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By Lynn Hulsey and Joanne Huist Smith

Staff Writers

8:39 PM Saturday, June 30, 2012

DAYTON — For 20 years, Dayton resident Jan Singleton has been buying rundown properties with an eye toward developing them one day. He says he’s performing a public service, acting as a neighborhood savior.

But Dayton and Montgomery County officials, neighborhood activists and local property owners have a different view of Singleton.

They say he’s destroying neighborhoods, not building them up.

Singleton owns 54 abandoned properties in Montgomery County, by far the most of any single landowner. He also owes $329,017 in unpaid taxes on those properties.

His strategy, which Singleton freely admits, is not to pay taxes in order to entice lenders holding the mortgages to either forgive them or to decide against foreclosure due to the high tax liability.

“Between the property taxes, weed assessments, the cost of clean-up and repairs, they’ll find there is no profit for them, no value in the property,” Singleton said. “It’s a stick to hold over banks and mortgage companies.”

Singleton owns a total of 68 properties. Of the 30 with structures, he has made property tax payments on just three. He has made almost no tax payments in seven years on his 38 vacant lots.

“His game is not to pay taxes. He plays the game until his time runs out,” said Daniel Gerhard, Montgomery County’s assistant treasurer.

The treasurer’s office foreclosed on at least five of Singleton’s properties for back taxes, Gerhard said. Another dozen ended up in tax lien sales.

Singleton acknowledges his properties are in bad shape. He says he’s looking for investors or bank loans to finance repairs.

In just the last five years, the city of Dayton has issued Singleton 18 citations for property code violations, 10 repair orders and 16 warning notices. Eight of his houses were boarded up and the city took him to housing court on 13 cases.

“This guy has found a way to work around the system,” said developer Theresa Gasper, who grew up in Dayton’s South Park and now owns rental properties there. “Everybody’s aware of the guy. But nobody has the authority to do anything about it.”

Singleton tells a different story.

“I’m a guy trying to improve the community, trying to fix properties that nobody else wants,” he said. “Entrepreneurship is supposed to be alive in Dayton. I have my doubts, especially on the days when I have to appear in housing court.”

Singleton calls most of his properties “walk-aways” that he discovered by researching rundown homes that had been foreclosed on and sent to sheriff’s sale. He said he approaches homeowners and offers to take the properties off their hands.

“Some of them didn’t even know they still owned the property,” Singleton said. “They thought they had lost it to foreclosure years ago.”

Once he targets a property, Singleton sends the owner a letter along with a quit-claim deed.

Warranty deeds, where the seller guarantees there are no outstanding claims on the property from creditors, are traditionally used in residential home sales. A quit-claim deed transfers the interest the current owner has in a property without making warranties about rights that others, like a mortgage company or county treasurer, may have in it.

“There’s no money involved,” Singleton said. “They just mail the quit-claim deed back to me.”

By keeping the ownership murky, Singleton effectively circumvents the system, said Tyrone Sampson, Dayton’s senior housing inspector in charge of court duties.

“I think it important to know that when Jan Singleton acquires a property, he won’t have the deed recorded,” Sampson said. “That’s what he hides behind.”

Montgomery County Recorder Willis Blackshear said Singleton often transfers the deeds in the county auditor’s office, but doesn’t follow up by having it recorded in Blackshear’s office. The Dayton Daily News identified 18 of Singleton’s properties that were not recorded in this way.

“He’s playing a shell game. Looking at the auditor’s records gives the appearance that the transaction is complete, but it’s not complete,” Blackshear said. “If someone is doing a title search on a property, the new owner would not be reflected.”

Singleton said the two-step process of transferring the deed in the auditor’s office and then having it recorded in a separate office is laborious and costly. He files the properties in the recorder’s office when he can afford to do so, he said.

Maintaining an arm’s length connection to the property allows Singleton to generate revenue, such as from a rental, while avoiding responsibility for code violations, said Kevin Powell, the city of Dayton’s acting division manager of housing inspection.

“If we have that hard copy document (the deed), we can prove to the judge that he is the owner,” said Powell.

Sampson said he has seen Singleton beat housing violations repeatedly over 20 years by not recording deeds.

In the meantime, neighbors say Singleton’s abandoned properties continue to deteriorate.

Walter DeLoats lives next to a Singleton property at 124 Monmouth St. in Dayton. Siding is falling off the house. Windows are broken. A broken gate leads to a yard full of weeds and refuse. The house has become a habitat for feral cats.

“It should have been demolished a long time ago,” DeLoats said. “If (the city) would just tear it down and leave a vacant lot, that would be fine.”

Singleton said he doesn’t understand why the county considers him a problem when there are more than 6,000 properties on the county’s abandoned list.

“I’ve never been one to let stress take over. I sleep pretty decent at night,” Singleton said. “I’m providing a service.”

Contact these reporters at 
(937) 225-2362 or jsmith@Dayton
DailyNews.com and (937)225-7455 or lhulsey@daytondailynews.com.