Sell Your House Fast in Malden

Malden's Mayor's Problem Properties Unit — established by Mayor Gary Christenson in February 2012 and run jointly by Inspectional Services, the Board of Health, Fire, Police, the Legal Department, and OSPED out of 215 Pleasant Street — actively targets illegal rooming houses, vacant and abandoned buildings, and properties with recurring code violations.

The city's vacant property registration ordinance (Section 3.36) charges $50 for a vacant-only registration but $550 for vacant-and-foreclosing properties and $500 in annual renewals after 120 days of vacancy, with fees deposited into a revolving fund that bankrolls further enforcement.

In serious cases the unit can invoke Massachusetts General Law Chapter 111 §127I to put the property into court-ordered receivership, transferring control to a third party who recovers repair costs as a lien against the owner.

For owners of inherited or struggling multifamilies in Edgeworth, Linden, or Maplewood, the timeline for deferring a decision is short — fees, fines, and a possible receiver can all attach within a year, and once a receivership lien is on the title, a traditional sale becomes substantially harder to close.