August, 2010
Alexis Bellino and her husband Jim, the newest cast members of "The Real Housewives of Orange County" narrowly averted foreclosure these days, after they got a last minute loan modification from their lenders.
Alexis and Jim defaulted on more than $80,000 in debt payments on the $4.56 million home they have owned for couple of years. The fees and penalties the delinquent amount totaled nearly $84,000 as of April and their lender, Chase Bank scheduled a foreclosure sale for August 25 at the entrance to the central Orange County Courthouse.
The couple managed to obtain a loan modification, so the foreclosure sale never took place.
"Chase Bank has been great to work with on my modification," Jim Bellino said. "The trustee sale has been canceled, and the modification has been agreed upon."
Alexis is a "32 year old spicy blond", a stay at home mom, while her husband, Jim is a self-made entrepreneur. They have three children: 4 year old James and twins Melania and Mackenna.
The property threatened with foreclosure in located in Bayshore, just one block from the home Nicolas Cage sold for $35 million two years ago.
According to the county records, the Bellinos bought the home for $4.56 million in August 2007, but the housing market collapse brought a 42% drop of their home price. Zillow now estimates the house to worth under $4 million.
The house has five bedrooms, five bathrooms and nearly 4,200 square feet and sits on a 9,135 square-foot lot.
The Bellinos have put the home up for sale two years ago, but they pulled it back in October. A notice of default filed in April said they stopped making mortgage payments since the start of the year, but as they obtained the loan modification they can stay in their home.
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Category : Celebrities &Distressed Luxury Real Estate News &Orange County
Scott Storch had the opportunity to see how is down and how is up. Unfortunately he didn’t manage to solve his financial problems, so he woke up with his Miami home foreclosed on as part of his financial meltdown.
The Villa Ferrari, Storch’s former 20,000 square-foot home on Palm Island has a 100 foot boat dock, 11 bedrooms, 15 bathrooms, 3 guest houses and two pools. SunTrust bank which held two mortgages worth a combined $7.75 million against the property, bought it back at auction for $5.5 million,although Storch had bought the home for $10.5 million, but it had been listed for $13.9 million.
The home has now a new owner in the person of Russ Weiner, the CEO of Rockstar Energy drink, who bought the property from SunTrust for $6.75 million.
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Category : Celebrities &Distressed Luxury Real Estate News &Headlines &Miami
Antoine Walker, the former NBA star, who made about $110 million during his 13 year pro career playing for the Boston Celtics, Miami Heat, Dallas Mavericks, Atlanta Hawks and Minnesota Timberwolves is now facing foreclosure.
He was a member of the NBA All Rookie First team, named an NBA All Star three times and won an NBA championship, with the Miami heat 4 year ago. Antoine Walker is now facing foreclosure.
He has filed for bankruptcy and he’s hit by a $2.3 million foreclosure lawsuit for the Tinley Park home, purchased for her mother. According to the lawsuit documents, he has missed three months of payments reaching the $2.3 million. Walker is trying to recover now, by selling his other home in Miami which is on the market for $3.4 million, but according to Crain’s he has liabilities of $12,74 million versus assets of $4.28 million.
But Walker has some other financial troubles too. Recently he was arrested for filing bad checks for some gambling house. The problem is that the debt value is almost $1 million, debt cumulated between July 2008 and January 2009 at Ceasars Palace, Planet Hollywood and Red Rock Resort. He could face up to 12 years in prison, if convicted.
Category : Celebrities &Distressed Luxury Real Estate News
Jeremy London, the former Party of Five star is going to be evicted from his West Hills, California home. Although the electricity seems to be turned off, the troubled actor continues living at the home, even more he continues to cut the grass in the front yard.
London fell behind with thousands of dollars on his mortgage payments and the bank put his bungalow into foreclosure. However Jeremy London is behaving like nothing happened.
"He has been living there for the past couple of week and his blue Range Rover has been parked outside," a neighbor says. "It looks like the electricity has been cut off because there were no lights on at nights although he did cut the grass on the front lawn. He hardly goes out during the day and has been behaving very strangely considering the house is now in foreclosure.", the neighbor added.
