Tag: Foreclosures

Carlton Woods
06/03/10 3:57pm

A Look Inside The Woodlands Mansion Chamillionaire Gave Back to the Bank

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Foreclosures, Homes for Sale, The Woodlands
13 Comments

Here’s what you wanted to see: nice fuzzy photos of the 7,583-sq.-ft. mansion in a gated neighborhood in The Woodlands recently repossessed from rap star Chamillionaire. Talking to TMZ reporter and comedian Adam Glyn yesterday in front of the W Hotel near New York’s Times Square, the Houston native says he gave the house in Carlton Woods back to the bank because he “just didn’t feel like it was a good business investment to keep paying that much mortgage for a house that I’m never at.”

This house actually was my most expensive mortgage. And I decided to let that house go because the house ended up being worth nothing. When the market went down, the house went down too and it was just worth nothing. . . . I paid close to 2 million dollars for the house and I decided to just let it go, give it back to the bank. It wasn’t a situation where they came and took it from me. I felt like I didn’t want to pay that much money a month for a house that I’m never at. I was never at the house, I was always on the road touring . . .

The rap star, who bought the home under the name Hakeem Seriki Millionaire Mindframe Trust (Hakeem Seriki is his real name), actually paid $2.125 million for the property in 2006. TMZ reports the home was foreclosed on after the owner failed to make several payments. The 5-bedroom, 5 1/2-bath house on an acre-plus corner lot may have been “worth nothing” to him, but the bank will likely be able to squeeze a fair bit of money out of it:

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Commercial Real Estate
05/28/10 11:10am

Swamplot Street Sleuths: On the Banks of Greenway

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Foreclosures, Greenway Plaza, Houston Heights, New Construction, Redevelopment
1 Comment

Got a question about something going on in your neighborhood you’d like Swamplot to answer? Sorry, we can’t help you. But if you ask real nice and include a photo or 2 with your request, maybe the Swamplot Street Sleuths can! Who are they? Other readers, just like you, ready to demonstrate their mad skillz in hunting down stuff like this:

Some fine sleuthing and rumor-mongering by Swamplot readers this week! Here’s what you dug up about the 2 properties in question:

  • Greenway Commons: That building going up at the corner of Richmond and Cummins is . . . an Iberia Bank! Just a little pad-site action for the sprawl-eriffic Costco Plus retail-and-parking-lot development that replaced the former HISD headquarters building a few years back. The most polite and knowledgeable-sounding response came from Amir, who added info about a nearby corner, for all you bank fans out there:

    The location currently going up on the CostCo pad site is an Iberia Bank ground lease. The property located at Richmond and Weslayan is owned by BBVA Compass, which operates the drive thru behind it and will eventually build a location there.

What about that Heights church building?

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Foreclosures
05/24/10 11:20am

No Auction Action for the Harold St. Family Home Turned Party Pad

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Homes for Sale, Montrose, Price Reductions, Streetscapes, Trees
8 Comments

How’d that foreclosure auction go for the humongous early-eighties brick house on Harold St. in Montrose used in recent years as a party pad and chainsaw test site?

Let’s just say that the auction listing is gone, the property is back on MLS — and the price has been cut another $45K. But unlike the sudden, swift, and unexplained felling of the mature street trees surrounding this property, the chopping of the list price has resulted from a series of 6 hacks, from $644,900 last October to $469,900 just last week.

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Bankruptcies
05/17/10 9:37am

At Risk on Rusk

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Buying and Selling, Downtown, Foreclosures, Quicklink
No Comments

AT RISK ON RUSK Earlier this month Cameron Management lost the 2000 St. James Place office building to foreclosure; now CEO Dougal Cameron is trying hard not to lose the Houston Club Building Downtown. So the Cameron-controlled limited partnership that owns the 18-story 62-year-old office building at 811 Rusk is declaring bankruptcy. Cameron had visions of converting the building into a hotel or high-end apartments when his investment group bought it from JPMorgan Chase in 2007; more recently the company hired PageSoutherlandPage to plan an “educational facility” to take over several floors. The building has 5 levels of parking. The Houston Club, which counts George Bush as one of its members (and as the name of one of its rooms), has a low-cost lease on four floors that expires in five years. [Houston Chronicle] Photo: Silberman Properties

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Foreclosures
04/21/10 2:45pm

Going, Going, But Never Can Say Goodbye: Will the Montrose Party Pad on Harold Survive?

