The home on the 2000 block of 114th Avenue NW. in Andover may seem like just another house for sale, but it's one in which we all have a stake.

The four-bedroom, two-bath house, built in 1991, was foreclosed and forfeited to the Federal National Mortgage Association last spring. Since then, it has gotten new windows, siding, electrical and energy improvements, insulation, appliances and floor coverings. It's been painted. All with $47,700 in taxpayer money.

The work was one of many projects across the state and nation done through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP), created as part of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. The $4 billion in NSP funding was intended to help states respond in the areas hardest hit by foreclosures and falling home values.

Anoka County has received nearly $5 million and had spent or committed more than $2.2 million of that at the end of 2009. In addition to the house on 114th Avenue, eight others are being rehabbed, eight houses have been demolished, and two have been sold to Habitat for Humanity.

Work on the Andover house was completed around Thanksgiving, and it went on the market soon after, for $156,500, said Karen Skepper, the county's community development manager. Several potential buyers already have expressed interest in the house; a buyer's income may not exceed 120 percent of the area's median, or $100,700 for a family of four. Proceeds from the sale will go back into Anoka County's NSP program.

"It's been an exciting year of firsts for every single person in our department," Skepper said. "We've been going down roads we had never explored before."

The goal, she said, was to inject enough money and effort in neighborhoods for the work to be visible and appreciable. The county demolished seven dilapidated houses on one square block in Columbia Heights, for example.

"Straight from the words of [Housing and Urban Development], we wanted to be able to drive down the street five years from now and say, 'Look, we've made a difference,'" she said.

The county got off to a slower start than she had hoped; her department had to start from scratch to develop a process to do the work on the scale and at the standard it needed to be done.

"Our goal at the end of the project was to turn over a lot with no contamination, or a home with no hazards that won't need significant improvements for at least five years," Skepper said. "Our philosophy was we don't want to have anybody coming back and try to tag the county with selling an inferior project, so we've set the standard for us a little bit higher."

Federal rules require that the rest of the money must be dedicated by June 30.

Maria Elena Baca • 612-673-4409