Tag: private property

Number Of Zombie Properties Increase In 30 US States

The number of zombie homes – vacant properties abandoned by owners during the foreclosure process – rose in 30 U.S. states and the District of Columbia in the second quarter of this year from the previous quarter, real estate data analytics company ATTOM said in a May 29 statement.

Zombie homes, which can fall into disrepair and negatively impact the value of other properties in the neighborhood, are a sign of distress in the housing market and the broader economy.

As Naveen Athrappully reports for The Epoch Times, among states with at least 50 zombie homes, North Carolina saw the largest percentage increase in these properties year-over-year, with their numbers rising by 52.5 percent during this period.

This was followed by Iowa and Texas, both seeing an over 50 percent jump in zombie properties. South Carolina and Kansas were the next on the list.

According to ATTOM’s analysis, Peoria County in Illinois ranked at the top in the list of U.S. counties with the highest zombie foreclosure rates.

Broome County in New York came in second, followed by Cuyahoga County in Ohio, Baltimore City County in Maryland, and Indiana’s Marion County.

On a positive note, things looked better from a nationwide perspective, with only one out of every 14,207 being zombie properties in Q2, which ATTOM said was a low rate, indicating the strength of the post-pandemic U.S. housing market.

“Thankfully, we’re not seeing a lot of homes sitting vacant due to pending foreclosures, which is good for families, neighborhoods, and the market,” said Rob Barber, CEO of ATTOM. “However, foreclosure filings have shown a recent uptick—with April seeing a 14 percent increase compared to the same month last year.”

“So far, buyers seem to be scooping up these repossessed homes relatively quickly, so they aren’t sitting empty,” he added. “Nobody wants to see a return to the days of the 2008 housing crisis when vacant, blighted homes were common in many parts of the country.”

Meanwhile, the number of property foreclosures had risen by 11 percent in the first quarter of this year from the previous quarter, breaking away from the trend of three consecutive quarterly declines, ATTOM said in an April 11 statement.

“While levels remain below historical averages, the quarterly growth suggests that some homeowners may be starting to feel the pressure of ongoing economic challenges,” Barber said.

“However, strong home equity positions in many markets continue to help buffer against a more significant spike in distress.”

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Locked Out of the Dream: Regulation Making Homes Unaffordable Around the World

Next to inflation, Americans ranked housing as their top financial worry in a Gallup survey last May. It’s only gotten worse. January home sales were down 5% from last year’s dismal numbers. Record numbers of first-time buyers are stuck on the sidelines as housing affordability stands at the lowest level ever recorded, while one in three Americans now spend over 30% of their income on mortgage or rent. 

The housing crisis is not just an American problem, but a global phenomenon that hits the middle and working classes the hardest. Studies of the Canadian, British, European, and East Asian markets have also found that housing prices have risen far faster than household incomes and inflation. A report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development concluded that “housing has been the main driver of rising middle-class expenditure.” In prosperous and communitarian Switzerland, Zurich studios sell for well over $1 million, and small houses even more, making downpayments unaffordable to affluent people despite the overwhelming financial advantages to homeowners. 

Underlying the plight of home buyers worldwide is a sometimes overlooked but profound influence – the spread of restrictive land-use regulations. It’s reshaping political and economic alignments in ways that may further destabilize the social order. Home ownership is strongly correlated with positive social indicators, and as renting grows twice as quickly as buying, this trend poses a threat to Western democracy by deepening economic inequality, depressing demographic vitality, and undermining the upward mobility that has driven Western progress for the past century.

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Pope Leo’s Childhood Home Faces Eminent Domain as He Relocates to a More Eminent Domain

“Every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own,” wrote Pope Leo XIII, in his famous 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, laying down the basics of Catholic social teaching.

The plans of contemporary socialists to seize private property, Leo XIII denounced as “emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community.”

The last Pope Leo’s defense of private property adds no small amount of irony to the small Chicago suburb of Dolton, Illinois’ plan to honor the new American-born Pope Leo XIV by seizing his childhood home from its private owners.

Yesterday, Chicago-area media reported that Dolton officials plan to use eminent domain to take the home where Leo XIV, formerly Robert Francis Prevost, was raised from its current private owners to create a publicly accessible historic site.

At present, the owners are auctioning off the small, 1949-built home for a reserve price of $250,000.

In a Tuesday letter to the auction house running the sale, Dolton attorney Burton Odelson cautioned buyers against purchasing the house.

“Please inform any prospective buyers that their ‘purchase’ may only be temporary since the Village intends to begin the eminent domain process very shortly,” reads Odelson’s letter, per NBC Chicago.

Odelson told Chicago’s ABC7 that the village had initially tried to voluntarily purchase the home but had snagged on the sale price.

“We’ve tried to negotiate with the owner. [He] wants too much money, so we will either negotiate with the auction house or, as the letter stated that I sent to the auction house, we will take it through eminent domain, which is our right as a village,” Odelson said.