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Homes for Sale, Interiors, Montrose
19 Comments

A reader with a longstanding appreciation for the party house at the corner of Harold and Graustark in Montrose writes in to provide a little background on the property for Swamplot readers. After sitting on the market since at least last September — and working its way down $130K to an asking price of $514,900 — the mammoth early-eighties brick in-town home with 4 bedrooms, 4 full- and 3 half-baths, and 4 staircases is now nearing the end of an online foreclosure auction. Who will end up with this 9,111-sq.-ft. prize?

The house is large and an odd mixture of no expense spared features (marble floors throughout, wood floors cut on bias, acres of woodwork…) and typical early 80’s tract home construction techniques. Design features include the dance floor off the master bedroom (complete with freestanding bar and speakers in the wall!), brass banisters on the winding marble staircase, scads of quick exit staircases and mirrors on the ceiling of every shower.

Oooh! Can we see any of that in the pix?

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Crime
03/18/10 9:58pm

How To Be Sure That Coke Palace You’re Buying Is the Real Deal

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Home Design, Homes for Sale, Ponderosa Trails
22 Comments

Yeah, there are lots of very large homes in Houston that kinda look like some drug lord’s mansion. But how can you find one that’s truly authentic? Here’s one way: Look for a property that’s been put on the market by actual U.S. marshals!

Like this 5-bedroom, 4-bath pinkish-brownish stucco crib at 17907 Elk Valley Circle in Ponderosa Trails. It sits on a 2.54-acre lot on a quiet cul-de-sac just south of Cypress Creek near Kuykendahl, and comes complete with the requisite pool and patio, hot tub, double-height porte-cochere, and 4-car garage.

Sure, it sorta looks like it might be the home of a drug kingpin, but so do a lot of other big homes in town built since, say, 2000. What’s this one’s pedigree?

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Art
03/18/10 12:50pm

Pearland Heads Cut Off: The WaterLight District’s Giant Presidential Bust

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Cancellations and Delays, Financing, Foreclosures, Mixed Use, Parks, Pearland, Proposed Developments, Public Art
14 Comments

President Heads above Mud at Presidential Park and Gardens, Waterlights District, Pearland, Texas

The property intended to be home to the Waterlights District — the proposed mixed-use shopping and eating extravaganzorama in Pearland — has been posted for foreclosure by its main creditor, Amegy Bank. The 1.9 million-sq.-ft. development was to feature condos, luxury apartments, office buildings, retail space, restaurants, 2 hotels, a conference facility, a “water wall,” and a Venice-like “Grand Canal.”

The site, off the Shadow Creek Pkwy. exit on the west side of Hwy. 288, has been marked for more than 2 years now by a curious semicircle of David Adickes sculptures, a preview of the development’s Presidential Park and Gardens. That park was to feature giant white busts of all 38 U.S. Presidents. But unlike Adickes other presidential suite, I-45’s Mount Rush Hour just north of Downtown Houston — in which each of the sculptor’s busts rests on its own podium — in the Waterlights grouping the 7 Presidents moved to the site appear from the freeway to be buried in the earth up to their chests, somehow managing to keep their heads above the often-times-soggy land around them. Yes, it was the perfect marker for a freeway-side development buried in debt and treading quicksand just to keep itself afloat:

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Buying and Selling
03/04/10 10:49am

Wilshire Village Saved from Foreclosure; Who’s Your Sugar Daddy Now?

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Foreclosures, Lancaster Place, Neighborhood Disputes
2 Comments

The demolished Wilshire Village Apartments appear to have been rescued from threatened foreclosure. A source tells Swamplot that the $13 million the owners owed to Wedge Real Estate Finance has been paid off in full — within days of a scheduled trustee sale. Where’d all that money come from?

If this Wilshire Village rescued owner-in-distress situation sounds familiar to you, you aren’t alone. Jay Cohen, the longtime sole owner of the apartments that stood at the corner of West Alabama and Dunlavy until last summer, faced foreclosure on the property back in 2002, according to a Houston Business Journal article written at the time by Nancy Sarnoff. Details of what happened next have never been published, but within a few years the 7.68-acre property had a new ownership structure, and apartment developer and former director of real estate for Landry’s Restaurants Matthew Dilick was its general partner. (Jay Cohen is likely a limited partner.)

So . . . who’s Dilicking Dilick, now that his own rescue efforts have flopped? Does the Wilshire Village site have a new owner?

