pWATERTOWN — City officials soon will know more about what’s going on with the city’s unpredictable housing market after a consultant completes a comprehensive housing strategy./ppAt the request of Mayor Joseph M. Butler Jr., the Development Authority of the North Country has retained the services of a Buffalo-based real estate consultant, GAR Associates, to analyze Watertown’s housing market and trends for homeowners and renters./ppShortly after taking office in January, Mayor Butler asked DANC to see what can be done about a variety of housing issues facing the city. He stressed the city needed to deal with vacant and foreclosed homes, so-called “zombie houses” and deteriorating properties that have popped up in neighborhoods in Watertown in recent years. /ppMichelle L. Capone, DANC’s director of regional development, said GAR Associates will formulate the study by developing a detailed analysis of the city’s housing supply and housing situation. /pp“The key area will be looking at shifts of homeowners and renters,” she said./ppCity Council members approved going forward with the housing strategy at last Monday night’s meeting. /ppCalling it “a pretty inclusive analysis,” Mayor Butler said the study will take the city a long way in understanding the housing market./pp“It’s going to be an evolving document,” he said. “It’s not going to be set in stone.”/ppThe study will look at renters moving out of the city and into new apartment complexes in surrounding communities, evaluating homeownership opportunities for renters, and the impact of 801 housing units and how it influences housing options./ppThe city’s housing market shifted as the result of a rental building boom a couple of years ago that was associated with a housing shortage for Fort Drum soldiers. More than 1,000 units were built in and around Watertown to fill the need, causing renters to move out of the city’s aging housing stock and into the new rental units and leaving many of the older units vacant./ppGAR Associates will collect data, review demographics and then analyze what it means, Ms. Capone said. The consultant will look at sale pricing and trends, market rate apartment complexes, affordable housing and low-income housing tax credit projects./ppThe consultant will meet with city planning officials, the assessor’s office and developers./ppDANC chose GAR because it had completed housing studies in Lewis County and Ogdensburg for the agency, Ms. Capone said./ppHousing issues played a role in last fall’s election campaign. Mayor Butler and new council members Mark C. Walczyk and Cody J. Horbacz all promised to do something about so-called zombie properties, abandoned houses and deteriorating neighborhoods. The city has already established a number of new and old policies to help the city’s housing situation. Councilman Stephen A. Jennings also has proposed a rental registration program to keep track of the numerous rental units in the city./ppRecently, council members also learned about the city’s aging housing stock. A report completed by the city’s Planning Department revealed that 58.4 percent of the homes in the city are renter-occupied, while just 41.6 percent are owner-occupied and that 57.1 percent of the houses in the city were built before World War II./p
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