Foreclosing going up in the world's borough

 

 Queens Chronicle

The latest Property Shark report, which was released last week, revealed that since the eviction moratorium came to a close in January, first-time scheduled foreclosures and preforeclosures filings have steadily made a climb in Queens.

While Brooklyn has the most foreclosures and preforeclosures in the city the first quarter of 2022, the World’s Borough is not too far behind on both fronts.

Since the end of the moratorium, there have been 87 first-time foreclosures throughout the city and lis pendens, or preforeclosure filings, have jumped by 13 percent citywide compared to the first quarter in 2020.

In Queens, there were 31 foreclosures, most of which were in the 11434 ZIP Code, which encompasses parts or all of Hollis, Jamaica, St. Albans and South Jamaica. There were also 237 preforeclosure filings — a 54 percent increase from the first quarter 2020, according to the report. Brooklyn had 35 foreclosures and 530 lis pendens filed.

There were 12 foreclosures in Manhattan, nine in the Bronx and none in Staten Island, according to Property Shark. Respectively, they also had 32, 74 and 150 preforeclosures.

The city’s homeowners have increasingly felt the economic pressures caused by the pandemic, said City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Jamaica).

“Housing is New Yorkers’ top priority for having safer neighborhoods, and our city must focus on keeping people in their homes,” said Adams via email. “We know that Black and brown homeowners in neighborhoods, like those I represent in Southeast Queens, have historically been at greatest risk of foreclosure and losing the generational wealth built over many years, which we must defend.”

Year after year, the city has funded a multimillion-dollar Foreclosure Prevention Initiative, which remains in the current budget to provide assistance to distressed homeowners, she added.

“In its Preliminary Budget Response, the Council has also proposed a property tax rebate for homeowners, which would provide overdue relief,” said Adams. “These are priorities we support to keep New Yorkers in their homes during this crisis.”

Homeowners who have fallen behind or need help navigating the complicated process or who want to avoid foreclosure can get free legal service by contacting the Center for NYC Neighborhoods network at (646) 786-0888.

Councilwoman Nantasha Williams (D-St. Albans) was disheartened that her district, 27, continues to take the brunt of the foreclosure crisis, which has become a recurring issue.

de Blasio illicitly rewarded city hall and presidential campaign PAC donors to abused third party transfer program for city foreclosed buildings

 
NY Daily News

Groups selected by the city to take over foreclosed properties both employ and have close ties with dozens of donors who have given generously to politicians with a say over the fate of the valuable buildings.

A Daily News analysis of for-profit and non-profit entities approved by the city to take over the “distressed” buildings found workers and directors for most of those entities donated cash to local political campaigns. Of the 37 outfits approved for the city’s controversial “third-party transfer” program, at least 21 employ or have close connections with someone who donated, campaign finance records revealed.

Political observers and critics of the program say the donations, coupled with the city picking the companies to take over the properties, many of which are in quickly gentrifying neighborhoods, raise thorny issues.

“These are the kind of things that make me wince. There is something here that doesn’t smell right,” said Betsy Gotbaum, executive director of the Citizens Union good government group. “Who benefits? Why are these particular people benefiting?”

All told, from 2013 campaigns to the present, the donors gave at least $100,000 to local and national political causes, including Mayor de Blasio’s presidential run. Of all the politicians they’ve given to, de Blasio holds the most sway. He is chief of a bureaucracy that chooses who gets the valuable properties and who doesn’t.

Since his 2013 mayoral run, de Blasio has received $4,900 from Nancy Lepre, president of Avante Contracting; $10,950 from Frank Carone, a board member and audit committee chairman at RiseBoro Community Partnership; and approximately $14,000 from others affiliated with the city-selected, third-party-transfer companies.

Both Avante and RiseBoro are among entities approved by the city to take ownership over buildings the city forecloses on. Other companies whose board members, employees or relatives have given include Lemle & Wolff, the St. Nick’s Alliance and the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board.

But Carone stands out among this broad constellation of donors.

 But Carone stands out among this broad constellation of donors.

