing or a complete kitchen, is higher in non-metro areas. The share of units lacking complete plumbing is 4 percent in non-metro areas, compared to 2 percent nationally.

Among units in non-metro areas that lack complete plumbing facilities, 10.3 percent also have more than one occupant per room (compared to 8.2 percent in metro areas). This suggests that in non-metro areas there is likely to be overcrowding in the same units that lack adequacy. It is probable that the households facing affordability problems are dealing with it alongside other issues.

While it is true that cost burdens are high and a growing problem in most metro areas across the country, it is important to remember that non-metro areas also face increasing housing affordability issues, in addition to other housing-related challenges and should not be forgotten in policy discussions of a comprehensive approach to the escalating housing affordability problem.

Housing Inadequacy Remains a Problem for the Lowest-Income Renters

Irene Lew
Research Analyst

In the early 1970s, in response to growing concerns about the housing conditions of poor families, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) developed a measure of housing adequacy for its American Housing Survey (AHS) that continues to be used by the agency today. This adequacy measure was originally designed to evaluate the extent to which the national housing stock met the standard of “a decent home and a suitable living environment” established by the Housing Act of 1949. While the condition of the housing stock has improved over the past several decades, the rental stock is still three times more likely than the owner-occupied stock to be considered inadequate. And problems persist among the most affordable rentals.

While fairly complex, the AHS adequacy measure factors in various housing problems related to plumbing, heating, electrical wiring, and maintenance. Using this AHS measure, the majority of the nation’s rental housing stock is in physically adequate condition. As of 2013, just 3 percent of occupied rental units were categorized as severely inadequate and 6 percent were moderately inadequate. In fact, the adequacy of the rental stock has improved over the past decade, with the share of rentals categorized as physically inadequate declining from about 11 percent in 2003 to 9 percent in 2013. 

Notes: Inadequate units lack complete bathrooms, running water, electricity, or have other deficiencies. 

Source: JCHS tabulations of HUD, American Housing Surveys.

Stricter building codes have certainly helped to encourage higher quality, particularly the construction of units with complete plumbing and heating systems. As a result, severe physical deficiencies have been rare among the rental stock, especially among newer rentals. Just 1 percent of rentals built 2003 and later was classified as severely inadequate, compared to 4 percent of those built prior to 1960.

It is noteworthy, however, that the AHS adequacy measure does not account for certain health-related quality issues such as the presence of mold or structural issues such as holes in the roof or foundation, so housing quality problems may in fact occur at higher rates than the survey reports. And although physical deficiencies have become less common among the nation’s rental housing stock, housing problems disproportionately appear in units occupied by the lowest-income renters. In 2013, 11 percent of units occupied by extremely low-income renters (those with incomes less than or equal to 30 percent of area medians) were physically inadequate, compared to just 7 percent of those with incomes above 80 percent of area medians.

Notes: Extremely low / very low /  low income is defined as up to 30% / 30–50% / 50–80% of area median income. Inadequate units lack complete bathrooms, running water, electricity, or have other deficiencies.

Source: JCHS tabulations of HUD, 2013 American Housing Survey.

The lowest-income households also accounted for the largest share of renters reporting overcrowded conditions and physical housing problems such as toilet breakdowns, exposed electrical wiring, heating equipment breakdowns lasting six hours or more and the presence of rats in the unit. 

Notes: Extremely low / very low /  low income is defined as up to 30% / 30–50% / 50–80% of area median income Overcrowded conditions refer to units where there are more than two people per bedroom. Holes in the floor are those that are about four inches across.  

Source: JCHS tabulations of HUD, 2013 American Housing Survey.

Matthew Desmond’s most recent book, Evicted, vividly captures these statistics, drawing attention to the grim housing conditions of families in low-rent units in inner-city Milwaukee who must live with the constant presence of roaches and other vermin, clogged sinks and bathtubs, holes in their windows, and broken front doors.

Rentals occupied by extremely low-income households in central cities have the highest physical inadequacy rates, especially those located in small multifamily buildings with 2-4 units. Indeed, 16 percent of these units were categorized as inadequate, compared to 12 percent of those in buildings with 50 or more units. As I pointed out in a previous post, small multifamilies are a critical source of low-cost housing because they tend to charge lower rents than those in much larger structures, but much of this stock is rather old and at higher risk of loss from the affordable stock due to deterioration.

As this recent NPR piece suggests, the narrow margins for mom-and-pop landlords operating in low-income neighborhoods do not provide sufficient incentive for landlords to make improvements or repairs in a timely manner. Indeed, according to the American Housing Survey, 13 percent of extremely low-income renters reported in 2013 that the owner of their unit usually did not start major repairs or maintenance quickly enough, compared to less than half that share (6 percent) among higher-income renters with incomes above 80 percent of area medians.

