Torre Sanders bought the house at 3958 Sullivan Ave. for $10,000 last summer and, even then, the two-story brick building needed a lot of work.
For years, the building stood vacant in the Greater Ville neighborhood as its failed roof allowed water to trickle through, destroying the ceilings throughout the home and creating structural problems.
That changed in 2021, after the home received a nomination for stabilization under Prop NS, a voter-initiated program originally passed in 2017 to take homes in the city land bank, stabilize them and put them back on the market for investors or prospective home buyers.
Through funds made available from the Prop NS fund, roughly $6 million a year, city officials hired contractors to stabilize the homes, which typically entails fixing a building’s roof, foundation, exterior walls or other aspects that keep a home from deteriorating.
Sanders said he saw the potential in the two-story brick home when the city listed it post stabilization.
“There's a lot of great homes down here,” he said. “They just need to be taken care of, you know. So what better way than to restore them, better than what they probably were.”
This month, Sander listed the property — now fully rehabbed into a three-bed, three-bath — for roughly $225,000 and sold it after just six days on the market.
Sanders, a native of nearby Jeff-Vander-Lou said while he does make a profit from rehabbing the buildings, he also feels called to restore these aging homes. He said that where some people see a boarded-up property, he sees potential.
“We want to inspire people and show people that we have a lot of great properties down here,” he said. “It's a matter of coming down here, doing the work, taking care of them and making it happen.
Sander’s property is the ultimate success story for Prop NS. A home is nominated for the program by neighbors or stakeholders, the Prop NS team evaluates the nomination, contractors are hired to stabilize the home, and then it’s sold to a prospective buyer.
“This is exactly what we want to happen,” said Prop NS Director Sean Thomas. “We want people to take them on and be successful with being able to sell them or be able to move in.”
City voters approved the proposition in 2017, and the program itself fully launched in 2020 after legal troubles delayed its launch. The program is run through the St. Louis Development Corporation.
According to SLDC data, there are 1,102 residential lots owned by the land bank and available for purchase. The Greater Ville and the Wells Goodfellow neighborhood contain roughly 300 of those properties.
Voters allowed the city to spend up to $30,000 to stabilize vacant single-family homes and up to $50,000 for multi-family homes with six or fewer units.
The program gets funds from an annual $6 million stipend to hire contractors to do that work.
To date, of the 221 homes the program evaluated and approved to be stabilized through the program, 190 were completed. Of those stabilized homes, the city sold 113 through the program to private buyers.
Thomas said it’s a massive success for the program.
"We've made it five years and have had successes with stabilizing buildings and getting those out of LRA inventory into the hands of rehabbers,” Thomas said, “some of whom have actually completed their projects fully and have done phenomenal jobs with them.”
Forty-five of the homes sold to private buyers are located in the Walnut Park East, Greater Eville and Kingsway East neighborhoods.
But stories like Sanders’, where stabilized homes are fully rehabbed and sold, are rare. They highlight a challenge within the program. Five years into Prop NS, and with 113 properties sold, only 12 have been fully rehabbed.
Thomas said it's a known issue. While the goal of Prop NS is to stabilize the homes in the land bank, the ultimate hope is that buyers take on the building, fully rehabilitate them and then sell or live in them. But he said it can be difficult for buyers to secure funds to complete the process.
“The biggest challenge is access to financing,” Thomas said. “With most people who buy houses, the bulk of their loan is for the purchase price — these houses are so challenged that they need a significant amount of funds for rehab."
During a meeting of Prop NS’s board this month, appointees reflected on the last five years and where the program may be headed.
During that meeting, Thomas acknowledged the challenges some buyers of Prop NS’s properties face when they go to fully rehab the buildings.
“The harsh reality is that redlining still exists, and a lot of those financial institutions are not making loans on the north side of the city or in the neighborhoods where we're doing stabilization work,” he told the board.
It’s not the only challenge. Thomas said it’s difficult to find contractors willing to do the work, and the approved funding per home for the program often doesn’t cover what it takes to fully stabilize properties.
“Most buildings in the LRA inventory require more work than is possible for the full stabilization with our per building caps, and because of those funding caps and very small margin for profit,” Thomas said. “A limited number of contractors have been willing to bid on this work.”
The board plans to ask the St. Louis Board of Aldermen to increase the amount it can draw from the annual $6 million to put toward houses. Thomas said currently, the $30-$50,000 amount doesn’t cover many homes that need repairs.
Additionally, multiple homes sold to private buyers or stabilized by the program were damaged during the May 16 EF3 tornado that ripped through St. Louis. Seven properties were totally destroyed.
Thomas said many homes damaged during the tornado and abandoned might have a future in the Prop NS program if nominated. He said the board is also interested in finding a way for the program to help prospective homeowners impacted by the tornado.
