There were about 71 ads for sheriff's sales of real estate in Licking County, Ohio published in the 2/22/07 Advocate. The total number of column inches of legal advertising in that edition was about 448, which is 37 1/3 feet and cost taxpayers about $5,800. This is for one day's worth of advertising.
Legal ads for sheriff's sales are, as anyone who's ever read one knows, virtually worthless except for the few lines that tell the property address, the appraisal value, the terms of sale, and the owner's name. The rest of what's normally included in these ads is legal property description, useful to almost nobody but it certainly pads the cost of legal advertising. Nowhere do the ads offer other information that might be critical to buyers: condition of the house, grounds, other structures, for instance, plus a number to call for further information.
Presumably the tradition was concocted by the legal community, not citizens, not people with real-estate-sales savvy, and not communicators.
This has been going on since forever and it needs to be fixed. The state needs to rewrite the laws governing legal advertising to make them more efficient and informative, if indeed the purpose is to sell these properties and not just feed more tax dollars to the legal system and the newspaper.
Friday, February 23, 2007
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