BOSSIER CITY, LA (AP) — Bossier Parish has begun fighting the problem of blight by selling adjudicated properties through online auctions.
The Bossier Parish Police Jury recently entered into a partnership with CivicSource, a company that does online auctions for cities.
The Times reports that last Friday, in a first for the parish, 31 of its adjudicated properties became available online to potential buyers.
Placing properties online has proven a successful method to reduce blight in cities such as New Orleans — and since buyers pay the total cost, partnership with CivicSource costs the city and taxpayers nothing.
CivicSource's chief legal officer Stephen Morel said online auctions open property sales to a wider audience, generate revenue for cities, speed up the sale of adjudicated properties and actually raise the selling price.
"What governments have been trying to do is sell these properties off one at a time, but without title insurance," Morel said. "The ability to provide title insurance on adjudicated properties has been a foreign concept to governments. No one wanted to take that risk."
CivicSource, based in New Orleans, also provides title insurance on sold properties.
Patrick Culverhouse, a parish spokesman, said there are advantages to having an outside source handle the properties.
"What we want to see are those properties back into commerce, and that is something that CivicSource can do for us," he said.
Without the title to a property, a purchaser technically owns the land but runs into roadblocks when trying to take out a mortgage. City governments in the past also have debated on whether to fund the sale of adjudicated properties. But with platforms such as CivicSource, the buyer initiates the sale and the process costs city governments and taxpayers nothing.
The way it works is the winning bidder at auction picks up all the costs associated with the company's preparation of a property. Morel said the costs associated with the property — including the initial research, notification process, estimated closing costs and cost of title insurance — all are included in the base starting price at auction.
Morel said since launching in July, the online auctions have collected more than $16 million through sales of more than 600 properties across Louisiana. Cities have collected an additional $3 million in redemptions from owners of adjudicated properties slated for sale, according to the company.
The first public auction for Bossier Parish Police Jury's properties will take place in early 2016.
