Under a new city policy known as "bulk purchasing," investors can buy an unlimited number of residential properties that the city has foreclosed on. Prior to the trial program, they were limited to three.

At its May 15 meeting, City Council is to vote on the first wave of investors eligible to buy properties in bulk. And some council members say they're concerned about what the bulk policy will accomplish, particularly if it places numerous properties in the hands of out-of-town owners.

Nine investors are ready to buy 101 properties. Two of them, who would be eligible to buy 38 properties, live in Utah.

The Investor Bulk Sale Program is a trial program designed to get more than 200 single-, two-, and three-family tax-foreclosed properties back into private hands. All of the properties have been vacant at least for months, sometimes for years, and most are badly deteriorated. The city is auctioning them through a sealed-bid process in "as is" condition. The sales need to be completed by July 2007, and investors have until September 2008 to complete all repairs. Financing, repairs, and code violations are the responsibility of the buyers.

The investors had to prove to city officials that they have gotten loans approved and can close on their purchases within 60 days. The number of properties they can buy is determined by their credit rating and borrowing ability.

The minimum bid for each property is $2,800 with a cash deposit of $1,000, and investors must commit to rehabbing all of their purchases at the same time.

While the Bulk Sale Program would return the properties to the city's tax base, say its critics, it doesn't do anything to alleviate city's crippling concentration of poverty. And potentially, the critics say, the program could make it worse.

"Two of our most important goals have been to increase home ownership and decrease the concentration of poverty," says Councilmember Dana Miller, who voted against the program in February 2007. "In my opinion, this program does neither. Since there is no residency requirement and technically no limit to how many properties one owner can have, large numbers of these properties can go to investors all over the world. There's been interest from people as far away as Australia."

Miller says he's also concerned that the bulk program doesn't seem to have any correlation to the housing study the city just released.

"We even asked, Why are you proposing this now when you have a housing study in the works," says Miller. "Why not wait until you have the results of the study?"

Miller says he doesn't think the Bulk Sale Program will increase absentee ownership because most of the properties are located in the inner city, where most residential properties are already rental units. But it severely limits the potential for increased owner-occupancy, he says.

The rental market rate for most of the single-family units will be about $600, he says. "How much in repairs can you afford to put into them?"

Councilmember Carolee Conklin says she was not expecting such an ambitious program for a pilot.

"I'm not sure what we have now is really a pilot program," says Conklin. "I am concerned about the size, the number of developers, and the city's ability to do the necessary management."

But Councilmember Bill Pritchard says he has weighed the negatives and he supports the program.

"I do have some concerns with the emphasis on rentals versus owner-occupancy," he says. "But the concept is a good one if it gets a lot of these houses back on the tax rolls. And the truth is, it's unlikely that average buyers through their own resources are going to buy many of these properties, if any at all."