The prevalence of housing deficiencies among units occupied by the lowest-income renters highlights the importance of bolstering building code enforcement efforts at the state and local levels. However, municipalities are often faced with tight budgets that lead to dwindling code enforcement teams. Indeed, according to one estimate in 2013, Cleveland and Detroit, among others, have cut their code enforcement workforce by about half since the middle of the last decade. Cities like Baltimore, Portland, and the San Francisco Bay Area are also facing shortages of building inspectors that make it difficult to deal with building code violations. While increased code enforcement can identify landlords who are failing to maintain their properties, this could also lead to unstable housing situations for current tenants. Renters may withhold rent or call local building inspectors as a tactic to push landlords to make necessary repairs, but this could lead to eviction threats or the initiation of a formal eviction process due to nonpayment of rent.

At the federal level, budgetary constraints have also impacted efforts to address the physical deficiencies among the aging public housing stock, which was largely built before 1970. Federal appropriations for the public housing capital fund fell by 34 percent over the past decade and HUD is faced with an estimated backlog of $26 billion in capital maintenance and repairs (as of 2010). HUD’s housing choice voucher and project-based rental assistance programs, which subsidize rentals for low-income households in the private market, require landlords to pass annual or biennial inspections for housing quality. However, the public housing stock is not subject to regular inspections and has largely been prohibited from using private capital to finance capital needs and repairs. As a result, compared to other types of assisted rentals, physical housing problems are more common among the public housing stock. In 2013, over half (53 percent) of public housing units had more than two heating equipment breakdowns lasting at least six hours and 13 percent of units had water leaks due to equipment failures within the previous 12 months.

Living in unsafe, physically inadequate housing can lead to adverse health and developmental outcomes for low-income families. Indeed, recent research confirms that children exposed to defects such as leaking roofs, broken windows, rodents, and nonfunctioning heaters or stoves were more likely to experience emotional and behavioral problems. Among five housing characteristics studied—quality, stability, affordability, ownership, and receipt of housing assistance—poor physical quality of housing was the most consistent and strongest predictor of emotional and behavioral problems in low-income children and adolescents. Poor housing conditions such as mold, chronic dampness, water leaks, and heating, plumbing, and electrical deficiencies, are also associated with health risks like respiratory illness and asthma. These findings underscore the urgent need for cities to prioritize code enforcement and work collaboratively with nonprofit tenants’ rights groups to deal with landlords who are not responsive to requests for necessary repairs.

Can Demolitions and Property Rehabilitations Alter Nearby Crime Patterns?

by Jon Spader

Senior Research
Associate

The potential for vacant and abandoned structures to attract crime has long concerned local policymakers. Newly vacant structures may attract crime, to the extent that they contain appliances, copper pipes, or other targets for burglary and theft. Additionally, abandoned structures offer suitable locations for criminal activity away from the public eye, such as public order offenses like vandalism or drug use. The presence of such crimes can reduce public safety for other neighborhood residents and require public dollars to police.

The foreclosure crisis sparked increased anxiety about these issues in many communities where concentrated foreclosures left properties vacant. Indeed, a large and growing body of research indicates that foreclosures caused increased crime during this period, largely as a result of the vacancies that occurred during the foreclosure process. In addition to the possibilities mentioned above, researchers hypothesized that foreclosures might increase crime through several additional channels: falling property values might reduce the local resources available for crime prevention; turnover of neighborhood residents might reduce the extent of monitoring in public spaces; and, reduced maintenance might alter offenders’ perceptions about whether the unit is occupied.

These potential vectors for increased crime raise important questions about what options are available to policymakers who seek to prevent vacant properties from becoming sources of blight to their surrounding communities. A recent Joint Center for Housing Studies working paper examines one possible strategy, measuring the extent to which demolitions and property rehabilitations effectively reduced the incidence of crime on or near foreclosed and vacant properties. Specifically, this paper measures the impacts of demolitions and property rehabilitations funded by the Neighborhood Stabilization Program between 2009 and 2013 in Cleveland, Chicago, and Denver. For more information about the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, additional analyses are available here, here, and here.

These three maps below show the location of demolitions and property rehabilitations in Cleveland, Chicago, and Denver. The number, type, and location of NSP activities are displayed, overlaying this information with shading that illustrates the underlying rates of crime in the neighborhoods surrounding the property demolitions and rehabilitations. The working paper measures the average impact of demolitions and property rehabilitations on the incidence of crime that occurs on the property or within 250 feet in any direction. This distance increment reflects the impact of these investments on the property itself or in the areas immediately adjacent to the property (relative to the trend observed in other areas of the neighborhood).

In addition, the map for Denver shows a small number of financing activities which provided down payment assistance to low-income homebuyers to purchase homes that had recently experienced foreclosure. Unfortunately, the number of such properties is too small to allow similar analysis of whether the reoccupancy of these properties affected the incidence of crime or near the financing properties.

 

The results suggest that the demolitions conducted by the NSP grantee in Cleveland reduced the incidence of burglary and theft within 250 feet of the demolished properties. The measured impacts of demolitions were present during the period of the demolition and persisted for one year following the demolition, before dissipating. In total, these estimates imply a reduction of just over 1 reported property crime for every 2 demolitions completed.

