I guess we learn things all the time and this one is interesting. It’s a paper published in the University of Cincinnati Law Review about the 2008-2009 mortgage meltdown. Lending institutions are way behind on dealing with all the foreclosed properties. They’ve hired property management companies to help deal with the overload.
Now there’s been a rash of lawsuits by homeowners late on their payments who’ve come back to find that their homes have been trashed and their personal property stolen. Seems it’s being done by these third-party contractors hired by the mortgage companies.
I wonder if there’s any spillover by management companies that foreclose on liens on people in Homeowners Associations?
Ah yes, I do like to keep you posted on embezzlers who steal from their their neighbors. It’s such a personal crime. You have to look your neighbors right in the eye and tell them, “I’m robbing you blind and you’re too stupid to know.”
We’re not too stupid. We just don’t have the guts to spread the word. But that may be changing.
Lorene Lutey Treml, of the Meadow Valley Condominium Association in Wisconsin: You’re a crook. A firing squad is too good for you.
I’m so glad someone sent me this link. It’s a Skype discussion between some concerned HOA members in Minnesota and Dr. Gary Solomon. Solomon is one of the premiere experts on the national HOA scam and every second you spend watching this video will pay off many times over.
The link below has absolutely nothing to do with HOAs. It should. But it’s interesting nevertheless. It’s also a chance for me to tell another one of my weird personal stories.
It was the early 70s and we were three years into our marriage. We had our second baby son and we were living in relative poverty. Still, we went looking for a home and found one for sale on the Seattle Eastside. I think the original price was around $30,000 but I calculated that all we could afford was $23,000. I gave the owner 200 bucks cash for the earnest money deposit and since there was no Realtor involved and nothing to sign I wrote up my own contract on the only paper in the house: A paper napkin. What was I thinking? I was just 24 and still dumb about life.
The owner of the house signed the paper napkin, reluctantly of course. I know he had regrets about accepting my low-ball offer, but he still honored our agreement. And I carried that napkin into my bank to see if they would give me a loan. Based on the signatures on the napkin they gave me a full loan.
After getting the TV job in Denver a couple of years later we sold the house…and got $36,000. Had I kept that old house it would be worth more than a half million dollars today! You win some, you lose some.
I’ve whined about this sort of thing repeatedly: HOAs shutting down little kids’ lemonade stands just because some witch on the board thinks that kids’ activities destroy the neighborhood. Ah, how I long for the good old days when the presence of kids and their activities actually increased community property values.
Speaking of property values, I wonder if one of our Florida friends could track home sales in the Hawk’s Point HOA and see how they compare to home values outside any HOA? I would bet dollars to donuts that…naw, I’ll wait until the data comes in.