 Not only is he on the board of directors at RiseBoro, the non-profit once known as the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council and synonymous with the disgraced late Assemblyman Vito Lopez, Carone is the chief lawyer for the Brooklyn Democratic Party. In that role, he wields vast influence over the candidates the party chooses to sit as judges in Brooklyn’s courts.

The judges chosen by the party go on to hear cases involving foreclosures under the third-party transfer program. If a judge rules in the city’s favor, the city can then transfer the properties to entities such as RiseBoro, which can then begin collecting rent from tenants.

“It is very troubling,” said Serge Joseph, a lawyer for a Bronx co-op that was recently foreclosed on under third-party transfer. “If you put that on top of everything else, it becomes overwhelmingly troubling.”

 “Everything else,” according to Joseph and many other critics of TPT, is the lack of notice provided to owners by the city prior to transfers taking place, the way the city defines a “distressed” property, and the city’s failure to provide assistance to struggling buildings in its Housing Development Fund Corporation (HDFC) program.

Foreclosure stats remain the highest in Southeast Queens

Queens Chronicle


More than a decade after the mortgage bubble burst in the United States, Queens continues to be ground zero for foreclosures in the city.

In its latest report, PropertyShark, a website that chronicles residential and commercial real estate in major U.S. markets, said the borough’s numbers were up for the first quarter of 2019.

The report, written by Robert Demeter, states that first-time foreclosures in the city totaled 870 from Jan. 1 through the end of March, a decrease of five percent over the first three months of 2018.


But in Queens, the borough had 315 new foreclosures to begin 2019, a 4-percent increase over the 303 in the first quarter of 2018, and a 25 percent hike from the 252 registered in the final quarter of 2018, which includes October, November and December.


“The 11434 zip code encompassing Jamaica, South Jamaica, Rochdale and St. Albans neighborhoods had the most foreclosures in the borough: 28,” according to the report.

Pols call for moratorium on property seizures

From PIX11:

Hundreds of homeowners throughout New York City have been defrauded out of their homes. Now, elected officials are calling for a federal investigation into the matter, including whether a city program may be partly to blame.

"There needs to be a moratorium on taking houses from these homeowners until we can make sure that somethings not unethical, illegal, or immoral," said Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams.

Adams says his office has heard dozens of similar stories over the past year: homeowners in rapidly gentrifying areas, like Bed-Stuy, forced out of their homes. He says it's usually been one of three causes:

Forced foreclosures
Deed fraud
City's third party transfer program

"We believe when you have something of this magnitude that could be a large number of black and brown homeowners losing their homes, when the dust settles we cannot look back and say wow we should have paid attention to this," Adams said.

Which is why he and City Council Member Robert Cornegy are calling for a stop on all property seizures pending federal, state, and city investigations. For it's part the city's office of Housing Preservation and Development, which runs the TPT program, says it's unfair to lump it in with other illegal activities scamming people out of their homes.

Brooklyn neighborhood under siege

From PIX11:

This was not a forum on issues within public housing, of which there are many, but instead an attempt to focus specifically on private homeowners and tenants.

The frustration circulating through the room came to a boil when it came to deed theft – and the army of sketchy real estate investors residents say prey on struggling homeowners.

“Some of us have identified a single player who is a responsible for a disproportionate amount of skullduggery in Bedford Stuyvesant,” said Brooklyn resident Joe Gonzalez.

“The third party transfer program, broadly speaking, is really mean to protect tenants of these buildings that have been severely distressed,” said Deputy Director of NYC Neighborhood Strategies Leila Bozorg.

Inevitably, the conversation turned to the topic of gentrification, who’s responsible for it – and what can be done to neutralize the impact on private homeowners and tenants, who can no longer afford to live in their own neighborhoods.

On Brooklyn resident told the crowd, “The miseducation of the community is systemic. And the lack of empathy by the politicians has accelerated gentrification in our area. So it’s gonna be hard to stop the foreclosure process right now, because once you start feeding a beast a particular diet, it’s hard to change that diet.”

