NCST serves as an advocate for neighborhood stabilization and blight remediation, and as such, we release articles and also share in press stories with our buyers and sellers to help call attention to their efforts, and to bring more understanding to the continued need for revitalizing our nation’s most vulnerable communities.
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NCST Community Buyers Play Critical Role in Stabilizing Middle Neighborhoods
Since our founding in 2008, NCST has aimed to stabilize neighborhoods by getting distressed properties into the hands of mission-driven, on the ground partners that rehab these properties and who then return them to low- to moderate-income families via affordable homeownership or rental opportunities. Recently, a lot…
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The Dark Side of Single-Family Rental
After the foreclosure crisis, global equity firms snapped up thousands of single-family homes to rent out. This massive shift in the market has not been good for aspiring homeowners, tenants, or neighborhoods. In 2011 single-family home prices hit a two-decade low, and mortgage rates were as low…
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Zombie houses in Brookhaven renovated, sold as affordable homes
A dozen former zombie homes in Brookhaven Town are finding new lives as affordable houses for families who previously had never owned the places where they lived. The nonprofit Suffolk County Landbank, formed five years ago by county officials to buy and resell derelict properties, expects to spend…
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Revisiting the National Mortgage Settlement at the State Level
It’s been 10 years since the housing crisis hit this country and the world’s economy. National Public Radio is currently taking a look back at different aspects of the financial melt-down on its MarketWatch program, including the National Mortgage Settlement, the largest consumer financial protection settlement in…
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Community Buyers Using Public Sources of Funds Remain Supported by NCST
Public sources of funds used to acquire and rehab vacant and blighted homes have been a mainstay for NCST community buyers, particularly municipalities and non-profit housing developers. Federal housing programs such as the HOME Investment Partnership program, Community Development Block Grants, and of course the Neighborhood Stabilization…
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Live Free and Die
A new startup will buy seniors’ homes—and let them live there for life. Is Grandma having trouble with her property taxes? A new Manhattan-based startup wants to buy her house and let her live there, for free, for the rest of her life. This makes sense as…
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In Georgia, Sean Hannity is just another landlord hiking the rent
Fox News host Sean Hannity is one of the most recognizable media figures in America. He has the ear of President Trump. His show is one of the most popular on cable news. But you wouldn’t know it from talking to the tenants at the Meadows, a…
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Supply, Supply, Supply
The only three things that mattered in real estate used to be location, location, location. But these days, it’s supply, supply, supply. Recent headlines echo the same news – “home prices are surging as the housing supply shrinks.” Read more here, and here, and here, and here….
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April is National Financial Literacy Month
April is National Financial Literacy Month and it’s a great time to focus on ways to help educate clients (and ourselves) about personal financial health. Many of NCST’s community buyers offer counseling to help their clients sort through financial difficulties that affect their daily lives as financial…
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Land Bank and Habitat revive zombie property
A new Schenectady police officer will soon move into a newly renovated home, thanks to a partnership between the Capital Region Land Bank and Habitat for Humanity. The home, at 906 Pennsylvania Ave., was sold to Andre Alert, a new recruit in the Schenectady police department. It…
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