How this Belvidere home went from problem property to $190K listing

By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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BELVIDERE — First it was the overgrown grass. Then illegal dumping. Then neighbors started spotting mice.

The escalating issues at an abandoned house at 1000 Nettie St., which is across the street from a day care, made it a common source of complaints for 3rd Ward Alderwoman Wendy Frank.

“It was my No. 1 hot spot with the most frequent problems,” Frank said.

On Friday, Frank and other city and county officials got to walk through the home, which has gone through a complete overhaul that left it almost unrecognizable from its past problems.

David Reyes, the owner of Advantage Realtors, and his son, Gabriel, renovated nearly every aspect of the home inside and out.

There are two complete new bathrooms, a complete new kitchen and brand new carpeting throughout. They also sanded and finished the hardwood floors, installed new doors, new windows, a new water heater and furnace, a new garage door and made repairs to the stucco facade and gave it a fresh coat of paint. They also replaced half the roof, poured new concrete outside and fixed drainage issues, among other improvements.

Now the property isn’t attracting complaints. It’s attracting buyers.

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Listed at $189,900, it had roughly 10 showings on its first day on the market Thursday and another 15 or more lined up, Reyes said.

The transformation is being held up as an example of what the Region 1 Land Bank can accomplish. The goal of the program is to acquire abandoned and tax delinquent properties in order to get them into the hands of responsible owners. Vacant properties like the one on Nettie Street, which are unmarketable to the private sector due to tax liens, can be acquired and be sold at auction to the private sector.

That’s exactly what happened here.

“This is probably one of the properties that got the land bank idea started,” said Eric Setter, Region 1’s land bank coordinator. “Everybody seems to know this address.”

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The city of Belvidere started getting complaints in 2014 for overgrown grass. There were broken windows, vagrants and routine illegal dumping by 2015 and the house was boarded up two years later. When the land bank formed in 2019, staff inspected the outside of the property and saw at least 25 code violations, Setter said.

The land bank acquired the property through judicial deed in 2020, and in 2021 it was sold to Reyes for $41,414.

“We’re very, very proud of the investment that was made here and the result,” said Mike Dunn Jr., executive director of the Region 1 Planning Council. “We hope that there’s many more.”

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Reyes said the program shows what can be accomplished when you get properties back into the hands of people who will care for it. He has purchased six properties through the R1 Land Bank and renovated and sold the others.

“In order to do this you have to pour your heart into it. It’s very demanding,” he said. “Anytime you can get property into the hands of people who will love it, that’s a good thing.”

This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on Twitter at @KevinMHaas or Instagram @thekevinhaas.