# City Vacant and distressed property maps



## Mrcharwe (Apr 10, 2022)

I saw another thread about signing up for a site to look for vacant properties and realized people must not know that a lot of major cities track vacant and distressed properties and publish the data for free on their sites. Before we start, I would like to make it clear that you use this very informative data however you like. It's your life and you make your own choices.

I will attach a list of a few cities below so that you can have a look at the data and how it is presented. 

To try to find this information for a city near you, google a few different terms and see what you can find. 

Try googling: 
City Name Vacant properties map arcgis
City name vacant property indicators arcgis
City name distress properties arcgis
City name city owned properties arcgis

Arcgis is the mapping software that cities uses for planning and tracking their city. If you go onto the cities arcgis you can look up a specific property see data about it, including tax data. If the property taxes are far behind its a pretty good indication the building is vacant. 


Now for the list:

Philadelphia is publishing data on "Likely Vacant Properties" and give it a score on how likely the property is to be vacant.
https://phl.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=64ac160773d04952bc17ad895cc00680
This one is Vacant building notices in Baltimore.
https://data.baltimorecity.gov/data...n/explore?location=39.296440,-76.620350,15.00
This is a data set for city owned property in Boston, some are actual used buildings some are abandoned buildings the city now owns.
https://data.boston.gov/dataset/dep...resource/ae101391-b13b-4dca-830e-ec0c695145ed
This is a list of buildings that Chicago has sent notices to owners about vacant buildings. There's more data in here if you poke around.
https://data.cityofchicago.org/Buildings/Vacant-and-Abandoned-Buildings-Violations/kc9i-wq85


And just to show the different ways of doing things, New Orleans doesn't list vacants. They do list something called uncommitted properties. Which are city owned from abandonment. Most are vacant lots but some are listed as structures.
https://data.nola.gov/Housing-Land-Use-and-Blight/NORA-Uncommitted-Property-Inventory/5ktx-e9wc
They also list all of their code enforcement cases. If you figure out which code is for distressed properties you have a great starting list. 
https://data.nola.gov/Housing-Land-Use-and-Blight/Code-Enforcement-All-Violations/3ehi-je3s
And finally New Orleans does this weird thing called a property survey, where you can log on as a guest and look at houses that have been flagged for potential code and distress issues and basically tell the city whether or not to investigate this property. You can also hit skip and not rat on people but just look at the houses that show up. If something looks abandoned, just note the location and you could check it out later. 
http://propertysurvey.nola.gov 



So to sum it up. Look for your cities acrgis and search through the data to see what info might link you to vacant properties. If you combine a few data sets, like behind on taxes, with code violations, you should be able to id abandon buildings to scout.


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## MetalBryan (Apr 11, 2022)

Do Los Angeles next. Somebody was asking about LA a few weeks ago. Thank you for your service.


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## Mrcharwe (Apr 11, 2022)

Here is some data to help start a los angeles search.

this first link is a report of number of vacant units be neighborhood. It doesn't list specific addresses but gives an idea of which neighborhoods to focus on.
https://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2019/19-0623_rpt_HCI_06-12-2020.pdf
This link is registered foreclosures in LA in 2021. There are data sets going back over 5 years so I am sure some properties on these lists are currently vacant. 
https://data.lacity.org/Housing-and...tered-Foreclosure-Properties-on-Map/rra2-hwhm
This last link is code enforcement, again combining this with foreclosures should help to narrow down properties that are currently vacant.
https://data.lacity.org/City-Infras...ng-and-Safety-Code-Enforcement-Case/2uz8-3tj3


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## moderntrivia (Apr 11, 2022)

Geographic Information System (GIS) broadly refers to maps and (usually a lot) of constantly updating data about the map. I just learned about one with Wake County (Raleigh NC) and you can look up who owns what property, when they got it, and for how much. I think Googling "tax map [city]" is a decent way to go about this. If not for squatting, it's interesting. And something else I learned quick is usually assessed property values are half of what they should be, at least in Michigan.


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