I took a ride in foreclosure heaven, the sprawl City of Homestead, to see if I could easily identify foreclosures. Before sprawl hit, Homestead was a farming community. This is an area where production home builders went wild. I found it isn’t too hard to spot foreclosures. No, the grass is not high but the houses are obviously empty. First clue, they have lock boxes on their doors. Second (this was one surefire way to know it is a foreclosure) they have signs in the window that say: "Foreclosure." Both of these properties are within a block of each other.
Citigroup Global Markets Realty owns this first one. The 1,800 sq. ft., 3 bedroom home sold last 11/2006 for $338,000, it was built in 2003. Between 11/2004 and 8/2007 Citigroup had 131 Lis Pendens and 16 Certificates of Title (the way foreclosures are transferred). This property was transferred on 10/25/2007 from Yoanna Castillo. Curiously, I could not find any records for this person, which may mean they work for the police dept. or have had their records purged some other way.
This second property was not an easy property to research either. Keys Gate Community Association Inc. had 340 Lis Pendens between 01/02/2006 and 03/01/2008 and 18 Certificates of Title. Michael Latterner is one of the officers of this Keys Gate Corporation (who has often been linked to Lennar in large sales contracts).4/11/2007 the Keys Gate Community Association was granted a Certificate of Title on foreclosed Lot 27 which is a 4 bedroom, 1,900 sq. ft. home previously owned by Maria
Tamayo. I found a recent sale of a similar sized home. It sold 4/2007 for $295,000. Maria paid $355,000 in 2005. This property was foreclosed on almost a year ago and it is still sitting empty! Tamayo’s first mortgage was for $284,000 from First NLC Financial Services and they also gave her a second mortgage for $71,000 12/01/2005, total $355,000 (100% of purchase price was financed). There was a Lis Pendens 11/22/2006 against her. Incredibly she got another private mortgage for $40,000 at 13.5% on 11/17/2006 (mortgage registered 12/02/2006). Can someone tell me: How did the developer end up with this second property in foreclosure when there were apparently 3 mortgages on it?
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11 comments:
better question: how did they end up with 18 properties?
Fraud, fraud, fraud.
I wish this would happen in our neighboorhood... Such a house in our neighborhood is about $1.3M, and all the (foreign) buyers still have this idea that real estate is a good investment.
It is a great investment for them with the dollar being so weak.
Speculators scammed our neighborhood very well. I live in this area: Keys Landing of Keys Gate. The developer ended up owning them because we filed first since the HOA dues were not paid. No one else bid on the properties as the sale except the developer. Our problem: making the banks who hold the mortgages mainting properties so the community does not look like a dump.
Thanks to piss poor planning and plain greed our suburbs will inevitably become 21st century ghettos!
My advice to those who live down south: GET OUT SOONER RATHER THAN LATER! It's gonna be ugly.
"It is a great investment for them with the dollar being so weak."
Tt is a investment worse for than it is for us. The prices are still falling AND the dollar is still falling.
As to how the the builder/HOA ended up with title. I suspect that the previous owner owed it some money and Tamayo assumed that debt when she bought the house (and never paid it off). This would have allowed the builder/HOA to file and perfect it's interest in the home before the lender even filed.
For those of us who bought early, before the bubble, it is low cost housing. I prefer DOWN SOUTH, Doo-ral and other "high end" places are much worse. No traffic, quiet areas, open space, just some school issues, but after the budget cuts, DCPS will be leading the downhill spiral of all Florida schools.
If this the shores... I know phase one very well. At one time there were 11 for sale signs on 1 short block.... Were you able to pick out the section 8 rentals? A real issue for the neighbors.
One street I know has probabbly 5 section 8's with in the block. The places are messy, loud and issue for the associations.
Phrase one of the shores at preconstruction sold as low as almost 123,000 ... for a 3 bedroom 2 bath 7000 square foot lot... many folks bought them to flip and didn't make it.
Great post, I've also driven through local neighborhoods looking for the foreclosures. I live near Gary, IN, which seems like the entire city has been half-abandoned for some years now, but there are more obviously empty homes. Even going through the more half-way decent neighborhoods around the area, it's not too difficult to spot what are probably foreclosed homes.
Maybe, in time, some of these Homestead homes can be knocked down and returned to farmland. That would definitely help keep the community more usable and sustainable, rather than being another victim of suburban sprawl.
Sadly enough: I think I was in Keys Gate or Keys Landing...
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