DeBlasio unfairly seizing properties

From Kings County Politics:

Mayor Bill de Blasio today defended the city’s taking of more than 60 properties in Brooklyn – including those of at least three fully paid off African American owned properties worth millions of dollars – and transferring their ownership for “re-development” to non-profit and for profit companies.

But New York State Attorney General Candidate Keith Wofford took de Blasio and the entire city government to task for incompetence at best, and illegal political corruption at worst, in seizing the properties.

“What’s happening here is disgraceful and likely illegal. Mayor De Blasio lives nearby and sleeps securely at night, while his administration creates anxiety and fear among vulnerable citizens whose largest asset is ripped away without compensation or due process,” said Wofford.

Wofford went so far as to call the foreclosure proceedings “unconstitutional,” and urged the Mayor to act immediately in stopping anymore transfers under the program.

The program that the city’s Department of Housing Preservation & Development (HPD) utilizes in taking properties is called the Third Party Transfer (TPT) program, which goes back to the 1980s when New York City had many blighted and burned out properties. The program designates qualified sponsors to purchase and rehabilitate distressed vacant and occupied multi-family properties in order to improve and preserve affordable housing for low-to moderate-income households.

Over the years the program has been amended in its definition of distressed properties, most recently in 2016, in which the City Council approved an expansion of the program to include buildings which are subject to Environmental Control Board (ECB) judgments as a result of building code violations in the amount of a lien to value ratio equal to or greater than 25%.

In order for HPD to obtain the foreclosure judgments, the agency sought, needed and received city council approval – an approval that some city council members now say they approved because HPD misled them.

The story came to light, when KCP learned the city foreclosed on Marlene Saunders, 74, a retired nurse, who nearly lost her paid-off and in pristine condition brownstone at 1217 Dean Street on a rapidly gentrifying block in Crown Heights.

The three-story brownstone had been in the Saunders family for 30 years and has been appraised at over $2.2 million. Saunders son showed KCP copies of checks paid and cashed by the city for property and water taxes, but were never applied to the property. He also stated the family knew nothing about the court proceeding, in which a foreclosure judgement was issued and only learned the family no longer owned the property through a flyer delivered to the brownstone months after they lost the deed.

Foreclosure looms for Acropolis Gardens

From The Real Deal:

A Wells Fargo-managed trust is looking to foreclose on a 618-unit co-op development in Astoria after its owners failed to make a loan payment.

French bank Natixis issued a $45 million mortgage in April 2017 on Acropolis Gardens, the 16-building complex bordered by Ditmars Boulevard, and 33rd and 34th streets. The debt was pooled into a securitized trust managed by Wells Fargo, according to court documents, with monthly repayments of $13,596.

But the Wells Fargo-managed trust filed a foreclosure action on Monday, after the property’s condominium board, Acropolis Gardens Realty Corp., missed a July payment.

The failed payment followed the trust’s discovery of multiple legal actions against the condo board.

HPD targeting zombie homes

From The Real Deal:

The city is taking on lenders of “zombie homes” — decrepit, vacant, distressed houses with unpaid mortgages, which have forced the city to conduct emergency repairs and maintenance.

The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development is seeking more than $1 million from CitiMortgage, Wells Fargo and other home lenders who have allegedly failed to maintain houses on the brink of foreclosure, the department announced.

The cases target five Brooklyn properties and their lenders including Rushmore Loan Management Services LLC at 581 Saratoga Avenue, Ocwen Financial Corporation at 31 Essex Street, Seterus, Inc., at 1554 Dumont Avenue, CitiMortgage at 1889 Bergen Street and Wells Fargo at 1831 Park Place.

HPD partnered with the New York City Law Department bring the cases under the 2016 New York State Zombie Property and Foreclosure Prevention Act.

The city said it had identified as many as 4,000 zombie homes in the five boroughs since the act was introduced and sends warning letters to lenders and mortgage servicers that failed to maintain properties.

Would this work for the homeless?

