Faces Of Foreclosure

We started wondering about Triple Investments, Charter Properties in Sausalito, Scott Dixon, John Lundy, Joe Giraudo and Peter Kerman in November 2009.

While trying to save a friend’s home through the non-profit Marin Family Action and its workshop for Families Fighting Foreclosure, an associate delivered papers to Charter Properties offices in Sausalito (image right taken November 2009 by D.A. Levy).

Nothing was apparent in viewing their offices through walls of glass, but there seemed to be questionable behind-the-scenes maneuvering by the principals of Triple Investments, Charter Properties and Lecale Investments. We were questioning the sale of a prime piece of Tiburon property . . . and its sale price, which was staggeringly low.

We are digging to resurrect our notes from November 2009 and early 2010 to see if anything makes sense.

Our first post was Triple Investments, Sausalito on November 12, 2009 questioning the activities of various employees of these companies and of Lecale. These companies have just “hosted” the FBI in their offices at 2300 Bridgeway in Sausalito while the FBI burrowed through boxes of files.

Years ago, Lewis Long, an architect who worked for Desmond Muirhead Architects on a sinking barge in Sausalito, repeatedly said: “What goes around comes around,” which was his Southern black translation of “As ye reap so shall ye sow.”

And maybe that is coming about now for the companies mentioned in the top paragraph. Check www.MarinFamilyAction.com. They just might feret out Marin’s white collar thieves in this mortgage mess and have just filed a report with the District Attorney on one questionable group. “Insider trading” seems to have a lot as to who gets what.

From one of our earlier posts: “Want a duplex in Tiburon worth about $2.5 million for less than $1 million? Might be on the market soon due to lies and subterfuge. I’m serious. This all sounds nuts. Actually, it is nuts. But it is also true.”

On January 21, 2011, Carolyn Said of The San Francisco Chronicle reported:

Foreclosure auctions take place every weekday on the steps of courthouses throughout California . Now the FBI is investigating whether some real estate speculators are illegally rigging bids for these sales.

"Last week, the FBI conducted interviews and executed search warrants through the entire Bay Area as part of a long-term investigation of anti-competitive practices at trustee sales of foreclosed homes," said bureau spokeswoman Julie Sohn.

The probe is shaking up the tight-knit world of investors who bid at these auctions. The issue, sources say, is that some participants allegedly pay others to refrain from bidding on certain properties to keep their prices low.

Such bid-rigging violates the federal Sherman Antitrust Act and can carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine. That maximum can be increased to twice the perpetrator’s gain or twice the victim’s loss.

"There have always been rumors of collusion at the courthouse steps," said Sean O’Toole of ForeclosureRadar.com, a Discovery Bay company that provides detailed information on properties sold at the auctions. At a typical auction, many investors clutch clipboards with printouts from his website.

"If you have a small crowd of guys that talk to each other every day, it’s natural for them to say, ‘Why are we bidding each other up? Let’s just buy this and work it out afterward.’ " O’Toole said. But when he speaks to real estate clubs and others, O’Toole said, "I am very clear. I say: ‘This is illegal. Don’t do it.’ "

Most properties revert to lenders at courthouse-step auctions, which are the final step in California’s foreclosure process, but about 20 percent get sold to outside investors.

More on this issue as it affects Marin, Sonoma, Napa counties . . . Faces of Foreclosure and here Families Fighting Foreclosure and here, as these companies have directly affected Marin County families.

The full article: SFGate.com

Proposed for Burn Notice:

The owner of the fourplex had lost his building through foreclosure. Even though he had been only $2,000 behind in mortgage payments to Western Funds Banking, no payments had been applied to the loan since January 2009. On the bank’s papers, he appeared to be $58,234 behind in payments as the money was sitting in his account with fees upon fees driving up the balance due.

I just read a post from a Realtor on Facebook. Her knee-jerk reaction to people losing homes is exactly what too many people are falling back on, i.e. “people losing homes bought them with the intent of flipping them and lost out when the market took a nosedive,” or “families went into homes they could not afford by falsifying income statements,” etc.

That is nonsense.

Many people losing their homes did NOT buy for investment but for a place to live . . . you know, the primary American Dream. Many people had well-paying jobs and could afford their mortgage. They lost their job(s) and are having difficulty in finding any employment in this market, let alone a position that pays enough to cover expenses.