One wonders how outrageous the owners’ offered sale price was given its current auction price of $250,000.

The fact that the home was once lived in by the current pope surely doesn’t enable the owners to command that much of a sale premium on what is undeniably a quite modest dwelling.

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National Guard helicopter crew landed on Montana ranch and trespassed to take antlers, citations say

Three Montana Army National Guard members face trespassing charges after authorities said they landed a Black Hawk helicopter in a mountain pasture on a private ranch to take several elk antlers before flying away.

A witness saw the May 4 landing and the person who owns the property reported it to officials, who tracked down the three guard members, Sweet Grass County Sheriff Alan Ronneberg said Thursday.

The guardsmen had been on a training flight from the city of Billings to Helena, the state capital, said Major Ryan Finnegan with the Montana National Guard. The helicopter landed briefly in the pasture located in the foothills of the Crazy Mountains, where the crew members picked up two individual antlers and an old elk skull with antlers still attached, the sheriff said.

Elk antlers — which grow and drop off male animals annually — are highly prized and can be sold by the pound. They also are collected from the wild as keepsakes.

The antlers and skull taken by the guardsmen were worth a combined $300 to $400, according to Ronneberg. They were later turned over to a state game warden.

Trespassers taking antlers from private land is not uncommon in Montana and other western states.

“This an odd one,” Ronneberg said. “Usually somebody parks on the side of the road and crosses into private ground and picks up a shed,” he said, referring to an antler that’s been shed by an elk.

Citations issued to two of the guardsmen said they “entered posted private property that was posted as trespassing for the purpose of elk antler removal.” The citation for the third again mentioned trespassing and also that “subject landed military helicopter on private property.”

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Home Invasions On The Rise: Constitution-Free Policing In Trump’s America

“One of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one’s house. A man’s house is his castle.”—James Otis, Revolutionary War activist, on the Writs of Assistance, 1761

What the Founders rebelled against—armed government agents invading homes without cause—we are now being told to accept in the so-called name of law and order.

Imagine it: it’s the middle of the night. Your neighborhood is asleep. Suddenly, your front door is splintered by battering rams. Shadowy figures flood your home, screaming orders, pointing guns, threatening violence. You and your children are dragged out into the night—barefoot, in your underwear, in the rain.

Your home is torn apart. Your valuables seized. Your sense of safety, demolished.

But this isn’t a robbery by lawless criminals.

This is what terror policing looks like in Trump’s America: raids by night, flashbangs at dawn, mistaken identities, and shattered lives.

On April 24, 2025, in Oklahoma City, 20 heavily armed federal agents from ICE, the FBI, and DHS kicked in the door of a home where a woman and her three daughters—all American citizens—were sleeping. They were forced out of bed at gunpoint and made to wait in the rain while agents ransacked the house, confiscating their belongings.

It was the wrong house. The wrong family.

There were no apologies. No compensation. No accountability.

This is the new face of American policing, and it’s about to get so much worse thanks to the President Trump’s latest executive order, which aims to eliminate federal oversight and empower local law enforcement to act with impunity.

Titled “Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens,” the executive order announced on April 28, 2025, removes restraints on police power, offers enhanced federal protections for officers accused of misconduct, expands access to military-grade equipment, and nullifies key oversight provisions from prior reform efforts.

Trump’s supporters have long praised his efforts to deregulate business and government under the slogan of “no handcuffs.” But when that logic is applied to law enforcement, the result isn’t freedom—it’s unchecked power.

What it really means is no restraints on police power—while the rest of us are left with fewer rights, less recourse, and a Constitution increasingly ignored behind the barrel of a gun.

This isn’t just a political shift. It’s a constitutional unraveling.

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Florida bill would let homeowners use ‘reasonable force’ against drones

Florida lawmakers are considering a bill that would permit homeowners to use “reasonable force” against drones — likely sparked by last year’s uptick in sightings of mysterious unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

The measure, sponsored by state Sen. Keith L. Truenow (R) last month, was placed on the Florida Senate’s legislative calendar on April 16.

Constituents across the U.S. have signaled discontent with the federal response, prompting more questions on where the drones originated and how they could be regulated. The Biden administration stressed that the UAVs were not a threat to national security or operated by foreign adversaries.

President Trump earlier this year said he would look into the drone spotting, but he ruled they were “not the enemy” and likely authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) or belonged to hobbyists.

The Sunshine State legislation seeks to change property owners’ guidelines for unmanned aircraft that remain suspended above their own land. It has already cleared several committees despite potential conflicts with federal law.

The FAA prevents people from shooting down drones even if they are hovering above their personal property.

“A private citizen shooting at any aircraft – including unmanned aircraft – poses a significant safety hazard,” the agency’s website reads. “An unmanned aircraft hit by gunfire could crash, causing damage to persons or property on the ground, or it could collide with other objects in the air.”