From the Commercial Observer:

In 2002, I had an idea to take vacant city-owned land and have developers and various trades donate their services to build a multifamily building, housing only destitute tenants in rent-free units. It was a utopian vision but the building did indeed get built with the collective genius of Helen Ng, Lance Brown, Mark Ginsberg, Tara Siegel, Rex Curry, Rick Bell, Karen Kubey, the late Margaret Helf and and countless other volunteers. Shaun Donovan of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development shared our vision and found us a site in the Bronx for us to build on. The architects on our team changed the vision and decided that a “green space, sustainability and replicable, affordable design” competition would be a more achievable theme. After being on the initial steering committee, I opted to fade into the background after the goals changed, but I was pleased that so many professionals took the call to action. Rose Associates ended up winning the competition, Via Verde was built in 2006 and thrives today. The process was known as the New Housing New York Legacy Project. However, the recession of 2008 derailed replicating it in scale.

Fast-forward to 2016. Bill de Blasio unveiled the Turning the Tide program to revamp the shelter system to help the homeless. The administration was saying the right things, vowing to build 90 new shelters. Muzzy Rosenblatt of the Bowery Residents’ Committee gets high marks for taking the initiative and building Landing Road as a model project, combining a 200-bed shelter subsidized by 100 low-income apartments. However, since it is privately owned, the numbers don’t work for the city to replicate it in bulk without simultaneously overburdening taxpayers.

Here’s a refined idea:

Have the city identify existing owned multifamily buildings that are abandoned or foreclosed or commercial buildings that can easily be converted to multifamily buildings. Since they aren’t yielding tax revenues anyway, a 10-year moratorium on property taxes won’t impact the budget.

Have developers take on the project pro bono with regard to fees. This might seem Pollyanna, but I have faith that the Real Estate Board of New York could get our members to step forward and take this on. The PR effect, goodwill and intangibles would be invaluable to said developer.

Ask contractors with excess capacity to reduce their rates to aid on the project. This is clearly a big ask. The city could barter other services to partially offset the reduction while getting neighboring restaurants and retailers to further donate to these trades.

The only tenants eligible for the building have to demonstrate extreme need. Start with those that are chronically homeless. Get referrals from the local soup kitchens and shelters. Convince retailers to furnish the apartments. Get clergy, social workers, job counselors and medical workers to help the tenants after they move in.

Short sale specialists

From Buzzfeed:

On a bustling block in the Rego Park neighborhood of Queens, above a pharmacy and a bagel shop, sits the unmarked office of My Ideal Property. The long blocks outside are punctuated with Russian Cyrillic signs. Rego Park and nearby Forest Hills are home to a tight-knit community of Bukharians, first- and second-generation Jewish immigrants from Central Asia who migrated to the area after the Soviet Union collapsed.

The men, who called Serhant in 2015 with a deal, grew up in this diaspora. One of them, Isaac Aronov, graduated from Forest Hills High school in 2004. Public records show he landed a job as a mortgage broker at an office in Rego Park. It was the heyday of the boom. Housing prices were higher than they’d ever been. But the frothy market he entered was already heading toward disaster.

After the crash, Aronov, like Wall Street, was nimble enough to recognize that there was opportunity in distress. In 2008, he started My Ideal Property with some friends from the neighborhood. They were young, ambitious, and willing to work hard. With what one former partner described on his website as “zero experience or financial support,” they began buying homes in some stage of foreclosure.

They gravitated toward the majority black and Latino neighborhoods that were hubs of subprime lending before the crash, and later accounted for over three-quarters of New York City’s foreclosure filings. Taking out short-term, high-interest private loans from wealthy backers in Manhattan and Long Island, they bought fast.

It was a lucrative time to be buying, and investors across the city were busy. A recent analysis by the nonprofit Center for NYC Neighborhoods found that, between 2014 and 2016, more than 5,800 homes were “flipped,” or bought and sold within a year. Half of them were in some stage of foreclosure. Within this rush, the men behind My Ideal Property carved out a significant niche. By 2016, the company had done more than $250 million in deals and employed over 100 people, according one founder's website.

But that aggressive move into troubled neighborhoods has come at a cost for their inhabitants.

