bigredmed wrote:So what happens to a building in one of these areas so ensconced with laws/rules/ordinances regarding what can be done to when that building has accumulated a couple of hundred K in REPAIR costs (to say nothing about modernizing or updating projects)? Can there be a point where the house simply is worth less than an empty lot? Do we know what the status of that house was?
I don't know if there is anything in the ordinances in Dundee that would penalize you for failing to maintain a house. There may be rules about using non-original-appearing replacement materials. A house could definitely reach the point where repairs would be more costly than it's worth. This particular house didn't appear to have reached that point, even if some of the foundations or footings needed repair. If it had extensive termite damage, that would be another story. Sounds like it hadn't been remodeled since the 50's, which is possibly a good thing...maybe it missed out on the plywood paneling, shag carpet, orange plastic laminate craze of the 70's. But they did equally horrendous re-decorations in the 50's too.
The assessor's site put the value of the lot at $23,500, but I'll bet you could sell an empty lot in that location for at least 60k, even though traffic on Farnam is heavy and it switches from east-bound to two-way to westbound each weekday. That would be a pain.
There have been quite a few tear-downs in older parts of west Omaha too...for example, the neighborhood just east of regency has had several big ranch houses replaced with McMansions, and of course the Witherspoon & Theisen Mansions were torn down to be replaced. Guess they were still too new to be thought of as historically significant.
Dundee went through a period in the 60's and 70's when several houses were starting to be converted into apartments. That can be almost as bad as outright demolition in some cases. Zoning helps keep that from happening too much. Lincoln had the same problem in neighborhoods close to UNL. Sometimes nice houses were torn down and replaced by 6-12 unit slip-in apartment buildings, right between other single family houses.