According to a realtor familiar with the property, there is nothing London can do. The property has been foreclosed by the bank and the eviction process is in progress.
"It could take several months for the eviction to take place and the house is not officially on the market just now."
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Category : Celebrities &Distressed Luxury Real Estate News
It looks like the foreclosure crisis is not limited to simple American citizens only. Even the Philadelphia Housing Authority chief, Carl Greene, is facing foreclosure.
He has been foreclosed on his Naval Square development, a 2,100 square foot condominium, that worth $615,035. Wells Fargo foreclosed Greene for a $386,685.22 default, according to the lawsuit documents.
Carl Greene, who directs the nation’s fourth largest public housing agency is one of the highest paying officials, as the numbers say: $306,370 plus $44,188 bonus for last year. Questions can be asked, how does this man, with this income has no financial power to pay his mortgage.
Kirk Dorn, Greene’s spokesman said these days, that the executive director was in a dispute with Wells Fargo. "It’s unfortunate that the dispute is now public, but he plans to deal with the matter in private," Dorn said. "Mr. Greene knows people will find it hard to understand how he could be involved in a possible foreclosure proceeding on his home, but he would prefer not to say more about it at this time," he added.
The next step is like what every other Philadelphia homeowner threatened with foreclosure: he will have to participate in the city’s mortgage-foreclosure program and must appear in Sept. 16 in the courtroom of Judge Annette Rizzo.
The Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) is a state authority funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and is responsible for providing housing for Philadelphia’s poor. Low income residents have the opportunity purchase affordable housing with the help of PHA.
Greene runs PHA since 1998 after he was serving as executive director of the Detroit Housing Commission.
With the Obama administration Greene has put the economic-recovery money to work, attracting attention and accolades from HUD. PHA has received and additional $127 million stimulus money, that was used by Greene to renovate and build units for 1,200 families.
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Category : Distressed Luxury Real Estate News
The outstanding building on the Hudson River that once had a $25 million asking price has now a new owner: it was picked up by its mortgage holder at a Manhattan foreclosure auction.
The foreclosure action was launched back in 2008 by CapitalSource Bank, which holds $18.9 million lien on the development, according to Propertyshark’s informations. George Lora, the director of CapitalSource said they intend to sell the property.
This foreclosure auction is the latest example of a very good project, born on surging demand on condos, but as the easy credit is over, and the housing market collapsed, no one is interested anymore. They say even Leonardio DiCaprio signed a contract to buy at least two floors in this project, know as Hudson Blue, but they didn’t close the deal because there were lacks of unit sales.
This condominium development was formed by Michael Yanko and Eran Conforty, two Israelis, who met in New York and developed luxury buildings focused on "superior design".
The two Israelis began to market the project as part of the "Gold Coast" on West Street, where the glass-facade buildings abutting the Hudson afforded spectacular water views. At one point one of the developer stated that they considered subsidizing a private chef for residents.
These units attracted lots of curiosity and the asking prices were somewhere between $2 million and $2.5 million.
However, the low ceilings combined with large windows in the front and back – but no views between – gave the apartments a cramped feeling. The original marketing plans didn’t work, so the two had to reconsider the strategy.
"They kept changing their minds to find something they thought was marketable," said Barbara Godson, a Halstead Property agent who showed apartments here.
In the foreclosure auction CapitalSource bid $6.8 million. This amount doesn’t reflect the real value of the property because the buyer was the lender, who held the mortgage. CapitalSource has already done the next step: they hired Grubb & Ellis to market the property, which is one of the tops in the city.
Category : Distressed Luxury Real Estate News &New York
Lake Forest – the Chicago suburb – is known as a place where all women drive S.U.V.’s and all the men are CEO’s. The trouble of the world didn’t seem to get into this neighborhood, where the per-capita income is $77,000.
Till now. It seems like foreclosures that has swamped the housing market – mainly in low-income neighborhoods, now starting to lap at the unspoiled shores of this community on Lake Michigan.
