Archive for the 'Foreclosures' Category

German lending company, Bayerische Landesbank has filed a bank owned foreclosure lawsuit against developer Manhattan Capital and its business partner, RREEF Global Opportunities Fund, a Deutsche Bank subsidiary.

The lender sued the Midtown-based developer in connection with the defaulted loans amounting to $51.7 million for a condominium conversion project located in New York City. Both Manhattan Capital and RREEF Global are converting a 14-story building into an 84-unit luxury condominium.

Bayerische Landesbank filed the bank owned foreclosure lawsuit before the New York State Supreme Court in an effort to repossess the note. According to court records, the bank claimed that Manhattan Capital had missed payments on the loan starting in February.

According to the bank, the borrower defaulted on its loan and has failed to make its account current despite repeated demands made in writing on March 19 and June 15 of this year.

The developer is supposed to make a closing on its first sale but the filing of the foreclosure case put everything on hold. Meanwhile, it plans to file an amendment with the office of the Attorney General to allow buyers to revoke their contracts and refund their money.

Units in the luxury condominium have a price range of $585,000 to $1.825 million. Meanwhile, bank owned foreclosure lawsuits and amendments for rescission are becoming common in the commercial real estate market due to the economic downturn.

Last March, a foreclosure lawsuit was also filed against the Jasper commercial building which was converted into a condominium. In
April, buyers at the Linden78 building were given rights to rescind.

According to data, about 48 percent of the Manhattan Capital-developed condominium units were sold. Aside from the delinquent loan payments on the condominium project, Manhattan Capital also owes contractors over $2.1 million. According to the office of the New York County Clerk, contractors involved in the project have not been paid and they filed mechanic’s lien.

The contractor with the highest lien value is My Jamie Joseph Only, an air-conditioning, heating and plumbing sub-contractor that claims $1 million on the project.

According to attorney Sandor Krauss, once a loan is in default, the borrower is required to notify the buyers. However, several buyers said that they did not receive any bank owned foreclosure notification from the developer.

Units at the Concordia condominium building located in Cape Coral, Florida is selling like hot cakes as its new owner sells them at less than their original price. The condominium was once under bank owned homes foreclosures. Its unfinished structure then was a glaring evidence of the crisis in the housing market.

Today, it is a bastion of growth and serves as a proof that there is life after foreclosure. The plan for the construction of Concordia condominium started in 2004, during the peak of the housing market in Lee County. By 2005, while the condominium is under construction, its unit price range from $256,000 to around $475,000.

After two years, 50 percent of the planned 340 units and 34 buildings had been built. However, around September 2007, Concordia succumbed to the pressure of the collapsing housing market and the rising bank owned homes foreclosures. Sales were affected by falling home prices which led the Florida Community Bank to file a foreclosure action amounting to $23.4 million against condominium developer, Concordia Cape Coral LLC.

Florida Community took over the project with Steve Price, president of the bank, leading the effort to continue the development of Concordia after several offers to purchase the whole development failed to materialize.

Now, two years after it was taken out of bank owned homes foreclosures, 90 condominium units have been sold, according to Concord Wilshire Realty director of marketing Susan Lucia. Lucia also added that the remaining five buildings of the project are now under construction.

Lucia, whose company handles the marketing and selling of Concordia units, explained that the strategy involves selling the remaining units immediately by reducing their price by as low as $77,000 which is three times less their price during the peak of the real estate market.

Additionally, she said that Florida Community has been investing money into amenities and landscaping which were neglected when the property was still under foreclosure.

On the other hand, while everything is rosy with the Concordia, the future of Florida Community’s other project which it recovered from foreclosure is in limbo.

The unfinished Zoomers Family Amusement Park was taken out of bank owned homes last year after an $11.4 million foreclosure case against developer and owner Ronald Heromin. The bank is still waiting for a buyer to finish the project.