This is not about blaming anyone . . . it is about avoiding any more carnage. Too many people have decided that 3 million families (at 2.7 people per home equalling 10 million people) have all screwed up.

I’d love to know the mathematical probabilities of that. (Anyone know a mathematician who could figure that out? Anyone know the crew of television’s series “Numbers?”)

Instead of thinking “blame,” which too many people are doing on all sides, what about thinking “change” and “positive, workable solution . . . solutions that will stabilize America’s hard-working middle class families who underwrite most of society through their taxes? Who is going to pay for all the services we want, including health-care, if the middle class is decimated?

Lending Executive Loses Home

Proposed for Leverage:

Nathan Ford (Timothy Hutton), Eliot Spencer Christian Kane), Sophie Devereaux (Gina Bellman), Alec Hardison (Aldis Hodge), Parker (Beth Riesgraf).

Four families who have lost their homes approach the crew of Leverage seeking assistance and justice. These families all worked with Western Funds Bank and even though millions of dollars were purportedly available to enable them to stay in their homes, after nine months of “negotiations” with the lenders, nothing was accomplished, other than to have their homes foreclosed on them.

A senior member of the Western Funds Bank mortgage division received a multi-million dollar bonus during the nine months of ineffective assistance. The families wanted someone to be held accountable.

The Leverage team decided that the most appropriate form of accountability would be to “take” the senior banker’s $4 million home in the hills south of San Francisco, sell it on a shortsale, and split the $3 million or so among the four families, which would enable them to get back into housing simliar to what they had lost.

The banker would be given a stipend to enable him to rent a condominium until he could find suitable housing elsewhere.

Start Here:

Carter shouts to his crew: “Do whatever you need to do to keep this family in their home . . . “

Premise: The shadowy derring-do of an undercover task force comes to the fore in this crime series from executive producer Jerry Bruckheimer. The covert team includes a recently married policeman and a fetching female cop who’s an expert prevaricator.

Dark Blue Cast
Dylan McDermott: Carter Shaw
Omari Hardwick: Ty Curtis
Logan Marshall-Green: Dean Bendis
Nicki Aycox: Jaimie

Dark Blue Credits
Danny Cannon: Executive Producer
Doug Jung: Executive Producer
Jeffrey Hunt: Director
Jerry Bruckheimer: Executive Producer
Jonathan Littman: Executive Producer
Karen Gaviola: Director
Rick Eid: Executive Producer
Matt McGuinness: Writer

Proposed for Numbers:

While listening to his neighbor’s harrowing story of being moved out his home due to foreclosure, Charlie’s brain was automatically calculating the probability of more than three million families all making the same financial mistakes and losing their homes. That’s ten million displaced people.

Like many people, until someone close was affected, a neighbor that he knew to be responsible and hardworking, Charlie hadn’t thought about the odds of millions of people being irresponsible to such a degree that they lost their homes. He went to his board to figure this out . . .

Suzanne stood in the bank lobby crying, a fist full of cash, waving it at the loan officer who, annoyed at this scene, was explaining that while they would take her money, it would not be applied to the home loan. They would hold it in suspense . . .

J. Madison was last seen leading an elderly crying man out of a home that had just been lost through foreclosure. J. Madison, who specializes in foreclosures, had a buyer ready to pay cash and had to get the old man out of the house right away; the buyer was on his way to view the home and Madison didn’t want to upset the buyer . . .

If this doesn’t inspire your creative spirits for a crime drama, I don’t know what will:

“The Cuomo report – prepared over nine months – argues that some banks paid out larger bonuses than their profits, while simultaneously taking exceptional state emergency funds.

Ten banks were given money as part of the government’s $700 billion financial stimulus plan.

In 2008 Goldman Sachs paid $4.8 billion in bonuses, representing more than twice its income. Similarly, Morgan Stanley awarded bonuses of $4.5 billion while earning just $1.7 billion.

All the while a painful global recession – partly caused by bankers’ excess – was depriving less fortunate citizens of their livelihoods. The government provided both firms with $10 billion as part of the its wider Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp). Goldman recently reported a better-than-expected net profit of $3.44 billion for the three months to June.

Citigroup and Merrill Lynch paid bonuses of $5.33 billion and $3.6 billion respectively while seeing losses of more than $27 million each, said the report.