Crowley, the hypocritical liberal

From the Village Voice:

Crowley, the Queens congressman and county leader, has styled himself as an advocate for homeowners, praising former president Obama’s efforts to expand federal housing programs to make it easier to refinance mortgages at current interest rates, even if more is owed than the value on the home. “We need to find ways to both help people stay in their homes and save more of their income,” he said in 2012.

But Crowley’s words have not matched his actions. He empowers Sweeney’s law firm, maintaining close ties despite its work on behalf of banks. And his brother Sean Crowley is a lobbyist at one of New York’s most influential firms, Davidoff, Hutcher and Citron, where he has lobbied the state government on behalf of the New York Creditors Bar Association, the trade association representing creditors and attorneys engaged in debt collection.

Crowley, however, defended his record.

“Congressman Crowley has been a staunch supporter of middle-class families and will continue to support policies that help keep New Yorkers in their homes,” said Alex Florez, a spokesman for Crowley. “The work the lawyers do on behalf of their clients is independent from the work they put in as volunteers in our effort to help elect good Democrats in Queens.”

When have they ever helped elect a "good Democrat" and not a Tweeder?

A dubious distinction

From the Times Ledger:

New York’s foreclosures hit a height in 2016 not seen since the two years immediately following the 2008 market crash, according to a new report from property research specialists PropertyShark. Queens was the site of the most foreclosures by a significant margin, with southeast Queens particularly hard hit in 2016.

PropertyShark examined foreclosed properties that had been scheduled for auction for the first time in 2016 and the report stated the properties were single-family or two-family homes, or condo or co-op units.

The analysis found that 933 of the 2,202 first-time foreclosures in New York City were in Queens. The number of foreclosures increased from 804 in the borough in 2015, and the 2016 total marks the highest scheduled number of foreclosures since 2010, in which 1,404 foreclosures were scheduled. In total, 42 percent of first-time auctions in the city last year were located in Queens.

Foreclosures spike, especially in Queens

From the NY Post:

October brought an ugly surprise to hundreds of New Yorkers, as new foreclosure cases spiked dramatically.

More than 1,100 NYC households fell into foreclosure in October, a 32 percent increase from September, and a 37 percent increase from last year. Queens, which has been hard-hit since the foreclosure crisis began in 2007, had 400 new cases last month, nearly double the number of a year ago.

“People think the foreclosure crisis is toward the end, and it really isn’t,” said Rose Marie Cantanno, supervising attorney of the Foreclosure Prevention Project at the New York Legal Assistance Group. “There are still a lot of people stuck in the middle, trying to do something, but having trouble [negotiating with their lender].”

While last month’s results are well below the city’s October 2007 peak of 3,200 new foreclosures, experts fear the October 2016 uptick will continue.

The market for residential mortgages has shifted from big banks to specialized servicers and private equity owners.

Will this work?

From NY1:

Some elected officials and several non-profits in Queens are taking part in a new initiative aimed at helping homeowners get out of foreclosure and increasing affordable housing.

Under the "Foreclosure Buyback Pilot Program," non-profits can buy back distressed mortgages from federal government entities such as Freddie Mae and Freddie Mac, giving families the opportunity to refinance with the organization and stay in their homes.

If that's not possible, local non-profits or municipalities can bid on the distressed properties and then convert them into affordable housing.

Previously, only private equity and hedge funds could purchase these properties.

Councilors I. Daneek Miller, Ruben Wills, and Richards are involved in the program and say it is the first of its kind in the nation.

Hotline for reporting zombie homes

From Crains:

New York state has created a new consumer hotline to help identify vacant properties.

Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the number—800-342-3736—on Tuesday. It's part of a larger effort by the state aimed at addressing the large number of vacant and abandoned properties known as zombie homes.

The hotline will allow local residents and officials to report vacant properties. The state is now compiling a list of all such homes and will require banks and lenders to ensure the property is maintained before foreclosure.

Foreclosure floods elderly woman's home

From WPIX:

In front of her home on Poplar Street, the gutter had a deep and wide sheet of ice. It extends to the house next door, which has sat empty since 2014, according to Lama's family and their neighbors.

