Archival Tax Foreclosures in Detroit, 2002 - 2013

Wayne County follows a relatively fixed process for initiating tax foreclosures. The county serves notice to any parcel that is more than three years delinquent on property tax payments, and these properties are then sold to the highest bidder in two auctions - one in early September, and one in October. While there have been some exceptions to this schedule (a June 2012 auction of unsold foremost among them), properties listed in the September tax auction represent a strong proxy for identifying the universe of tax-foreclosed properties. This file identifies parcels within the City of Detroit that were listed in the September Wayne County tax foreclosure auction in any year from 2002 through 2013. It contains information on year of foreclosure, as well as the total number of times that a property has been subject to tax foreclosure. The work to produce this dataset was conducted in September 2013, and the data were subsequently integrated into the Motor City Mapping project. The purpose of this file is to help provide information on how Detroit's tax foreclosure crisis has developed over time, enabling community members and decision-makers to make more informed decisions when developing strategies to combat this growing problem. Metadata associated with this file includes field description metadata and a narrative summary detailing the creation of the dataset.  For more information on the Motor City Mapping project, please visit www.motorcitymapping.org, and to learn more about the Wayne County Tax Foreclosure process, please visit this website: http://www.waynecounty.com/treasurer/783.htm.