National Land Bank Map
Discover where land banks are located across the U.S.
For the purposes of this map, we define land banks as public entities with unique powers to put vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated properties back to productive use according to community goals. State laws give land banks their unique powers, which vary state-by-state. These unique powers enable them to undertake these activities far more effectively and efficiently than other public or nonprofit entities.
Land banking programs, on the other hand, are run by nonprofit or government entities and focus specifically on the acquisition, holding, and sale of vacant and abandoned properties. They exist primarily in states without enabling legislation and typically do not have the unique powers of legislatively enabled land banks but can still provide important support to transforming vacant properties.
Approximately 80 percent of land banks in the United States were created pursuant to state-enabling statutes that authorize local governments throughout a state to create land banks.
As of February 2024, the following eighteen states and Puerto Rico have passed state-enabling land bank legislation:
- Michigan (2004)
- Ohio (2009)
- New York (2011)
- Georgia (2012)
- Tennessee (2012)
- Missouri (2012)
- Pennsylvania (2012)
- Nebraska (2013)
- Alabama (2013)
- West Virginia (2014)
- Delaware (2015)
- Virginia (2016)
- Indiana (2016)
- Kentucky (2017)
- Kansas (2018)
- Connecticut (2019)
- New Jersey (2019)
- Maryland (2019)
The characteristics of land bank statutes throughout the country reflect the unique legal and political environment of the state and provide varying legal powers to the land banks they govern. Ideally, land banks should be able to: acquire tax-foreclosed property cost-effectively; flexibly sell property to a responsible buyer or developer, driven not by the highest price but by the outcome that most closely aligns with community goals; extinguish liens and clear title; hold property tax-exempt; and generate and collect revenue from delinquent property tax fees, property tax recapture, or other funding mechanisms.
For more about land banks, visit our Land Banks Online Resource Center.
- Properties received by a land bank may also be occupied.
- Modified definition from Alexander, F.S. (2011). Land Banks and Land Banking. Center for Community Progress.