Guess Who Owns The Most Land In Buffalo

Over the last few years, Buffalo, New York, has been a national leader in the housing market. By all indications, the 716 will have the hottest market in the whole country, and even with the economy looking like it may slow down a bit, there's no expectation for the housing market to follow.

With so much activity, you would think there are a whole lot of houses on the market, but according to data from the Buffalo Niagara Association of REALTORS, housing inventory has been pretty low. There are many reasons why housing inventory is low, but one of those reasons has to do with who owns what properties and their willingness to sell or not.

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All across the country, some people and businesses own a lot of land and property. For example, an article in USA Today details how the original founder of CNN, Ted Turner, owns more than 2 million acres of land all across the United States. To put that into context, if you took the state of Rhode Island and multiplied it by 3, you roughly have the same amount of land that Turner owns.

Growing up, my grandfather told me that land and real estate are among those things you should invest in because, unlike other commodities, they're not making any more of it.

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Knowing that there won't be any more land popping up in the 716, I got a little curious about who the biggest landowner was in New York State's second-largest city. You may be surprised to find out who that is.

In 2020, The Buffalo State College Geography and Planning Department studied public records available in Erie County, New York, to find the answer to this exact question.

Their study initially focused on the number of vacant lots in Buffalo that could be used for future development. However, digging into the data, they discovered an interesting fact.

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They discovered that the City of Buffalo government owned nearly 7,000 vacant properties, in addition to almost 1,000 other structures, making the City the largest landowner in Buffalo.

The city owns more property than any individual or company in Western New York, with close to 8,000 lots of land, some with buildings on them and some without.

Western New York is experiencing a real estate crunch for people trying to buy a home; maybe it's not a bad idea to acquire some land from Buffalo and build a new house.