The findings do not show similar impacts for the observed set of property rehabilitations in Cleveland, Chicago, and Denver, nor for the observed set of demolitions in Chicago. Because the sample sizes are much smaller for these activities, we are unable to determine whether these activities had no impact on crime, or whether this outcome is due to limitations of the study’s data and methods. For example, the set of property rehabilitations conducted in each city, as well as the set of demolitions in Chicago, each included a heterogeneous set of property  and neighborhood types, which may limit the estimates of the ‘average effect’ of these investments.

Nonetheless, the findings carry useful implications about the potential for demolitions to alter nearby crime patterns. The direct implication is that a strategy of concentrated demolitions may be effective in altering neighborhood crime patterns under certain conditions. The map of Cleveland above illustrates the extent to which Cleveland clustered its demolition activity, targeting its demolitions primarily to neighborhoods with high levels of vacancy and abandonment. The reductions in crime surrounding these demolitions add to the potential benefits that policymakers should consider in weighing the use of demolition to remove vacant and abandoned properties. The caveat is that the size of the impacts is relatively modest. Policymakers will need to weigh the overall benefits of demolishing vacant and abandoned structures against the costs—which averaged $13,970 per demolition for the NSP program.

Some caution is also needed in applying the findings to other neighborhoods and cities. As the above discussion suggests, the estimates reflect Cleveland’s use of concentrated demolitions in neighborhoods with high levels of vacancy and abandonment and moderate levels of crime. Their demolition strategy might therefore be readily applied to nearby Midwestern cities facing similar challenges, but could be less exportable to neighborhoods with different levels of crime, different built environments, or that are located in different regions of the United States.

Not All Hard-Hit Neighborhoods Recover Equally

by Jackelyn Hwang
Meyer Fellow

Foreclosures disproportionately hit minority neighborhoods across the U.S. during the housing crisis. In Boston, over 80 percent of foreclosures took place in just five of its 15 planning districts—Dorchester, East Boston, Hyde Park, Mattapan, and Roxbury; nearly 75 percent of the residents in these five districts are non-white, while the remainder of Boston is 70 percent white. While we know foreclosures took place more frequently in these minority areas, we know less about the paths that foreclosed properties followed and whether these paths are similar across these hard-hit areas.

In a new working paper, I show that foreclosed properties within the hardest-hit areas of Boston have quite different trajectories, which leave some sections more disadvantaged than others in the housing market recovery. Integrating several data sources (foreclosure deeds, real estate sales transactions, property tax records, crime and 911 reports, constituent service requests, inspection violations, and building permits), I explore the following questions:

• Who buys foreclosures? 
• Do they maintain them? 
• Do these characteristics affect the quality of the local neighborhood?

As in many other states, if a property owner in Massachusetts defaults on his or her mortgage and is unable to stop foreclosure proceedings (by paying the debt or negotiating new mortgage terms), the property is sold at a public auction. About 15 percent of the residential foreclosures (1-3 family units and condominiums) in Boston were purchased by investors directly at auction, but most properties remained in the hands of the bank following the auction. Eventually, the bank resells the property, but this can take many months and even years. During this time, the property is often unoccupied, which can lead to declining conditions of the property and the area around it. A local ordinance has attempted to stymy this by requiring owners of foreclosing properties, including lending institutions, to register with the City. Once the property is purchased from the bank, the property may follow many paths: owner-occupied or rented, fixed up, or left to decline.

The findings show that within Boston’s hard-hit planning districts, not all foreclosed properties and their surrounding areas have experienced the same trajectory in the wake of the housing crisis and recovery. Investors were more likely than owner-occupants to purchase foreclosed properties in sections that had greater shares of blacks, even after accounting for socioeconomic and housing characteristics of the areas and characteristics of the foreclosed property. Indeed, only around one in five foreclosed properties were purchased by owner-occupants in areas that were majority black, but nearly one in three were purchased by owner-occupants in areas that were less than 50 percent black. Moreover, individual investors were more likely than both owner-occupants and larger investors to purchase foreclosed properties in sections with greater shares of foreign-born residents.

When I examine how well new owners maintain their properties, the types of buyers who tended to concentrate in areas with higher shares of blacks were also less likely to maintain their properties. Foreclosed properties purchased by investors registered as trusts—which include non-owner-occupant family, realty, and land trusts and carry more legal risk than corporations, but also maintain anonymity and do not pay state fees—were 2.5 times more likely than owner-occupants to have maintenance-related inspection violations and service requests placed against them and were half as likely to obtain permits to fix their properties. Other types of investors were also more likely than owner-occupants to have maintenance-related inspection violations.

Lastly, areas where a higher percentage of foreclosures are purchased by investors registered as trusts also have higher rates of property-related issues in the local area. The lower quality of property maintenance and greater rates of blight in particular sections of these hard-hit areas can detract investment in the areas that need it most. Nonetheless, the distribution of various types of foreclosure buyers are not associated with local levels of crime and social disorder, such as loitering, but areas with higher foreclosure rates had more crime and disorder.

