Land banking

Land banking is the practice of aggregating parcels of land for future sale or development.

While in many countries land banking may refer to various private real-estate investment schemes, in the United States it refers to the establishment of quasi-governmental county or municipal authorities purposed with managing an inventory of surplus land.

Land banks are quasi-governmental entities created by counties or municipalities to effectively manage and repurpose an inventory of underused, abandoned, or foreclosed property. They are often chartered to have powers that allow them to accomplish these goals in ways that existing government agencies can not. While the land bank "model" has gained broad support and has been implemented in a number of cities, they are implemented differently so as to best address both municipal needs and the state and local legal context in which they were created.

The period of deindustrialization in the United States coupled with increased suburbanization in the middle of the 20th century left many American cities with large amounts of vacant & blighted industrial, residential, and commercial property. Beginning in the early 1970s municipalities began to seek solutions to manage decline or spur revitalization in once prosperous city neighborhoods. The first land bank was created in St. Louis in 1971. While additional municipalities continued to adopt them at a trickle it wasn’t until the mid 2000s that land banks became viewed as a tested, reliable, and accepted model and experienced widespread implementation – particularly after the success of the Genesee County Land Bank. In 2009 the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a report embracing land banks as a best practices model for municipalities dealing with the effects of the real estate market collapse and the ensuing foreclosure crisis.

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