Allentown Cracking Down on Distressed Properties and Absentee Landlords

Allentown, in an effort to clean up center city, is considering implementing a pre-sale inspection that would require home sellers to fix-up the properties before the sale. Bethlehem and Easton already have similar inspections.

Typically, called a CO or Certificate of Occupancy inspection, these inspections used to target safety issues (GFI outlets, smoke detectors). Some of the more recent inspections that I have witnessed target anything in or out of the house.

• holes in raingutters
• windows that don't stay up
• flaked paint
• holes in the walls (1/4" hole got tagged by Bethlehem Township and had to be fixed before the sale)
• drip pan for hot water heaters

the list goes on and there is no standard. It is different for each municipality.

The Pennsylvania Agreement of Sale assigns the seller the task of ordering this inspection but it becomes a negotiating point over who will have the repairs done (the home seller or the home buyer). Allentown is considering allowing the home buyer 30 days to do the repairs. Bethlehem allows a home buyer a year and Bethlehem Township allows them 18 months.

Some home buyers in Lehigh Valley will not negotiate the CO inspection and feel it is the job of the home seller to get the Certificate of Occupancy since the municipality requires the inspection. This policy is way overdue by Allentown but I am concerned it will go from one extreme to the other and start hurting the sale of properties in the area as the lists of needed repairs get extremely large.

In another effort to clean up center city, Allentown is considering a policy that if the owner lives a certain distance away from the city they must have a local property manager to handle the property. The city is fed up with the "absentee owner" who purchases the property, collects the rent, but never does any maintainance to the property. I've been in many of these properties and the tenants are living with all kinds of problems that the landlord states will be fixed but never get done. Then the owner ends up selling the property "as-is" leaving the fixing of all problems to the buyer.

Although none of these measures have been voted on, I believe there will definitely be changes in the buying and selling of properties in Allentown.