Responding to concerns of local realtors, the city’s Inspections Division has streamlined home sales approvals by cutting back turnaround times for reviews from two or three weeks to five or six days and by reducing the list of actionable items from 132 to 71, Director of Inspections Oscar Turk said Monday.
The city has two levels of review, one for a certificate of occupancy and one for a certificate of compliance. The former reflects state habitability guidelines, while the latter demands proof that a property or apartment meets the city’s property maintenance code.
At Monday’s City Council meeting, Turk outlined recent changes in responsiveness by his department to facilitate sales in a climate of foreclosures and “short sales,” a situation in which a lender may accept less than the value of the property in order to ward off a foreclosure.
The City Council is currently considering an ordinance that would allow an exemption from the Certificate of Compliance for short sales, with the proviso that at the time of closing on a future sale the ordinance would be invoked.
Turk said such an exemption could be approved within two or three hours. The new property owners would then be responsible to bring the property up to code.
But while thanking Turk for his presentation, Councilman Rashid Burney called for elimination of the Certificate of Compliance ordinance, calling its enforcement “a poor allocation of our very limited tax dollars.”
“I am suggesting we completely do away with the Certificate of Compliance,” Burney said.
Turk responded by saying the city has a 60-40 percent ratio of rentals to ownership and said it was “extremely important” to maintain the city’s housing stock. The Certificate of Compliance ordinance came about in 1995, he said, against a backdrop of property “flipping,” in which properties exchanged hands without regard to regulations such as prohibitions on attic or basement apartments.
Although Burney insisted there were other factors in successful house sales, such as location and amenities, other council members raised issues of safety and other concerns.
Some members did not agree that a standard home inspection would suffice, because it only addressed exterior issues. Councilman Adrian Mapp said Inspections does not address the question of indoor safety.
Mapp called it a “very bad idea” that private inspections would take the place of Certificate of Compliance inspections.
The short sale ordinance and much other legislation will be up for a vote at the City Council meeting on June 21 in Municipal Court, 325 Watchung Ave.
--Bernice Paglia
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i wonder if mr burney is in real estate? and is that the reason he wants to do away with it?looks like politics as usual in town.
ReplyDeleteI find Councilman Burney's suggestion disturbing. Most people don't know that he has a home inspection business that would benefit from this. Did he mention at the meeting how he could potentially make profits from doing away with the certificate of compliance?
ReplyDelete60-40% renters to owners? Those are very bad metrics, a good reason to separate property taxes and school taxes....
ReplyDeleteWhile in theory, the CofC is a good idea, I have heard it does not work. The seller, who owns a one family home that had an apartment installed upstairs, will comply with the CofC in order to obtain the certificate. Once the CofC is obtained, the apartment is reinstated.
ReplyDeleteWhy doesn't inspections focus on getting our city looking presentable. They should fine people who have vegetation on the streets, fine people whose sidewalks are cracked, fine people who do not mow the lawn and so on....