Under the scripts category are sections for “Bones and Booth,” “Burn Notice,” “Criminal Minds,” “CSI,” “Law and Order,” “Leverage,” “Lie to Me,” “Numbers,” “Without a Trace.” I have a few other favorites that need to go on here, and you can add your own.

Join me on this. Bite back. These are TV shows. You can burn these Bonus Bankers, hang them, have drive-by shoot outs, lose them off beaches to sharks (will sharks eat sharks?), bury them anywhere, deplete their off-shore accounts (Leverage!!!!), have whole conventions of mortgage brokers strangely disappear in deserts. CSI’s team tracks them, “Without a Trace” can’t find them, but “Bones and Booth” do.
Feel free to include an appropriate assortment of politicians and real estate agents . . . Just have at ‘em. What goes around comes around. Very important that mortgage industry professionals end up in very very very long job lines for jobs that they cannot have as they are “over qualified,” and have “police records.”

Again, your potential base audience is 1.9 million people who have lost their homes due to foreclosure.

Perhaps there is an angry Wells Fargo employee or two who have been caught up in this mess. Wells Fargo/Wachovia’s new ad: “We’re with you when you need someone to stand by you.” Really! What about this from Wells Fargo’s website:

Welcome

A home is likely one of the biggest and most worthwhile investments you’ll ever make. And a Real Estate-Owned property, commonly called an REO or foreclosed property, may be a smart way for homebuyers who want to get into a home. Specializing in Foreclosures.

Since 1997, Premiere Asset Services (PAS), together with Wells Fargo Home Mortgage and our partner REALTORS®, has helped more than 30,000 homebuyers nationwide realize their dream of homeownership through the purchase of foreclosed properties.

From Listings to Mortgage Assistance: We offer a wide selection of foreclosures, representing several financial institutions that work with PAS to manage and market their REO properties. To make these properties available to homebuyers, we maintain free online listings. Whether you’re a first time homebuyer or a seasoned investor, we provide assistance with the buying process, from application to closing.

Leading the Way for Homebuyers and Agents: For over a decade, Premiere Asset Services has led the way in the sale of foreclosed properties. We have the satisfied homebuyers and agents to prove it.

NoteEmployees of Wells Fargo and their immediate family members are prohibited from purchasing properties sold by Premiere Asset Services

WHAT IF each of the major crime dramas, i.e. “Lie to Me,” ” Criminal Minds,” “Without A Trace,” various “CSI” programs, “Burn Notice,” “Numbers,” “The Closer,” “Leverage,” the new “White Collar Crime” (which is excellent — check out the “young blue eyes” lead), Hawaii 5.0, etc. presents their spin on our current mortgage nightmares/foreclosures during a season, all on separate evenings so they don’t touch each other’s ratings.

This real estate debacle is war on our own soil, so what about staging a national fundraiser through crime television programs, each of whom present their own take on the story of an individual or family (a real family) who has lost their home through foreclosure? And what about photographing just one day in every state; every state has dozens of foreclosures per day.

WHY? ‘Cause SOMEONE has to do something effective! And because many denizens of Hollywood care deeply about their craft and country. Movies and television dramas do bring truth to light and light to truth.

These are the images you see on the news. You seldom see the men, women, children, dogs, cats, birds, etc. that have had to move. Some of these people have been out of work for awhile and have no money to move and/or can’t find rentals that will accept their pets. Where do they go? What happens to the uprooted children?

Have you done the math for the millions of homes that have been lost to foreclosure? It’s a shocking revelation. Surely lending institutions are not thinking of their future. Two million foreclosures (this year alone) translates to an average of 2.6 people per home (5.2 million people), times a 50% expected population growth by 2050 (41 years). More than 10 million people, all passing down the stories of how they lost their home because Wells Fargo or Bank of America or Chase would not assist even though they received billions in taxpayer dollars to help families keep their homes.

If the lenders think this is going to go away, it isn’t. People in the Southern United States are STILL upset over the Civil War which ended in 1865.

Think about the goodwill of such a project. And, again, that audience. Many of these shows have audiences exceeding 2 million anyway; this could add a few million more viewers to each show.

Depending on your position in our home foreclosure saga, you will be damned or you will be praised.