Louisiana Authorised Land Banks in 2025, and Told Them to Pay for Themselves

Louisiana spent 2024 and 2025 rebuilding how it deals with delinquent property. One half of that was replacing tax sales with tax lien certificates from 1 January 2026. The other half, less noticed, was Acts 2025, No. 443, which gave Louisiana local governments the power to create land banks for the first time. Both reforms point at the same backlog: parcels adjudicated to political subdivisions years ago, with title nobody has untangled. The land bank Part is the tool for holding and clearing them - and it arrives without a budget.

A Nonprofit Corporation, Created by Ordinance

R.S. 40:599.4(A): "The governing body of a local government may establish a land bank authority in accordance with this Part, which shall be subject to the provisions of the Nonprofit Corporation Law, R.S. 12:201 et seq." Subsection (B) allows two or more local governments to enter an intergovernmental cooperation agreement to create a single land bank acting on behalf of all of them.

The creating ordinance "is administrative in nature" and "is not subject to referendum" under § 599.4(C), but in a parish with a publicly elected parish executive, or a municipality with a publicly elected chief executive or mayor, it is subject to that official's approval. Subsection (D) then fixes what the ordinance must contain, including the authority's name, which "shall be 'Land Bank Authority of (name of the incorporating local government)'."

Under § 599.4(E) the chief executive or mayor, or another official designated in the ordinance, executes and files the articles of incorporation under the Nonprofit Corporation Law. So a Louisiana land bank is a non-profit corporation created by local ordinance - closer to Ohio's county land reutilization corporation than to Alabama's state authority, but without Ohio's statutory funding.

The legislative findings in § 599.1 are brief and frank: there exist in many cities of the state "economically and physically depressed areas which, among other things, suffer from high unemployment, substandard and deteriorated structures, vacant and partially used lots, high crime rates, and other blighting influences," and because remedying them "typically necessitate[s] the infusion of tax-supported services, improvements, and assistance," corrective measures are a matter of public policy.

Adjudicated Property, Without Clear Title

The property powers in § 599.7 are where the Louisiana problem shows through. Subsection (A)(1) allows acquisition "by gift, devise, transfer, exchange, foreclosure, purchase, or otherwise on terms and conditions and in a manner the authority considers proper." Subsection (A)(2) allows the authority to own property in its own name, "including tax-foreclosed property and adjudicated property without clear title."

Adjudicated property - parcels that went to a political subdivision because nobody bid at a tax sale - is a long-running Louisiana backlog, and "without clear title" is the statute conceding the state of it. A land bank is being authorised to take property that cannot currently be sold because nobody can prove who owns what.

Hence § 599.7(C). An authority may quiet title or foreclose on property in which it holds an interest by conducting "an examination of title to determine the identity of any person possessing a claim or interest in the property" and filing a complaint to quiet title - and, critically for volume, "an authority may join a single complaint to quiet title or foreclose on one or more parcels of real property." One filing, many parcels.

One geographic limit applies throughout. Section 599.7(B): "Property purchased, owned, or sold under this Part may not be located outside the jurisdiction of the local government in which the authority is located."

What It May Do With a Building

Section 599.6(A) opens with a qualification worth noting before anything else: "Except as limited by the authority's articles of incorporation, an authority has all the powers specified in this Part." The articles can narrow the list, so the statute is a ceiling rather than a description of any particular authority.

Within that ceiling, four powers bear on field work:

• § 599.6(B)(17) - to "design, develop, construct, demolish, rehabilitate, renovate, relocate, and otherwise improve real property or interest in real property"
• § 599.6(B)(12) - to contract with public or private entities "for services necessary to manage and operate the authority"
• § 599.6(B)(13) - to "provide acquisition, management, and sale services to a local government for property owned by the local government"
• § 599.6(B)(16) and § 599.7(A)(4) - to insure against losses in connection with the real property, assets or activities of the authority

Paragraph (13) is the one with commercial shape. A Louisiana land bank can be engaged by its own parish or municipality to manage property the local government already owns - which, given the adjudicated backlog, is often a far larger portfolio than the land bank's own. As in Ohio, the land bank can become the single operational counterparty for a whole jurisdiction's inventory.

What the Part does not do is name routine maintenance. There is no equivalent of Ohio's "cutting grass and weeds, boarding up vacant or abandoned structures." The authority for that work sits in the management powers at (12) and (13), in (B)(15) - to "exercise a power usually possessed by a private corporation in performing similar functions" - and in the catch-all at (B)(19).

Told to Pay for Itself

Ohio gives its land banks two and a half per cent of delinquent tax collections. Pennsylvania lets a taxing jurisdiction dedicate up to half the property taxes on a parcel for five years after the land bank sells it. Louisiana gives neither.

Section 599.6(B) lists the money powers - borrow, issue bonds, invest, "solicit and accept gifts, grants, loans, or other assistance in any form from any public or private source," participate in federal, state or intergovernmental programmes - and then (B)(18) states the expectation: to "raise revenue by a legal means required to make the operations and activities of the authority self-sustaining."

Self-sustaining is a demanding standard for an entity whose inventory is, by definition, property that could not be sold at a tax sale and has no clear title. In practice it means a Louisiana land bank's maintenance spending will be tightly coupled to disposition proceeds, grant cycles and whatever it can charge its local government under paragraph (13) - which is a different conversation from the one a contractor has with an Ohio land bank drawing on a standing allocation.

What This Means If You Do the Work

• The regime is new - every section carries Acts 2025, No. 443, so there is little settled practice and each authority's articles of incorporation matter more than usual
• Section 599.6(A) lets the articles limit the statutory powers, so read the articles before assuming an authority can do something the Part allows
• Expect adjudicated property with unresolved title as the core inventory; § 599.7(A)(2) says so in terms
• Title clearing is likely to run ahead of disposition, and § 599.7(C)(2) lets one complaint cover many parcels - so work may be commissioned in batches tied to a filing rather than parcel by parcel
• There is no dedicated funding stream; § 599.6(B)(18) requires the authority to be self-sustaining, which couples maintenance budgets to sales and grants
• The most reliable revenue line for a land bank is § 599.6(B)(13) - providing acquisition, management and sale services to its own local government for the local government's property
• Nothing may be held outside the local government's jurisdiction under § 599.7(B), so a land bank's footprint matches its creating parish or municipality

For the other land bank models, see Ohio, which names grass cutting and board-ups and funds them from delinquent tax collections, Pennsylvania, funded from taxes on property it has already sold, and Alabama, whose state authority takes property free after three years. Louisiana's other regimes over a building someone else owns are covered separately: the tax lien certificate system that replaced tax sales on 1 January 2026, the consent-based blighted housing receivership, a chapter 7 trustee and the $35,000 homestead, and a succession representative's duty to preserve property. On the municipal side see New Orleans blight remediation and Shreveport's registration. Field capability is on our Louisiana page.