“Shooting at an unmanned aircraft could result in a civil penalty from the FAA and/or criminal charges from federal, state or local law enforcement,” it adds.

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Lawn Gone Liberty: The Update

It’s finally spring.

Better mow your lawn.

If you don’t, your town government may fine you thousands of dollars a day. 

Worse, if you can’t pay the fine, they may confiscate your home.

Six years ago, in Dunedin, Florida, Jim Ficken let his grass grow. 

His mom had died, and he’d left town to take care of her estate. He asked a friend to cut his grass, but that friend died, too!

In the two months Ficken was away, his grass grew taller than 10 inches.

City bureaucrats started fining him.

But they didn’t tell Ficken that. When he finally got back, there was no notice of the $500-a-day fine. Only when he ran into a “code enforcement officer” did he learn he’d be getting “a big bill.”

When the bill came, it was for $24,454.

Ficken quickly mowed his lawn. Then the city tacked on another $5,000 for “non-compliance.”

Ficken didn’t have that much money, so city officials told him they would take his home.

Fortunately, Ficken discovered the libertarian law firm, the Institute for Justice, which fights government abuse.

IJ lawyer Ari Bargil took on Ficken’s case, arguing that the $30,000 fine violates the Constitution’s limits on “excessive bail, fines, and cruel punishments.”

But a judge ruled that the fine was “not excessive.” 

Of course, judges are just lawyers with robes. Often they are lawyer/bureaucrats who’ve become very comfortable with big government.

I call a $30K penalty for not cutting your lawn absurdly excessive, 

IJ attorney Bargil told local news stations, “If $30,000 for tall grass in Florida is not excessive, it is hard to imagine what is.”

Dunedin’s politicians often impose heavy fines for minor transgressions.

One resident told us, “They fined me $32,000 for a hole the size of a quarter in my stucco … For a lawn mower in my yard … They fine people they can pick on … and they keep picking on them.” 

It happens elsewhere, too.

Charlotte, North Carolina, fined a church for “excessive pruning.”

Danbury, Connecticut, charged a resident $200,000 for leaving his yard messy.

Bargil notes, “It’s pretty apparent that code enforcement is a major cash cow.”

In just five-and-a-half years, Dunedin collected $3.6 million in fines. 

But by then, I and others had noticed. We were reporting on Dunedin’s heavy fines. 

So did the politicians sheepishly acknowledge that they had milked citizens with excessive fines and give the money back?

Of course not. They hired a PR firm. That cost taxpayers another $25,000 a month.

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Supreme Court Lined Up to Consider Case That Could Kill ‘One of the Most Reviled Decisions in Recent Decades’

An often-criticized precedent from the Supreme Court 20 years ago that gives local governments permission to literally confiscate a landowner’s property and give it to someone else who may have more political influence could be overturned through a new case pending before the justices.

It is the Institute for Justice that has been fighting on behalf of Bryan Bowers, a New York landowner whose property was “seized” by a local government agency.

It was then given to his competitors.

The precedent that soon could be doomed is the Kelo decision from 2005 in which the court redefined “public use.”

That’s the standard that courts must use to determine whether governments can take over private property without the owner’s consent, and it often is associated with the construction of roads and bridges and such.

In Kelo, a single-vote on the court claimed that creating jobs or increasing tax revenue was just that “public use.”

Dissenters, including a left-leaning Justice Sandra Day O’Connor warned that now the government “has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more.”

The IJ described the Kelo precedent as “one of the most reviled decisions in recent decades.”

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‘Fraud On A Mass Scale’ – Why Trump Should Repeal Real Estate Tax

This is the short version of the Amicus created for ZeroHedge. For the full print version of the Amicus Brief Supporting Property Owners and School Districts and Accounting Fraud, both of which are being delivered by hand to President Trump click here and here.

Introduction of Argument 

The Home Affordability and Probability of Bankruptcy graphic below shows Taxation of Unrealized Gains, which is a violation of the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Market Value is the mechanism in Texas and most States in the Union, from which the Assessed Value is created. 

Under current Texas Law you can protest your Market Value but not the Assessed Value. If the Market Value is fraudulent, then so is the Assessed Value. 

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The Disturbing Truth About the Home You Think You Own

The North Dakota Referendum That Could Have Changed Everything

In 2012, North Dakota held a referendum to become the first US state to abolish property taxes.

The measure aimed to amend the state constitution, eliminating property taxes and requiring the government to find alternative revenue sources.

Proponents argued that property taxes were unnecessary since North Dakota already had ample income from state taxes and oil revenues. They also pointed out that property taxes disproportionately burdened low-income homeowners and senior citizens. Eliminating them, they claimed, would provide financial relief, boost economic growth, and attract businesses and residents.

However, a coalition of bureaucrats and special interest groups fought against the referendum.

In the end, voters overwhelmingly rejected the measure—78% chose to keep their property taxes.

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