"In the first half of 2010, the largest increases in new foreclosures occurred in the region’s middle- and higher-income communities", a new report of the Woodstock Institute revealed.
The hardest foreclosures hit has DuPage County: here the numbers show a 74.8 percent increase in new filings in the fist half of this year. The second hardest hit has Lake County, home to Lake Forest, here the report shows a 64.9 percent jump.
Lake County registered 127 real estate transaction till the end of the first half this year and 14% or 18 of these were either in foreclosure or were transferred on short sales. However the number are not so scary, if we compare this area to the rest of Chicago: while Lake Forrest registered only 34 foreclosures this year, Chicago has 11,013.
Fact is, that while "short sale" or "foreclosure" phrases were unknown to this are, seems like there is a change. With the housing market collapse the homeowners in Lake Forest found themselves underwater spending much more than they could afford.
"We’ve seen a remarkable drop in large-home prices,"said David Moore, a businessman who serves on the Lake Forest City Council. "Homes in the water that used to go for $10 million or $11 million – it’s being whispered that you can get them now for $4 million or $5 million."
The Noble Judah home, one of the finest property in the area created some stir last week when it was put in the market as a short sale for $6 million. "A few years ago, the 85 year old manor would have commanded three times as much," Mr. More added.
However, defaulters in these kind of wealthy communities are less likely to face eviction by the sheriff. In addition, banks will allow these owners to stay in their homes until they maintain it.
Category : Distressed Luxury Real Estate News
Charles Rogers, the former Saginaw High Star and Detroit Lions wide receiver’s home as part of the Turnberry Estates subdivision in will face foreclosure on August 31 after he defaulted and owes $1.17 million. Rogers moved out from the house recently leaving the debt behind. His home is part of the The Turnberry Estates subdivision which has 17 homes valued between $1 million and 10 million, and their homeowner are business executives, restaurateurs and real estate agents.
However, one third of homeowners have faced foreclosure in the last 2 years, according to public records. One of the houses was lost to foreclosure, another three were scheduled for sale, but finally avoided them. Another two foreclosures are pending: Charles Rogers’ and another owner.
The luxury homes market shows an increased number of foreclosures: just in Metro Detroit 719 properties with above $1 million in worth received foreclosure filings since the beginning of the recession, according to Irvine, California-based RealtyTrac Inc. The experts say that this number of luxury homes facing foreclosure can be a sign that rich homeowners are treating these homes like a bad investment and the are dumping them. Although this will ruin their credit they will still have plenty of money in their bank account to buy some other home, said Bob Taylor, president of the Michigan Association of Realtors and real estate agent in Birmingham, trying to explain the phenomenon.
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Category : Distressed Luxury Real Estate News
The Novi palace, one of Metro Detroit’s symbol of wealth gained a few days before entering foreclosure. The 13,777 square foot mansion includes a steam room, a bowling alley, wine vault. Outside: $5 million worth of landscaped waterfalls, a pool with a 60-foot-long water slide and a par three golf hole. The auction planned for today is postponed for unclear reasons.
The owner, Rich Morgan, known as a the entrepreneur who built an empire of laser hair removal clinics, bought the mansion 3 years ago for only $9.5 million. After investing another $8.5 to build the house, the property now worth around $25 million according to some real estate officials.
Although this property is the symbol of wealth, it seems to be too expensive for this period, because Rich Morgan was the second owner in 2 years. After buying the mansion, Rich Morgan faced multiple financial problems. Farmington Hills law firm Trott & Trott said Morgan and his wife defaulted on the mortgage with more than $3.07 million in debt. In addition, Rich owes $199,763 in delinquent property taxes and has tax liens filings against him is four states, cumulating a total of $574,986, according to public records.
The opening bid is the amount the owner owes the lenders and usually the home becomes the property of the lender. In the Rich Morgan case he could redeem the home within 180 days by paying the same amount as the top bid. However, this is a tough time for a more than $10 million property to hit the market.
Category : Celebrities &Distressed Luxury Real Estate News &Headlines