Posted by Ronald *S tarr on August 24, 2001 at 23:15:01:
Ben(NJ)------------------
That sounds like a sound approach. I suggest you communicate it to the attorney right away.
Good Investing*******Ron Starr**************
Another whopper for the record books !! - Posted by Ben (NJ)
Posted by Ben (NJ) on August 24, 2001 at 11:15:21:
Never a dull moment. I just took title to a two family house through tax foreclosure. Yesterday, I went there
with a locksmith and a realtor. Since the owners had died in 1994, I expected a disaster, possibly even squatters. To my amazement, not only was the place broom clean but the power was on! There were new windows, vanities etc. Something very wrong! Well, this morning it hit the fan.
It turns out there is a guy in contract to purchase the house from an heir in California. All heirs were foreclosed out so I am the now the ONLY owner of this property. In what has got to be the dumbest move of the millenium, the purchaser put $20,000 into the property BEFORE he owned it! He has a yellow pages attorney who MUST have gotten title work and completely ignored my Lis Pendens. Can you say “malpractice”? In the funniest part of this tragi-comedy, the attorney told me that last year he evicted a squatter from one side and that the squatter had the unbelievable audacity to have RENTED out the other side of the two family!! Balls as big as an elephant! I am sure this is only the beginning of this mess.
Hat’s off to the guy. - Posted by Earnest
Posted by Earnest on August 25, 2001 at 16:51:41:
My hat’s off to the squatter who rented the other half. Ha! Now there’s an entrepeneur! If he’s got those balls, he’b be great at REI.
Re: Another whopper for the record books !! - Posted by Ronald * Starr
Posted by Ronald * Starr on August 24, 2001 at 16:47:08:
Ben (NJ)----------
As I frequently say, when you deal with foreclosures, you are dealing with the fringes of reality.
You don’t need to spend money for TV or movies. Just continue to buy tax-sale properties and sit back for the excitement.
I’ll be interested in seeing how this one goes.
Have you read about any lawsuits about similar situations in NJ courts? Can you even guess what the strength of your deed is?
Who got notices about the tax default and your foreclosure action? Deceased owner’s address only? Were there any signs of the heirs in the county records?
Now, the attorney will also scrutinize the whole taxsale/foreclosure process looking for mistakes that can be used to challenge the deed to you. I would recommend that you do that scrutiny real fast yourself. If you find any weaknesses, errors, illegalities, you might want to quickly propose some settlement whereby you get some cash, deed the property back to the buyer of the heir(s) and disappear into the sunset.
We had a house bought at taxsale where the homeowner’s attorney discovered that the county sent the notice of the public auction sale to the homeowners one day after they were supposed to do so. If it went to court, who would win? Hard to be sure, but the homeowner/non-taxpayer has the more sympathetic position. We settled–gave them the deed for our puchase price and a profit equal to about the cost of their attorney’s fees if they had gone to court. That is the amount I would suggest you go for should your legal grounds look shaky. Or maybe $1K or $2K more than the attorney’s fees and trial costs.
Of course, if your legal grounds seem rocksteady, do not give up so easily.
Good Investing and Good LitigatingRon Starr
Re: Another whopper for the record books !! - Posted by Jonathan Rexford
Posted by Jonathan Rexford on August 24, 2001 at 13:16:08:
Ben,
Keep us posted…lol
Re: Another whopper for the record books !! - Posted by Tom
Posted by Tom on August 24, 2001 at 11:55:10:
Stay tuned, ladies and gentlemen. This one is going to be a show to watch! ! ! ! !
Sun Tzu…The Art of War…(an epic) - Posted by Ben (NJ)
Posted by Ben (NJ) on August 24, 2001 at 18:48:07:
I am hatching a plot. Tell me what you think. Obviously buyer is very motivated to get this property(he’s already got $20,000 in the deal for God’s sakes!), buyer’s attorney is very motivated to GET him this property since his ass is on the line if his client loses out. Seller (the heir in California) could not care less about the property. It was basiclly abandoned, not even on the market. She never paid a dime in taxes, or even checked to see if squatters lived there or anything. She would have clearly lost it to me if it were not for the fortuitous timing of the buyer. My plan: I tell buyer to buy the property from me (via quitclaim if he will take it) for the same price he was paying the heir plus the redemption value of the tax lien (which he would have had to pay anyway since he was buying the house subject to my lien). He ends up not spending a dime more than he would have before. He is happy. His attorney is happy because no one is putting a microscope up his butt to find out why he didn’t do any title work on this sale. Heir is left out in the cold and with a choice: long distance and expensive litigation to try to vacate my judgment which she will probably lose, (we are not held too strictly to service of out of state heirs, we need only publish in the papers in the county of venue,if she were in NJ it may be a different story). If buyer prefers, he can even throw her a few thousand and get a quitclaim from her, closing any possible loopholes. ( I suppose I could do it too…NAHH! )I am betting that this is found money to her and she will jump on it. Any holes you can poke in my plan?