Land Bank, Red Tape, MI Hate: #fixerupperdetroit lawyers up

Today's post was going to a charming tale about how demolition makes a better story in a 30 minute HGTV show, where it's like five minutes and over, and only shows the exciting parts, than it does in real life, especially when the people doing it have other jobs.

Here are the pictures you would have gotten to see:

Panoramic of our fully gutted kitchen.

This window apparently used to be much bigger, or even a door? Not sure.

This is where our ground floor lavatory will go.

The dumpster is starting to fill up!

Panoramic of our street. Isn't it lovely with a light blanket of snow?

Rebecca deserves mad props for having pulled up this much tile, leveling cement, and hardwood. This is down to the subfloor now. What were those holes for? Not exactly sure. Plumbing or heat, maybe.

It's been a lot of work getting everything hauled to this dumpster!

Did I mention I'm proud of myself for hauling out so much rubbish?

Instead, I'm writing an update about the land bank story line. For back story, see: Why Detroit Can't Have Nice Things and #fixerupperdetroit Googles Squatters' Rights.

I heard from the lawyer recently and explained the situation and that we're on a renovation mortgage and would be happy to provide documentation of that so they can close our file.

She wrote back to say that she must follow a specific procedure. The "easiest" option is for us to sign a rehab agreement. That seemed reasonable-ish -

if you ignore the fact that entering into an agreement with an entity that operates very slowly, doesn't correspond with other agencies before acting, uses a lot of vague requirements, doesn't exist in most cities, could take away your house, and doesn't have to notify you of situations before acting is unreasonable -

until I read it.

And then I started thinking about our timeline for renovation for the bank, and the timeline they laid out, and how much paperwork and verification we already have to do to keep our renovation mortgage working, and how much we've already inconvenienced our contractor, and how busy we are with just what we've agreed to now, and how impossible it can be to file paperwork with the city, and how much paperwork this would require.

The nuisance complaint isn't even because of us. The neighbors would retract it in a heartbeat if they could.

So I called a real estate attorney and we will see what he says.

This is why people don't buy homes in the city. It's not that the homes aren't beautiful - many are. It's not that the neighbors aren't great - they are. It's the amount of red tape and the way services are delivered.