Kernwatch - Housing Values

Buffalo Real Estate Transactions

April 18, 2002 - MORE: BMHA, Williams, Rogers & West

April 3, 2002 - Kern testimony and report on the BMHA budget hearing.

February 28, 2002 - West & Rogers ‘Do Dinner’ . . . taxpayer’ tab: $800

February 23, 2002 - Does anyone care about the West Side?

February 18, 2002 - Pitts’ & Masiello's Anti-Home Ownership Zones

February 11, 2002 - Charlie Flynn Still Following Parlato-model Of Bilking The Poor While Parlato Forms his 11th DBA

Buffalo's housing values have plummeted in the past two decades. Unfortunately, assessments have not kept pace. The resulting overtaxed properties pose a serious threat to the City finances as the city continues spending at past levels even though less and less money is coming in. Assessment challenges each year reduce the revenue for the city, causing taxes in general to rise.

Also, real estate in the area is being ravaged by predatory real estate practices, which devastate neighborhoods and line the pockets of unscrupulous bottom-feeder investors. All of this while HUD and government programs fund the practices. Click here for an example of predatory practices.

I've been publishing a list of real estate transactions in Buffalo under the heading of City Hall Watch for a long time. I will begin to publish the list here, and to build past-sales data into this site as well.

If you have any suggestions or comments you can email me at kernwatch@aol.com.

Housing-related City Hall Watch articles

April 27 Sentencing of King brothers

Dick Kern vs. HUD corruption

Dr. Niman ignores Parlato corruption.

Suriel Development Houses

Millionnaire Weighs in on how "others" can save the city money

Buffalo's largest-ever block-busting real estate scammer
calls on city hall to "tithe" back to the city, to rescue budget.

Kernwatch.com deeply disappointed by removal of housing data crucial to East Side: Legislator Greg Olma has let us down. He's removed crucial neighborhood-busting data concerning Frank Parlato from his government-paid website. Parlato and Olma are political sparring partners. I hope this had nothing to do with the removal of the data in this a very contentious Legislative election year. Click here to read the questions and answers regarding why this data was removed.

Eureka! Through the miracle of modern technology, the investigative reporting of Greg Olma's office relative to Frank Parlato has resurfaced! Apparently it was removed from the home page of Greg Olma's legislative website, but never removed from the Internet. So, the address for the individual page remained, and came up in a database search concerning Parlato and real estate scams.

This may seem minor to some, but as Kernwatch.com builds its database of local real estate scams and scam artists, this is the rosetta stone of research. Since Olma has been thankfully voted out of office by his constituents, and the site will probably never survive, Kernwatch.com has downloaded the information for preservation purposes, and will host that major report on this site. Click here to read it, and check back as I will be updating this data and report.

Population loss: The thumbnail map to the right shows population changes from the 1990 census to the 2000 census. All you need to know is that red, or any shade of pink/red, is bad, and any blue is good - at least so far as growth is concerned.

My readers know how passionate I can be about high vacancy rates, the overpaid and cheaply constructed new-built houses and spending taxpayer money to build new expensive homes and public housing, at a time when clearly our population is shrinking. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so look at the picture to the right and keep it in mind the next time you read about the city subsidizing new-build housing. Clearly, our housing situation is not demand-driven, but government driven. The one thing we don't need is government driven economics.

Click the map for a full-screen view of Buffalo's population loss.