Abandoned and vacant bank foreclosure property becomes blight to neighborhoods and communities, pulling down prices in the area and becoming magnets to vagrants and thieves.

City officials in Perris, California knew that deteriorated foreclosed properties could not entice buyers and so they decided to hire David Milligan, a hazardous-waste specialist, to paint green the brown and dying grasses on lawns of foreclosed homes.

The makeover project is designed to protect the value of the bank foreclosure house and to make it attractive enough to entice potential buyers. That is why city officials were pleasantly surprised when their project did not just lure potential buyers but also news crews from various countries who filmed the makeover process.

News crews from Germany, Spain and Finland and from local media troop to the city to witness and filmed the front-yard makeovers. A television crew broadcasting to Austria, Germany and Switzerland filmed Insta-Green USA’s workers as they spray-paint a yellow lawn at the Monument Ranch subdivision in Perris.

Focus TV Productions editor Kirsten Moser said that what Perris is doing has an international appeal because it provides a glimpse of the other side of the housing crisis, and not just the usual depressing foreclosure news.

Perris is located in the Inland area which has experienced the highest number of bank foreclosure property in the county. In April, about 4,000 foreclosure notices were served to homeowners in San Bernardino County and 5,000 in Riverside County.

Vacant houses have become targets for squatters and vandals, unattended swimming pools turned into habitats of disease-carrying mosquitoes and dead and decaying lawns destroyed the appearance of neighborhoods and pulled down home values.

Because of the increasing number of vacant properties in the area, some Inland cities, such as Riverside and Rialto, have required lenders to maintain their properties and keep them free from weeds, trash and graffiti.

Milligan, who was hired by Perris in March, has so far colored the grass and beautify the lawns of 23 homes in the city at a maximum cost of $650 each. He explained that the color painted on the grass would last a maximum of four months then the dye, which is light sensitive, would start to break down.

For colorant, Milligan is using the non-toxic dye, kale pectate, which is usually used on golf courses, to spruce up the lawn in a bank foreclosure property.

Foreclosure has become a nightmare to thousands of homeowners. But some people have seen business opportunities on bank foreclosed homes. There are those offering cleaning services, counseling and now caretaking.

People who are doing the caretaking of foreclosurehomes for sale for realtors are called home tenders or managers. Their task was to furnish the foreclosed [...]

The Senate may have partly redeemed itself from its rejection of the bankruptcy reform measure recently by approving on Wednesday a measure that would enhance the government foreclosures program.
The bill, voted 91 to 5, would protect mortgage servicing firms from litigation if they modify loans under government foreclosures schemes and would require lenders to notify [...]

Distressed homeowners in Illinois have reason to feel some level of relief after Illinois Governor Patrick Quinn signed into law a legislative initiative that would mitigate the rising number of foreclosure properties across the state.
The legislation, coded Senate Bill 2513, would give defaulting mortgage borrowers 90 days to seek HUD-certified foreclosure prevention counseling and negotiate [...]

The bankers who had a big part in the flood of foreclosures that downed the housing market and the national economy are blocking a significant solution to the problem, according to Henry Sommer, author of bankruptcy textbooks and an attorney at Consumer Bankruptcy Assistance in Philadelphia.

As Florida foreclosures continue to soar in January, courts in the state have been conducting rocket docket hearings to clear their backlogs of foreclosure filings. Rocket docket takes just a few seconds.

In rocket docket, the judge just asks two questions: whether the homeowner is currently occupying the home and whether he is current with his monthly amortization. While the answer to the first question could be yes or no, the answer to the second question is always no. The judge will then inform the homeowner how many days he is allowed to stay in the house if he is unable to negotiate a deal with the lender.

The housing recession for the past two years has increased foreclosures to record levels as more and more families are struggling to make payments on properties that are decreasing in value. Despite these hard times, there is still something to be optimistic about.

The building of affordable housing for people with low income in San Diego County are affected by the increase in California foreclosures and lack of tax credit investments.