Point-of-sale home inspection disclosures are being overturned in some jurisdictions as ‘over-regulation.” Director Joe Schilling weighs in on the debate in Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN, in a recent Star Tribune article.
According to the article, Brooklyn Park, MN, had one of the strictest home-sale inspection programs in the Twin Cities, until the city council voted to drop it. The ordinance required a city inspection providing a disclosure report of findings to prospective buyers and the correction of any building code violations before a home could be sold.
Mayor Jeff Lunde stated the ordinance was an “over-regulation” and did not prove to keep housing values up. Metropolitan Institute’s Director, Joe Schilling, who has worked with Midwest and Northeast cities that have tried to maintain and improve housing stock, said “point of sale is a sound public policy adopted in recent decades by many Midwest cities.”
Since “the foreclosure crisis hit, Shaker [Heights] has been more resilient. It had its share of foreclosures, but … it had significantly less negative impact from the crisis than cities without POS,” Schilling said.
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