Consistent with a long line of sociological research on residential segregation and residential preferences, minority areas, and certainly those with high foreclosure rates, crime, and disorder, are in the least demand by all residents. Larger investors appear to be more willing or financially able to take on these assets, but how they maintain their properties has important implications for the future stability of these neighborhoods. After all, visible blight serves as an important cue for potential investors and households.

What can be done? Recognizing that owner-occupants may not be the only possible solution for foreclosed properties, given the relatively large stock over the last several years, policies can work to: 

1. Develop financial incentives and provide resources to ensure that investors purchasing foreclosed properties maintain them; and, 
2. Create resources and opportunities for smaller, local investors or owner-occupants to purchase and maintain properties in areas struggling to recover.

Creative programs like the Landlord Entrepreneurship Affordability Program, which supports low- and moderate-income families in purchasing, rehabilitating, and serving as an owner-occupant landlord in small-scale rental properties, are what truly distressed areas need. 

New Report: U.S. Home Improvement Industry Outpaces the Broader Housing Recovery

In the aftermath of the Great Recession, the U.S. home improvement industry has fared much better than the broader housing market, according to our new report. Emerging Trends in the Remodeling Market. While residential construction is many years away from a full recovery, the home improvement industry could post record-level spending in 2015.

A number of factors have contributed to the strengthening remodeling market: following the housing bust, many households that might have traded up to more desirable homes decided instead to improve their current homes; federal and state stimulus programs encouraged energy-efficient upgrades; and many rental property owners, responding to a surge in demand, reinvested in their properties to attract new tenants.

Additionally, with the economy strengthening and house prices recovering, spending on discretionary home improvements (remodels and additions that improve homeowner lifestyles but which can be deferred when economic conditions are uncertain) rose by almost $6 billion between 2011 and 2013, the first increase since 2007.

Improvement spending, however, has not been evenly distributed across the country. Homeowners in the nation’s top 50 remodeling markets accounted for a disproportionately large share—nearly 60 percent—of overall improvement spending. Thanks primarily to their higher incomes and home values, owners in metro areas spent 50 percent more on improvement projects on average than their non-metro counterparts in 2013 (see interactive map).  

The remodeling industry also faces a radically different landscape than before the recession. “After years of declining revenue and high failure rates, the home improvement industry is, to some extent, reinventing itself,” says Kermit Baker, director of our Remodeling Futures Program. “The industry is finding new ways to address emerging growth markets and rebuild its workforce to better serve an evolving customer base.”

Looking ahead, there are several opportunities for further growth in the remodeling industry. The retiring baby boom generation is already boosting demand for accessibility improvements that will enable owners to remain safely in their homes as they age. Additionally, growing environmental awareness holds out promise that sustainable home improvements and energy-efficient upgrades will continue to be among the fastest growing market segments.

Millennials, however, are the key to the remodeling outlook. “The millennials’ increasing presence in the rental market has already helped lift improvement spending in that segment,” says Chris Herbert, managing director of the Joint Center. “It’s only a matter of time before this generation becomes more active in the housing market, supporting stronger growth in home improvement spending for decades to come.”

Download the full report, infographic, and media kit.

Join the Twitter conversation with #HarvardRemodeling 

The Role of Investors in Acquiring Foreclosed Properties in Low and Moderate Income Neighborhoods

by Chris Herbert
Research Director

In the fall of 2011 the What Works Collaborative convened a meeting of researchers, policy makers, and practitioners to help frame a research agenda to inform policy making on issues related to housing finance over the next several years. Among the issues discussed at the convening was the challenge of obtaining mortgage financing in lower‐income neighborhoods heavily impacted by the foreclosure crisis. At the time, the foreclosure crisis had yet to show signs of abating even as the main federal initiative to address the impact of concentrated foreclosures on communities across the country, the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP), was beginning to wind down. Participants noted that while the NSP had been plagued by problems that had stymied efforts to expend program funding, private investors had emerged in markets around the country as a significant source of demand for foreclosed properties in heavily impacted neighborhoods, with the volume of financial investment made through private channels easily dwarfing those made with NSP backing. Yet, while it was clear that private investors were playing a substantial role in absorbing foreclosed properties and directing substantial capital into these areas, there was little systematic information available about the scale of investor activity, who the investors were, what strategies they were pursuing with the properties they acquired, or what the consequences would be for these neighborhoods of this substantial increase in investor activity.

