Faces Of Foreclosure

We heard of a wonderful win in Marin County, California which then turned into a nightmare. Were it not for the fact I know the following to be true, I probably would think it was some type of urban myth.

Hamilton Federal Credit Union was about to foreclose on a home and scheduled the sale on the courthouse steps for December 21, 2009. However, on December 20, Marin County Superior Court Judge Adams had granted a stay of the sale. The homeowner, concerned about previous actions of the credit union, showed up at the the courthouse to make sure that Hamilton Federal Credit Union had been informed of the stay. It was obvious that Hamilton was going ahead with their bidding war. The homeowner showed them the order “not to sell” from the Judge. They ignored it and went ahead with the sale anyway.

It gets worse: Mike Lundy from Triple Investment Company in Sausalito was there to bid. Because the homeowner had the court order to “not sell,” other bidders backed off. Not Mike Lundy. His reply, which was overhead by an associate, was “I don’t care. I have attorneys to take care of this.” He bid and bought — at a greatly reduced price, of course.

(Note: I would include Triple Investments and Mike Lundy in the Super Thieves portion of this site; however, after hearing about and observing their actions for the past several months, it seems they are, actually, petty thieves and cowards.)

Now the outcome to the wonderful story below is perched on a precipice.

What kind of people do we have here? The activities of this particular investment company are questionable at best. The person making the comment will be reported to the California Department of Real Estate. The DRE is a fine organization that we assume will look askance at such actions/statements by a investment company working under a broker who is purportedly licensed by the State of California.

If you have an issue with a real estate agent or broker in California, the DRE provides online complaint forms in English, Spanish and Chinese (hard copy only).

The home owner fought back, there is another stay, and she is still in her home after a many harrowing days. All prayers are welcome on her behalf. This, again, shows, the importance of standing up for your rights. In Marin County, F. Manuel Fernandez started a group to help save homes of residents of the North Bay. They are doing a great job. It’s a struggle because the system is against many homeowners, but it helps if you are part of a group. We think more such groups should start . . . or volunteer with a fine organization such as Neighborhood Association of America who is fighting throughout the United States to save homes.

This bears repeating as it is extremely important for all of us: This woman was told by a practicing attorney that she could NOT win. She ignored him. Her condo IS her castle and she wasn’t handing her castle to anyone.

Rather than shrug and walk, this homeowner will have her day in court. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. It’s not over until it’s over. And, as written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Measure not the work until the day’s out and the labor’s done.

Ethics for Executives In the event you are a top level executive with questionable ethics who stumbled across this site, here is a link to a selection of books that we highly recommend you read. Apparently ethics courses are not mandatory in today’s business colleges . . . that is apparent, don’t you think?

It has been an embarrassing and painful several months for the homeowner. In addition to the non-responsive lender, notices have been placed on her home and word leaked about her impending doom. Real estate agents have hovered and called.

(Editor’s note: I am a real estate agent. I consider this agressive outreach despicable. Earlier this year, a Santa Rosa agent was seen leading a crying man from his home so that the agent could show the home that afternoon to a prospective buyer! My recommendation to anyone going through this, get the agent’s card and file a complaint with your local Department of Real Estate.)

LET FREEDOM RING

My country, ’tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims’ pride,
From every mountainside,
Let freedom ring!

My native country, thee,
Land of the noble free,
Thy name I love;
I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills;
My heart with rapture thrills,
Like that above.

Let music swell the breeze,
And ring from all the trees,
Sweet freedom’s song;
Let mortal tongues awake;
Let all that breathe partake;
Let rocks their silence break,
The sound prolong.

Our fathers’ God, to Thee,
Author of liberty,
To Thee we sing;
Long may our land be bright
With freedom’s holy light;
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God, our King.

Everytime I hear a story like the following . . . which is happening frequently lately, I think of Steven Segal’s movie “Above The Law.”

The Foreclosure Survival Guide: Keep Your House or Walk Away With Money in Your Pocket This book from Nolo Press is excellent (as are all Nolo Press books). It will help you make decisions that will help save your home or help you walk away with grace (and money). That said, I am working on my own soon-to-be-published own guide as after 18 months of “negotiations” with Wells Fargo Bank — servicer of my note (a term I did not know 18 months ago) — the bank finally gave me a five-year stay of execution. I have a 20 pound, six-inch-thick binder of who said what to whom. It was nothing short of a nightmare. What would have been a rough six months in my life turned into 18 months of fear, sleeplessness, anger, etc. and my goal is to pay off this loan and never deal with this bank again. The Guide contains: Ways to negotiate, workout proposals, links to foreclosure laws by state, legal defenses of borrower, things lenders do not want you to know, letters requesting validation of debt, FTC and HUD complaints . . .

Interesting that the $12 million house squatter, Cheronda Guyton, a Wells Fargo executive, is scheduled to speak at the 1009 Trigild Lender Conference on October 21-23, 2009 at the US Grant Hotel in San Diego. Think she’ll show up?

Excerpted from
Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, Los Angeles Business Times, Denver Post and various websites.

Wall Street has long worried that the hundreds of thousands of foreclosed houses in the U.S. are losing even more value as they become havens for vandals, vermin and drug dealers looking for a place to crash.

Here’s an unusual squatter: A senior vice president at Wells Fargo & Co., who is in charge of many of the bank’s foreclosed properties reportedly moved into a 3800 square foot, two story beach house in gated Malibu Colony last May after the bank foreclosed on the property.