Cascading down the far wall of the house next door are 15-foot long, 3-inch thick icicles. All of the ice on a cold Friday gives a strong indication of what went wrong here.

"Water from the bathroom pipe broke," said Joseph Lama, 72, Fanny Lama's son. "It leaked down into the basement."

He then showed PIX11 News what the result of possibly five days of water leakage looks like. He opened up the cellar door of the foreclosed home next door to show that the crawl space underneath was filed with close to three feet of water.

Moldy Sandy foreclosure still not cleaned up

From CBS2:

A Queens family is still trying to recover from Superstorm Sandy.

As CBS2’s Hazel Sanchez reported, cancer survivor Joyce Zoller said she’s devastated after being ordered by her doctors and attorneys to move from her Queens home to Florida.

Not because her house is unsafe, but because she said the abandoned home next door is hazardous to her health.

“The mold, the smell, the vermin inside, birds flying all over, it’s a disaster,” said Zoller. “I don’t know how much more I can take. It’s my home and I can’t even live in my own home.”

CBS2 met with the Zollers in June of 2014 and learned their neighbor at 145-08 Neponsit Ave. had abandoned the property after Superstorm Sandy.

Black mold had been growing inside the home.

City records show HSBC Mortgage took ownership after it went into foreclosure, but as owners did nothing to clean up the mold.

A Department of Buildings inspector stopped by the house Thursday morning, slapping HSBC with another violation for failing to maintain the building, Sanchez reported.

HSBC has been issued multiple building code violations since Superstorm Sandy and faces more than $20,000 in fines.

Foreclosure fixed up

From the Times Ledger:

Dozens of Habitat for Humanity and Delta Airlines volunteers, a few carrying small luggage, gathered Wednesday on a rainy day to start work on restoring an abandoned home in Cambria Heights.

The derelict house, infested with termites, fell victim to foreclosure and then became a zombie home until a fire destroyed most of the property. The property was then handled by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development before being acquired by the New York City Housing Authority to become affordable housing.

Future homeowners are required to volunteer in the restoring of their homes. At the Cambria Heights house at 219th St, 53-year old carpenter Richard Thompson was ready to work on his future home.

“I found out about the program when I was looking for a home, but I did not have enough money for a down payment,” said Thompson, who currently lives in Brooklyn.

The program through Habitat for Humanity offers a 30-year fixed mortgage at a 2.0 percent rate with only a 1 percent down payment for a restored home.

Fewer Queens foreclosures

From the Queens Courier:

According to the comptroller’s report, areas immediately outside of New York City – such as Long Island and the mid-Hudson region – have seen the greatest number of pending foreclosures with cases rising 63 percent from 25,097 at the beginning of 2013 to 40,985 this year.

However, although pending foreclosure cases across upstate grew by 47 percent, New York City experienced nearly a drop of 10 percent over the two-year period.

For Queens, the situation looks to be “improving,” according to the report, with a high foreclosure rate of around 1.25 percent but decreasing caseload. At the beginning of 2013 Queens had 12,497 pending foreclosure cases and in the beginning of this year it saw 10,667, a decrease of 14.1 percent.

Sampson not the smartest tweeder

From the Daily News:

State Sen. John Sampson coached a shady Queens businessman over drinks at an Italian restaurant in Mafia boss John Gotti’s old neighborhood, on how to fool the feds, it was revealed Tuesday.

Federal prosecutors played tapes secretly recorded inside Vetro restaurant in Howard Beach by star witness Edul Ahmad who had loaned Sampson $188,500 so the Brooklyn Democrat could repay foreclosure funds he had allegedly embezzled.

Ahmad was instructed by the FBI to show Sampson a check register documenting the loan. “This opens up a can of worms,” Sampson allegedly said at the Feb. 22, 2012 sit down. “Make sure you lose a couple of pages here and there…You don't have to give it to them.”

Speaking in a loud voice, Sampson advised Ahmad not to lie to the feds, but then whispered suggestions that he falsely claim the loan was payment for years of legal work that Sampson had performed for him.