Newly rehabilitated Price Hill home points to bright future for Cedar Grove area

Today, representatives from Price Hill Will, Legal Aid of Greater Cincinnati, and the City of Cincinnati celebrated the successful rehabilitation of a building formerly considered a public nuisance in the Cedar Grove area of Price Hill.

Director of Price Hill Housing Resource Center, Matt Straus, says that the project highlights how lenders and community development corporations working together can help rebuild neighborhoods harmed by the foreclosure crisis.

Built in 1910, the 2,248 square-foot home at 1029 Beech Avenue was not only on the City's public nuisance list at one time, but it was also slated for demolition.  "Now it is completely rehabbed and is going to sell for almost double the average sale price for homes in Cedar Grove," says Real Estate Development Director James Bass.

The unique collaboration of lender and community development corporation worked out when Legal Aid offered their assistance to Price Hill Will in a lawsuit filed against lenders who owned foreclosed properties in Price Hill considered to be blighted.  Following that action, the lender on 1029 Beech Avenue, Deutsche Bank, donated the property to Price Hill Will which enabled the extensive rehabilitation process to begin.  Additional help was provided by LISC who provided $300,000 of revolving acquisition/construction loans, as well as some technical assistance in project structuring.

Now complete, the three-story home is under contract for $93,000 and features four bedrooms, two and a half baths, a balcony and off-street parking.

The rehabilitation of 1029 Beech Avenue (map) does not stand alone, as Price Hill Will has been rehabilitating properties throughout the neighborhood over the past 18 months, raising the average home sale price by more than $7,000.  Over that time, Price Hill Will has sold four out of six homes for more than $70,000 each.  Three additional homes that are expected to be sold next month will have an average sale value of more than $81,000.

Over four years, Price Hill Will has acquired 25 vacant, blighted properties through its Buy-Improve-Sell program.  16 of those  properties have been rehabbed and sold, two were torn down, and the remaining seven are currently under construction.  The community development corporation has a goal of rehabilitating up to 50 single-family homes in the urban neighborhood on Cincinnati's west side.

"There is evidence that the Housing Resource Center’s work has had significant success in stemming the foreclosure tide that has affected Price Hill. According to a study by Working In Neighborhoods, foreclosures in East and West Price Hill dropped by nearly 20% from 2007 to 2008. The rate for East Price Hill has dropped more than 45% since 2006."

Writer: Randy A. Simes
Photography by Scott Beseler
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