To address this void, the What Works Collaborative funded a series of case studies in four market areas across the country representing a range of market conditions. In each market, the researchers focused on the activities of investors in acquiring foreclosed properties in low‐ and moderate‐income neighborhoods in the metropolitan area core county. The purpose of the research was to identify in each area the extent to which foreclosed properties were being acquired by investors, what scale investors were operating at, the strategies that investors were pursuing with these properties, whether they were engaging in rehabilitation of these properties, and ultimately what impact their activities were likely to have on the surrounding community. To address these issues the case studies combined quantitative analysis of available data on transactions involving foreclosed properties with qualitative information gathered through interviews with government officials, nonprofit organizations, investors, real estate agents, lenders, and other informed observers.  These are the four case studies, as well as a summary and synthesis of findings from the report series:

• The Role of Investors in Acquiring Foreclosed Properties in Low- and Moderate-Income Neighborhoods: A Review of Findings from Four Case Studies (Christopher Herbert, Irene Lew, and Rocio Sanchez-Moyano)
   
• Investors and Housing Markets in Las Vegas: A Case Study (Allan Mallach)
   
• The Role of Investors in The One-To-Three Family REO Market: The Case of Cleveland (Frank Ford, April Hirsh, et al.)
   
• The Role of Investors in Acquiring Foreclosed Properties in Boston (Christopher Herbert, Laurie Lambie-Hanson, Irene Lew, and Rocio Sanchez-Moyano)
   
• The Role of Investors in the Single-Family Market in Distressed Neighborhoods: The Case of Atlanta (Dan Immergluck)
  
  

The Role of Investors in Acquiring Foreclosed Properties in Boston

by Irene Lew and Rocio Sanchez-Moyano
Research Assistants

In the fall of 2011, a meeting of researchers, policy makers, and practitioners convened by the What Works Collaborative highlighted the dearth of research examining the role of private investors in purchasing foreclosed properties in lower-income neighborhoods heavily impacted by the foreclosure crisis. To address this void, the collaborative funded a series of case studies in four market areas across the US that represented a range of market conditions: Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland, and Las Vegas. The case study for Boston, which was just released, focuses on the activity of investors in the city of Boston and other communities located in Suffolk County, Massachusetts.  (Note: the Atlanta case study was published earlier this year; Cleveland and Las Vegas are not yet published.)

The Boston study entailed an examination of data from The Warren Group, a third-party-vendor, on real estate transactions in Suffolk County from 2007 to 2012, as well as interviews with government officials, non-profit organizations, lenders, real estate brokers, and investors in foreclosed properties. Excluding government and nonprofit organizations, investors were identified in the transaction data either as those who had acquired more than one foreclosed property over the period or those who had purchased a foreclosed property under a corporate or legal name. Key findings from the report include:

• Investors accounted for a large share – 44 percent – of transactions between 2007 and 2012.
• In all, a total of 437 unique investors were identified.  Most of these investors can be classified as “mom and pop investors” who bought only one or two properties, but 33 investors each purchased 10 or more properties and accounted for more than 50 percent of all investor purchases. (Click table to enlarge.)
  
  

Note: Percentages do not sum to 100 due to rounding.

Source: Authors’ calculations of data from the Warren Group.

• While private investors operating on a national scale have received substantial media attention in the last year, in Suffolk County the largest investors had overwhelmingly local roots: 18 were based in Suffolk County and only two were headquartered out of state.
• Large investors were somewhat more likely to invest in highly distressed neighborhoods (35 percent of their foreclosure acquisitions, compared to 31 percent of the acquisitions of all foreclosure investors), and the majority of purchases were small multifamily buildings (2-4 units) or condos. Alan Mallach has defined a typology of investors in homes in distressed neighborhoods, with a key distinction being between those who seek to make their profit by quickly flipping properties to other buyers and those who seek to profit by holding onto properties for rental income. The study found that in Suffolk County a buy-and-hold strategy was most often pursued by large investors, supported by the healthy demand for rental housing in Boston. Although a few investors did turn over a majority of their purchases in a fairly short time, others who held onto most of their properties also sold a portion of their acquisitions when the right opportunity arose.  Overall, 66 percent of foreclosures purchased by large investors between 2007 and 2012 were still owned by these entities as of February 2013. 
• Cash was the most common form of financing, but hard-money loans from investor-affiliated lenders and mortgages from small community banks played an important role (Figure 1).
  
  

Note: Includes all legal variations of the same lender. Some investor-affiliated lenders have multiple iterations. Mortgages include only primary-lien purchase-money loans, as identified by the authors.

Source: Authors’ calculations of data from the Warren Group.

• Given the significant presence of large investors in more distressed neighborhoods, this study primarily focused on the activities of these investors. However, based on anecdotal information, small investors face more challenges than large investors in distressed property acquisition, rehabilitation, and management due to more limited financial resources. 

The primary motivation for this study was to gain a better understanding of the extent and nature of investor activity in acquiring foreclosed properties in Suffolk County in order to determine the impact investors are having on the neighborhoods where foreclosures have been common.  In the end, it can be difficult to predict the long-term impacts of investor activity.  On the one hand, investors have channeled a significant amount of capital into distressed neighborhoods, which may have helped absorb the high volume of foreclosed properties and stabilized conditions in those communities.  Our research team found that predatory flipping and irresponsible rental property management in Boston was rare.

