Archive for the 'General' Category

The foreclosure crisis in Massachusetts took another victim as the Stone Hotel Motel is scheduled for Bank Owned Foreclosures auction on July 2. The over 40-room property located in South Harwich is assessed at $1,233,900, with annual taxes of $7,771.

JJ Manning Auctioneers has advertised the Bank Owned Foreclosures auction for the property which consists of five buildings located on a 2.61-acre parcel of land. The facilities include two apartments, an office building and two hotel/motel buildings.

According to JJ Manning Auctioneers, the planned auction is on schedule but sometimes, with auctions, cancellation is a big possibility and so potential bidders are advised to call the company for confirmation on the day of the sale.

The property has been used both as a motel and for housing seasonal workers. It contains a 20-room dormitory used by its former owner, Doctor J. Richard Fennell to shelter seasonal workers of the Snow Inn and Thompson’s Clam Bar.

In June 1999, Fennell sold the facilities to Stone Horse Motel Inc. for about $600,000, with Harry Miller as the identified purchaser of the complex. In January 2002, Caribbean Cleaners Inc. bought the complex for a dollar. The following month, the company sold the complex back to Stone Horse Motel, also for a dollar.

Meanwhile, Douglas Levings, who declared himself as the only owner of the complex now under Bank Owned Foreclosures, operated the facilities as housing for seasonal workers and rental motel units. Last year, Levings decided to use the dormitory portion of the property into long-term rentals. He was concerned about the availability of foreign workers who worked seasonally under the H2b visa program.

Levings proposed using the complex to house people who have drug problems. He said that his research showed that there was a lack of housing for individuals who are recovering from drug addiction. He said that his proposal is aimed at providing housing to people who have successfully completed drug addiction recovery programs.

When he put his plan into action, residents living near the property staged a protest. The building department also served Levings a cease and desist order due to his failure to secure permits for conversion work.

The Bank Owned Foreclosures auction requires that successful bidders must have at least $25,000 in certified bank check. They must also be prepared to complete the sale within a month.

Members of the Marin Association of Realtors received a fair warning from California Association of Realtors chief economist Leslie Appleton-Young who told them to expect for a second wave of Bank Owned Foreclosures.

In her speech at the association’s meeting, Appleton-Young linked the languishing condition of the housing market in Marin and the national and state problems that exacerbate the ongoing crisis in the country’s economy.

She said that the economic outlook is important in determining how the city and the whole of the country could quickly recover from the crisis, adding that there is still uncertainty over how long unemployment can push higher the number of Bank Owned Foreclosures.

She told agents to brace themselves for a second wave of foreclosed properties this year or next as loans will start to re-set and properties repossessed by banks will begin to flood the market.

She noted a decline of 20 percent in the state association’s membership in 2008 despite the increasing number of Bank Owned Foreclosures selling at lower prices. She explained that the current situation in the real estate market is not for agents with faint hearts.

Appleton-Young’s speech was a contrast from her statements before the state association in April 2007. She told agents then that recession is not a possibility, citing job creation, the boom in the commercial real estate market and the economic growth in California. She pointed out that a 30 percent decline in home prices in Marin will not happen in her lifetime.

Fast forward to April 2009, the median price of a single-detached family house in Marin declined to $734,500 from $935,000 the previous year. Last month, foreclosed houses in the Bay Area accounted for nearly 50 percent of the total number of properties sold.

Appleton-Young said that she never thought home prices in California would decline by almost 35 percent. She added that the current housing market situation has a lot of lessons to offer. She told agents that today is the right time to make some changes on the housing industry.

Statewide, foreclosure filings were received by 230,915 homeowners in the first quarter of this year, a jump of 35 percent from the previous quarter. One out of 58 houses in California is in danger of becoming Bank Owned Foreclosures.

The dominance of two law firms on handling proceedings for properties on bank foreclosure listings has not escaped the attention of Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.

He ordered government-controlled mortgage financiers, Federal National Mortgage Association and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. and Lender Processing Services (LPS) to provide him with information on why only two law firms handle foreclosure proceedings in Connecticut.

Blumenthal is responding on complaints he received from consumers who claimed that they were not given proper notices of foreclosures from marshals. He said that troubled homeowners are being charged high fees on foreclosure proceedings and some marshals have received excessive fees linked to properties on bank foreclosure
listings.

According to Blumenthal, dominance of several law firms on foreclosure service has resulted to complaints of illegal or improper practices such as assigning work load to non-marshals, forgery, failure to serve papers and receiving bribes. He pointed out that these law firms in question are making a profit out of properties on bank foreclosure listings.

In his letters to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and LPS, Blumenthal asked them to disclose the criteria they are using to choose law firms that will handle foreclosure proceedings for them in the state.

He cited in his letter the law firms of Bendett and McHugh and Hunt Leibert Jacobson. Both law firms filed majority of foreclosure cases which are now clogging courts in Connecticut.

Furthermore, these law firms have allegedly passed the work of serving foreclosure notices to few select state marshals. According to complaints, state marshal John Fiorello and his group received over $1.1 million in 2008 for serving notices of foreclosures to homeowners whose properties are on bank foreclosure listings.

Blumenthal pointed out the anti-competitive practice of focusing the mortgage foreclosure processing service on few state marshals and law firms.

Records showed that Bendett and McHugh and Hunt Leibert filed nearly 1,200 lawsuits monthly in 2008, with foreclosure actions accounting for 99 percent of the cases. Additionally, the two law firms allocated almost 50 percent of their process-serving operation to the group of Fiorillo.

Bendett and McHugh and Hunt Leibert are the only law firms in Connecticut named by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as designated counsel to handle foreclosure actions on properties on bank forclosure listings.

It is the spring home selling season, and many sellers are encouraged by the rising number of prospective home buyers browsing foreclosed homes listings and looking at houses.

Republicans in the Senate are being urged by American homeowners and housing advocates to help the government foreclosure homes program by passing the bankruptcy reform law.

Senator Dianne Feinstein of California has been linked by The Washington Times to a possible conflict of interest case involving foreclosure property for sale.

There has been an increase in litigation over short sales and efforts by homeowners to avoid foreclosure listings, according to Shannon Jones, main speaker at the meeting of the San Diego Association of Realtors in April. She also said the rise in loan modification efforts could also result in the filings of lawsuits in the future.

The suspension of processing for foreclosures filed after December 2008 in Cook County, the country’s second most densely populated county, may lessen temporarily the increase rate for bank foreclosed homes in the area for several months. The suspension may also give some reprieve to families who have nowhere to go other than to stay on properties certain to become foreclosed homes while the judges decide on foreclosure cases in 2008.

With thousands of properties in foreclosures lists, prospective homebuyers have a lot of properties to choose from. They can spend days going from place to place looking at houses without the need to immediately decide on buying.

More than 70 percent of Americans have been cutting down on their expenses to prevent their homes from being added to lists of foreclosed homes across the nation, according to online research firm Move Inc.