It’s outrageous to take over a property like that, not make it available and then put someone from the bank in it,” said Phillip Roman, an 18-year Colony resident who lives a few homes away from the property.

Wells Fargo said in a written statement that it would conduct a thorough investigation of the allegations by neighbors, but said it wouldn’t “discuss specific team member situations/issues for privacy reasons.” The bank also said its ethics code wouldn’t allow employees to make personal use of property that has been surrendered to satisfy debts.

and

Such conduct would pose a conflict of interest, said W. Michael Hoffman, executive director of the Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University in Waltham, Mass. “For a business to allow this to happen in today’s ethically charged climate is quite suicidal,” he said.

According to an LA Times article, a Wells executive, who is responsible for the bank’s foreclosed commercial properties, was seen throwing parties at a $12 million beach house in Malibu, California, which the previous owners had to surrender to Wells to satisfy debts. According to the article, Wells Fargo had refused to show the house to prospective buyers, perplexing local real estate agents.

Adding fuel to what must be a public-relations nightmare for the bank is the fact that the couple who lost the home in foreclosure had to give up the property because they were victims of Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme.

The Times interviewed neighbors who said they spotted the Wells executive, Cheronda Guyton, throwing lavish parties at the sleek, modern house with a patio overlooking the Pacific. At one party, guests arrived by yacht.

According to the Times, Guyton couldn’t be reached at her downtown Los Angeles office and Wells Fargo declined to discuss Guyton but said the bank will “conduct a thorough investigation of the allegations.”

It hasn’t been a great week for Wells, one of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders. Banks like Wells are taking heat for failing to modify troubled mortgages quickly enough as part of the Obama administration’s $75 billion foreclosure prevent plan. According to the Treasury, Wells Fargo has started trial mediations for 11% of its eligible borrowers who are at least 60 days overdue. That lags behind the average 12% rate of modifications among the nation’s lenders. Congressional leaders say lenders need to move faster to prevent another wave of foreclosures from stalling the housing recovery.

“It appears that at least one Wells executive involved in this effort may have been a bit, well, distracted in recent months.

More:

The house was foreclosed and wasn’t available for rent. The residents of Malibu Colony have told the newspaper that Guyton is one of the executives of Wells Fargo & Co. and that a Volvo with a registry date of year 2007 is also seen often in the garage. Upon investigation, it was learned that the car belongs to Ms. Guyton.

When the media tried to contact Cheronda Guyton, all the calls made to her office number were unsuccessful while there’s no number listed against her present home address. Previous residents of the home have accused the bank of acting against the agreement which states that the home will not used for any marketing purposes. However, the bank says that the agreement was valid for only a certain period of time and that the bank was listing the house for sale.

and

“Residents in the gated community told the Los Angeles Times that a woman they believed to be Cheronda Guyton took up occupancy at the home in May. Residents said they obtained Guyton’s name from the community’s guards, who had issued her a homeowner’s parking pass.”

The bank’s agreement with the prior owner required it to keep the home — a 3,800-square-foot, two-story structure built in the early 1990s — off the market for a period of time, Wells Fargo said in a statement to the paper. What awaits Guyton remains to be seen as Wells Fargo investigates the matter. But one thing is sure: Her days of partying in the celebrity-laden Malibu are done. – George White

and

Such conduct would pose a conflict of interest, said W. Michael Hoffman, executive director of the Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University in Waltham, Mass.
“For a business to allow this to happen in today’s ethically charged climate is quite suicidal,” he said. And because Madoff’s fraud was the root cause of the situation, he added, “it’s like rubbing salt into the wounds of a national tragedy.”

Malibu Colony stretches three-quarters of a mile along the beach in the heart of Malibu. Its residents include actor Tom Hanks, former Univision Chairman A. Jerrold Perenchio and high-profile investment banker Michael Tennenbaum.

Colony residents said the woman they believe to be Guyton, along with her husband and two children, took up occupancy at 106 Malibu Colony Road shortly after Lawrence Elins turned it over to Wells Fargo Bank on May 13.

When a Los Angeles Times reporter used the buzzer at the home’s steel gate on Labor Day, a woman answered the intercom but declined to identify herself or come to the gate.

When asked whether the home had been foreclosed on, she said, “it’s not foreclosed. It’s owned by Collin Equities” — a Wells Fargo unit that liquidates foreclosure properties.

The woman on the intercom denied that she was living at the house or had been using it periodically over the summer. Asked whether she could say why she was at the home, she answered, “No, I cannot.”

and

The AP said it could not reach Guyton for comment.

Lastly, if it is true that there is an agreement to hold the house “off the market for a period of time,” per Wells Fargo, why is there a website built to show the home: 106 Malibu Colony AND if the house is actually on the market, why wasn’t it being shown to prospective buyers or renters on or around March 13, 2009, which is when the domain was registered through 1and1.com as 106malibucolony.com?

Real Estate agents do not register a name UNTIL they have the listing; it addition to having its own site, it is on Zillow “available for lease” at $65,000 per month long-term or $100,000 per month during summer through Coldwell Banker.

Speaking of Coldwell Banker, most real estate agents contacted by the L.A. Times re the incident expressed surprise over the use of the home and many were appalled. However, per the Times, agent Farrell “Burt” Bakman of Coldwell Banker in Beverly Hills, said he saw no problem with a lender using a property “as some sort of a bonus.” And there you have yet another example of what is wrong in America. A bonus for what? Foreclosure? This is absolutely insane.