On the other hand, there is concern that investors who acquire foreclosed properties may not maintain them to the same degree as owner-occupants.  In interviews, investors reported that due to factors such as the high market values of the primarily multifamily housing stock in Boston and the increased competition to attract tenants with Housing Choice Vouchers, they routinely undertook a fair amount of investment in properties they acquired. In fact, the median time to resale among properties resold by investors is about six months, which suggests that investors are likely to make some improvements to the properties before they are resold.  However, in the view of many nonprofit advocates, these market-driven property improvements are not enough to ensure the long-term affordability and sustainability of these units. The discrepancy in these points of view reflects the motivation of many investors to undertake improvements up to the point that a decent return on these investments is likely, while community groups have broader goals of providing high-quality affordable housing and developing properties that have a positive impact on the surrounding community. Other advocates worry about investor decisions to increase rents that may displace low-income individuals and families who are no longer able to afford these units, and whether investors are crowding out potential owner-occupants looking to buy in these neighborhoods.

Nonprofits partnering with city officials and investors have been working to alleviate these concerns.  One nonprofit organization’s partnership with the City of Chelsea to track code violations in investor-owned properties has led to improved accountability and code compliance among investor owners.  Other groups have recognized the value of leveraging investors’ support networks and informational advantages, with some partnering successfully with local investors on the acquisition and rehabilitation of foreclosed properties. One example is the Coalition to Occupy Homes in Foreclosure (COHIF), a group of nonprofits working with the City of Boston, the state of Massachusetts, and others that are looking to acquire 30 foreclosed or at-risk homes over two years.

The Boston case study—along with other studies conducted by research teams in Atlanta, Cleveland, and Las Vegas—made an initial attempt to fill in the gaps of knowledge regarding investor activity in these central urban neighborhoods.  The vast majority of investors across the four case study areas operated on a rather small scale, with a sizeable share of foreclosed properties acquired by “mom and pop” investors who purchased one or two properties. For the most part, even “large” investors in these communities were defined as those buying 10 properties, over a 4 to 6 year period, with few purchasing more than 100 properties. While these studies have shed some light on the extent and nature of investor activity, there is a need for more systematic research that can address the concern of whether investors are worse stewards of foreclosed properties than owner-occupants, as well as better determine their long-term impact on the health and stability of distressed neighborhoods.

Lessons for Helping Distressed Homeowners - and Avoiding Distress in the Future

by Jen Molinsky
Research Associate

In April of this year, the Joint Center convened a symposium entitled Homeownership Built to Last: Lessons from the Housing Crisis on Sustaining Homeownership for Low-Income and Minority Families. With the financial, psychological, and social costs of the recent housing crisis fresh in mind, the symposium gathered policymakers, industry leaders, housing advocates, and scholars to examine how the nation can move forward to ensure safer homeownership opportunities for low-income and minority families, many of whom suffered disproportionately in the foreclosure crisis. (In an earlier blog, Sarah Rosen Wartell, president of the Urban Institute, presented thoughts she delivered in a keynote address at the event.)

The symposium featured new research and analysis from 15 leading scholars and practitioners on the value of homeownership post-housing crisis; consumers’ tenure and housing choices; ways to balance affordability, access, and risk; the government’s role in the evolving mortgage market; and strategies to help homebuyers sustain ownership over the long term. We have begun posting these papers to the Joint Center for Housing Studies website, starting with three on the theme of sustaining homeownership. In their papers, Mark Cole and Patricia McCoy each explore lessons learned in the housing crisis about helping distressed owners, while Jeffrey Lubell examines shared equity homeownership as a potentially safer and more cost-effective form of homeownership, one that can help individuals sustain homeownership and help communities maintain affordability.

In her paper, Patricia McCoy (Connecticut Mutual Professor of Law and Director of the Insurance Law Center at the University of Connecticut School of Law) draws lessons from a thorough critique of servicer and government foreclosure prevention efforts in the recent crisis. Among her findings, loan modifications that do not lower monthly payments often failed: early in the crisis, the majority of loan workouts increased owners’ monthly payments, a serious difficulty for those whose distress stemmed from disruptions to income such as job loss. In contrast, decreasing monthly payments through interest rate reductions, lengthening of loan terms, or – most effectively – principal reductions, have been shown to lower the chances of redefault. Going forward, McCoy emphasizes the need to rethink servicer incentives; as she notes, “Today, servicers are overpaid for servicing current loans and underpaid for processing delinquent loans.” And loan modifications should not be delayed: McCoy notes that redefaults occur less frequently when homeowners receive loan modifications earlier.

