Best Practices for Building a Well-Run Vacant Property Registration Program

A talk by Kevin Hamilton. On paper, code enforcement exists to enforce building codes and local ordinances.In practice, it is often where every problem lands that no other department is built to handle.Blight is one of the clearest examples. No one decided that a code enforcement officer should spend an hour investigating a property just to determine who owns it, who controls it, what stage of default or disposition it is in, or simply how to find the right person to call. But in municipality after municipality, that is exactly where the work ends up.For more than 15 years, Kevin and his team have worked with property registration requirements and municipalities across the country. That experience has shown them what effective registration programs have in common, what information code enforcement actually needs, and where programs often break down.A well-designed property registration program can help your municipality:Drive ordinance complianceExpedite case resolutionImprove communication with responsible partiesIncrease community engagement and resident satisfactionGenerate sustainable program revenueBecome a powerful tool in the fight against blightThis course will examine where property registration ordinances came from, what existing ordinances across the country actually require, what information a registration program must collect to be useful, how programs should be structured and administered, and what tends to go wrong when those questions are not addressed at the beginning.Whether your municipality is creating a program for the first time or evaluating an existing vacant, foreclosure, REO, rental, or combination registration program, the goal is the same: build a system that provides code enforcement with better information, improves compliance, reduces unnecessary investigation, and produces measurable results for the community.Bring the ordinance you work under. We will read it together.