Pittsburgh has introduced a pilot program this week to encourage first-time buyers to purchase tax-delinquent homes directly from the city.
Officials are clearing titles on seized homes to make the process faster and smoother.
The City Council approved the pilot program Tuesday.
“Streamlining a program to sell city-owned residential structures to income-qualified residents creates another opportunity to make homeownership more accessible to Pittsburgh residents who have long been deterred by a complicated process,” Mayor Ed Gainey said in a statement. “Our goal is to provide a smoother and more accessible pathway to homeownership while revitalizing communities and supporting local residents.”
Pittsburgh's law department has already cleared the titles on five properties that are now eligible for residents to purchase, city officials said. Those properties are in the city's Sheraden, Windgap, West End, and Mt. Washington neighborhoods.
To be sure, residents and developers have always been able to buy properties the city has seized. The process, however, often involves months of legal hurdles, city officials said, but now the buyer can close within weeks instead of months or years.
The homes will be available for purchase to residents who earn up to 120% of Pittsburgh's median household income and who commit to living in the house for at least five years.
City officials have not disclosed how many properties they will include in the program.
Program viewed as step to ease city's housing crunch
Real estate agents across Steel City applaud this program because clearing titles on seized homes is an issue they have been begging officials to address for roughly 20 years, said John Petrack, executive vice president of the Realtors Association of Metropolitan Pittsburgh. The city has 13,000 to 20,000 parcels that could be title-cleared and ready for new owners, Petrack told Homes.com.
Clearing those properties would return the homes to the tax rolls, inventory for housing would increase and homeownership rates would likely rise, he continued.
The pilot program is “a first step in getting those properties back into the hands of private owners,” he said. “We’re encouraged by this. It’s important that the city looks at options like this. It will help cure the affordability problems for homeowners and buyers.”
Pittsburgh officials should designate a point person who can walk residents through the process, one local real estate agent said.
"Any program eliminating the barriers related to title and tax problems is a good idea," Christa Humphrey Ross, an agent with ReMax Select Realty in Pittsburgh, told Homes.com in a statement. "Some houses sit empty in the city because the issues have just been too complicated to untangle, especially for inexperienced buyers."
City officials see the pilot program as one of many ways Pittsburgh can solve its housing crunch. The population of Pennsylvania's second-largest city is on a slight uptick and, according to a 2022 city housing assessment, Pittsburgh will need an additional 3,100 single-family homes to meet the demand by 2032 and 8,400 by 2042. The population was estimated at 307,668 last year, a 1.6% percent increase, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Pittsburgh led the nation last month in home price growth among major metropolitan areas, with prices 7.6% higher than a year earlier, according to Homes.com data.
Clearing titles is the city's way of "ensuring that public assets are transitioned into productive use more quickly," Jen Gula, the city's finance director, said in a statement.