In his paper, Mark Cole also emphasizes the importance of early intervention to help distressed homeowners, in his case through counseling. Cole (former Executive Vice President and COO of CredAbility and now President of Critical Mass Solutions) offers insights learned from CredAbility’s work engaging and counseling distressed homeowners in early intervention and post loan modification support programs. Data gathered from 1.6 million first counseling sessions reveals how the profile of distressed owners changed over the 2007 to 2012 period: by 2012, the average owner seeking counseling was older (51 instead of 44), more likely to be middle class, and less likely to be a minority. Drivers of distress evolved too: at the start of the subprime mortgage crisis, overspending and over-obligation were the top reasons for mortgage delinquency and default, but as the recession took hold, reduction in income became a more important factor. CredAbility is also observing that financial troubles are increasingly stemming from multiple issues rather than single problems. Emphasizing that homeowner distress often originates from more than housing debt, the average CredAbility client over 2007 to 2012 had a 32.5 percent monthly housing cost-to-income ratio but a 54.1 percent total monthly debt payments-to-income ratio. Cole argues that one-time financial transactions such as loan modifications are not likely to change habits by themselves; rather, long-term contact with owners through counseling that takes into account households’ comprehensive financial picture is needed.

Finally, in his paper, Jeffrey Lubell urges us to think beyond the binary “own/rent” decision by considering “shared equity” options that fall somewhere in the middle of the continuum, such as community land trusts, limited equity cooperatives, deed restrictions, and shared appreciation loans to limit owners’ likelihood of becoming distressed. Not only can shared equity approaches limit downside risk, their loans often perform better: Lubell (former Executive Director of the Center for Housing Policy and current Director of Housing Initiatives at Abt Associates) cites data finding that less than half a percent of large sample of Community Land Trust homes were in foreclosure in 2011, while the rate for the broader market was 4.63 percent. In addition, most shared equity approaches involve long-term affordability provisions that can help successive owners. While they require a subsidy and implementation challenges are significant, Lubell estimates that shared equity could assist from two to five times as many households with the same amount of money as current grant programs.

Taken together, the three papers make the case for active, early engagement with distressed owners, with solutions that address their entire financial picture and make sense given the circumstances that have led to delinquency or default. Counseling can play a critical role, as the intervention of a trusted third party who knows the system can go far toward helping owners confront and resolve delinquencies. In the future, shared equity forms of ownership that offer more support and help contain downside risk can offer new opportunities for more affordable and sustainable homeownership.

Nonprofits Play Key Role in Repairing U.S. Homes

by Abbe Will
Research Analyst

Private sector spending on improvements and repairs to U.S. homes is approximately $300 billion a year. Yet as a new Joint Center working paper shows, each year nonprofit organizations and public agencies are also investing resources into the rehabilitation and repair of the homes of America’s most vulnerable households—including the elderly, disabled, and those with low-incomes—who might not otherwise be physically or financially able to undertake critical home remodeling and repair projects themselves. Major nonprofits such as Rebuilding Together, Habitat for Humanity, Enterprise Community Partners, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, and NeighborWorks America, as well as thousands of local community development organizations across the country, are filling a significant and growing need, largely unmet by the private sector, by investing considerable resources—financial, technical, and direct provision of services—to make homes safer, healthier, more energy efficient, and more accessible for disadvantaged households.

The recent foreclosure crisis and sluggish economy undermined years of efforts to stabilize and improve distressed neighborhoods in cities across the country, only adding to the need for nonprofit and public sector involvement. Until this past cycle, housing inadequacy—a measure of the physical condition of housing units—had been on the decline in the United States, largely due to the success of govern­ment housing policies and the growing affluence of the pop­ulation. Since the housing market bust, however, this trend has reversed with the number of moderately or severely inadequate homes increasing by 7% between 2007 and 2011 to 2.4 million units. Certainly the severe housing and economic downturn had a measurable impact on the quality of the nation’s housing.

While a comprehensive data source of home rehabilitation and repair activity by nonprofits and public agencies does not exist, this new Joint Center working paper provides some insight into the topic. Rebuilding Together, one of the nonprofits in the study, provides critical home rehabilitation and modification services to low-income homeowners through its extensive network of local affiliates. A member of the Joint Center’s Remodeling Futures Steering Committee, the organization provided support for an affiliate and homeowner survey that collected data on the various types of projects undertaken by their affiliates, as well as demographic and socioeconomic information about the homeowners served and their experience partnering with Rebuilding Together.

Recent spending on home repairs and replacements, as reported by participating households, suggests that many of the homes worked on by Rebuilding Together have seen significant under-investment over the years. While the average American homeowner spent $3,000 on home improvements and repairs in 2011, according to Joint Center analysis of the American Housing Survey, almost two-thirds of Rebuilding Together program participants reported having spent less than $500 on average in the past year—fully 80% less than the typical homeowner in the U.S. Indeed, according to estimates developed by Rebuilding Together affiliates and the Joint Center’s Remodeling Futures Program, the homes serviced by Rebuilding Together were so in need after years of deferred maintenance, that the average value of the rehabilitation and repair projects undertaken by Rebuilding Together was in excess of $6,000 per home, or twice the annual amount spent by the typical homeowner in the U.S.

