Property tax breaks meant to encourage homeownership have been awarded to 465 vacant houses in Baltimore, depriving the city of uncollected revenue in a difficult budget year and calling into question past promises from city officials to crack down on tax scofflaws, a Baltimore Sun analysis has found.Owners of the vacant homes received a total of $325,000 in tax breaks. That's enough money to run municipal swimming pools for more than Read more [...]

A market for ultra-cheap homes has emerged in cities around the U.S., and the result is that in many cases it’s much less expensive to buy a house than it would be to purchase a new car. The Baltimore Sun reports that one in ten homes sold in Baltimore during the first half of 2011 was purchased for less than $10,000. The roughly 275 homes sold in that price range in those six months outnumber the tally of homes sold for $10K or under in all of 2009 and 2010 combined. More than 500 homes in the Read more [...]

In High Point’s early history, the question “to board or not to board” must have been asked by the many black folks who visited, passed through or decided to settle in High Point. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the main difference between a rooming house and boarding house is that meals are provided at a boarding house. This gets confusing because the High Point City Directory listed boarding houses — but not rooming houses — until the 1960s. No matter the classification, Read more [...]