Home improvement expenditures under the Rebuilding Together program in 2011 were heavily oriented toward exterior replacements and kitchen and bath improvements—projects that would produce the greatest gains in key program objectives such as health and safety concerns, accessibility, and savings in energy use. Typical projects included additions or replacements of steps, ramps, railings, grab bars, windows and doors, roofing, insulation, energy-saving appliances, as well as painting and plumbing and electrical repairs. In the end, Rebuilding Together participants reported significant improvements in health and safety concerns, improvements in accessibility, and energy use savings as a result of nonprofit involvement.

Source: 2011 Harvard JCHS-Rebuilding Together Household Survey

While a more precise estimate is unavailable, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent each year by nonprofits such as Rebuilding Together, community organizations, and public agencies. Their contributions not only improve conditions for residents, they also help preserve badly-needed affordable housing opportunities, stabilize and revitalize deteriorating neighborhoods—of special importance in recent years—and encourage neighborhood stability by helping long-term residents of the community to remain safely in their homes.

The Return of Substandard Housing

by Kermit Baker
Director, Remodeling
Futures Program

The magnitude of the housing bust that began in the middle of the past decade is well documented, with a 75 percent plunge in housing starts, 45 percent decline in existing home sales, and 30–35 percent slide in house prices. Less well known is how the housing bust and the ensuing cutbacks in residential investment have eroded the condition of existing homes.

Reasons for concern over the potential for underinvestment in the housing stock are numerous, from the aging of the rental stock to the rising share of homeowners with underwater mortgages to the surge in foreclosures and short sales. In fact, there has been a significant decline in spending on homes during the housing bust. Average annual improvement spending by owners declined 28 percent between 2007 and 2011 after adjusting for inflation, totally erasing the run-up in spending during the boom years. Rental units never saw a run-up last decade, so per unit spending was down 23 percent between 2001 and 2011.

Figure 1

Sources: JCHS tabulations  of 2001-07 C-50; 2001-11 AHS; and Estimating National Levels of Home Improvement and Repair Spending by Rental Property Owners by Abbe Will, JCHS Research Note N10-2, October 2010.

There has been surprisingly little concern in policy circles that this significant reduction in housing investment might be producing deterioration in our housing stock. Thanks largely to the success of government housing programs and the increasing affluence of our population, the condition of the housing stock has largely dropped from policy makers’ radar screens in recent decades.

The first Census of housing in 1940 labeled 45.4 percent of owner-occupied units as substandard, which was defined as housing which lacked complete plumbing facilities or was dilapidated. This share dropped sharply over the next several decades, falling all the way to 6.1 percent in 1970 according to Clemmer and Simonson’s analysis in a 1983 article in the AREUEA Journal. Because measures of housing quality were dropped after the 1970 Census due to unreliability of data and the subjective measurement of structural quality, more recent statistics on the number of substandard units are not available from the Census.

However, beginning in the early 1970s, information from the American Housing Survey (AHS) points to the structural condition of the housing stock continuing to show slow but continuous improvement.  As of the 2007 AHS, just 2.27 million owner-occupied homes, or 3.0 percent of the total, were characterized as moderately (with fairly minor structural problems) or severely inadequate (with more major structural problems), down from 3.24 million or 5.1 percent of the total in 1995.

Figure 2

Notes: A housing unit is defined as inadequate through a combination of gross unit attributes such as lacking complete kitchen or bathroom facilities or running water, as well as signs of disrepair such as leaks, holes, cracks, peeling paint, and broken systems. For a complete definition, see the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Codebookfor the American Housing Survey, Public Use File: 1997 and Later.  Source: JCHS tabulations of the 1995-2011 AHS.

Since the housing market bust, however, this trend has reversed. By 2011, more than 2.4 million owner-occupied homes were classified as inadequate, an increase of 160,000 from the 2007 AHS. While this increase seems fairly minor in the big picture, the importance of it is not. Given available data, this appears to be the first significant increase in the share of homes with structural problems since the government was able to track them beginning with the 1940 census.

Now that the housing market is recovering and residential investment is increasing, this dip in the quality of the housing stock may well reverse as these homes are improved. However, recent Joint Center analysis concludes that once a downward cycle in housing quality is underway, for many homes it doesn’t get reversed. This analysis focused on owner-occupied homes that were characterized as inadequate in 1997, looking at their experience over the following decade but before the dramatic rise in distressed properties.

According to the 1997 AHS, 4.4 percent of owner-occupied homes were considered inadequate. By 2007, these units accounted for almost 8 percent of homes in this 1997 cohort that were no longer owner-occupied (vacant, or converted to rental or nonresidential uses), suggesting that they were less in demand. Even more telling is that these inadequate units accounted for almost 17 percent of all 1997 owner-occupied homes that were demolished within the decade.

The longer-term fate of the current slightly larger number of inadequate homes is unknown. Many of these homes likely will be renovated to provide affordable housing opportunities. However, many may not recover without extra help. Given the extraordinary circumstances that many homes have gone through in recent years, particularly foreclosed homes that often were vacant and undermaintained for extended periods of time as they worked their way through the foreclosure process, they may be more at risk than their inadequate predecessors. It’s probably time to put the structural condition of the housing stock back on the housing policy agenda.