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Apartments
02/25/10 11:09am

The Metropole Dance: Foreclosing and Flipping Greenway Plaza Apartments

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Buying and Selling, Foreclosures, Greenway Plaza
11 Comments

Two months ago, a group out of San Antonio bought up the $32 million and somewhat-tattered note owed by the owners of the Metropole Apartments at 3616 Richmond (between Edloe and Buffalo Speedway). But Lynd Residential Properties and McCombs Enterprises weren’t interested in collecting payments — they foreclosed on the property right away. And now they’re hoping to sell the 289-unit property — for more than $40 million. Globe St.‘s Amy Wolff Sorter explains politely how it came to this:

Metropole’s story begins in 2005, when Cambridge Development acquired a vacant office building with plans to convert it into living space. Cambridge Development finished its work in 2007, creating a luxury high-rise multifamily complex right around the time fundamentals began to weaken. Cambridge Development brought the asset to market in late winter 2008. Metropole was under contract several times but never made it out of escrow.

. . . and the new owners swooped in at the end of last year. They tell Sorter they’ve already brought the occupancy rate up from 75 percent to “the low 80s,” with rental rates of approximately $1.50 per sq. ft.

Photo: Metropole

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Apartments
02/22/10 4:49pm

Matthew Dilick: Wilshire Village Residents Were Just “Squatters”

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Foreclosures, Lancaster Place, Leasing, Neighborhood Disputes
15 Comments

Did Matthew Dilick, managing partner of the partnership that owns the 7.68-acre site of the former Wilshire Village Apartments, really refer to the long-term tenants of the long-neglected property at the corner of West Alabama and Dunlavy — many of whom had lived in their apartments and paid rent for decades before they were evicted last year — as “squatters”?

In a February 1st affidavit he provided to the 133rd District Court in hopes it might help forestall Wedge Real Estate Finance from foreclosing on the property, Dilick states that “the Plaintiff [Alabama & Dunlavy Ltd., of which Dilick is the general partner] expended considerable time and expense in evicting squatters on the Property.” This just a page or so after declaring his qualifications: “The Plaintiff and/or limited partners of the Plaintiff have owned this Property for over 50 years.”

Gosh, maybe there’s a bit of confusion here? Maybe the “squatters” Dilick is referring to weren’t the actual long-term rent-paying Wilshire Village residents, but some other people he found hiding out in the complex who didn’t have authorization to be there from “the Plaintiff and/or limited partners of the Plaintiff”?

Uh . . . no. By “squatters,” Dilick clearly means Wilshire Village’s long-term residents. The ones he sent eviction notices to; the ones he addressed as “reported occupants” in the release forms he asked them to sign. Otherwise, why should it have taken “considerable time and expense” for Dilick to evict them? How about just . . . “shoo!”?

Neatly left out of the affidavit: The apparent ongoing conflicts Dilick had with Jay Cohen, the sole owner of the property for the bulk of those 50 years. Until they were evicted, the tenants paid their rent to him every month. What’s Cohen’s role?

A person familiar with the situation writes in:

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Comments
02/19/10 12:29pm

Comment of the Day: The Wilshire Village Caper

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Demolitions, Financing, Foreclosures, Lancaster Place, Quicklink
No Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE WILSHIRE VILLAGE CAPER “Cohen is a limited partner and Dilick is the general partner. That helps explain why last February Dilick was telling people they were evicted and Cohen was telling them they could stay. Dilick is the GP and gets to call the shots. Who knows how or for how much Dilick became the GP (remember the rumors of tax delinquencies and Cohen seeking a bailout a few years back?) but I do recall Dilick surfacing in 2006 with his plan for putting a high rise there. That’s also the same time he started taking out loans on the property. So, my theory is that Dilick acquires his position as part of deal to help Cohen pay his taxes while maintaining partial ownership, uses the property as a piggy bank, comes to realize his development plans are going nowhere and he can’t find a buyer, can’t pay his loans because he couldn’t sell the property or make it profitable enough to cover his loans, defaults on his $13 million in loans, and tries every trick in the book to find a buyer and avoid foreclosure (including taking affirmative steps toward marketing the property, such as demolition, in an effort to satisfy lenders that money is on the way).” [Cap’n McBarnacle, commenting on Comment of the Day: The Ghost of Wilshire Village]

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Financing
02/17/10 6:03pm

Wilshire Village Owners Try To Hold Off the Bank

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Foreclosures, Lancaster Place, Land for Sale, Neighborhood Disputes
2 Comments

River Oaks Examiner reporter Mike Reed makes a valiant stab at deciphering the latest twists in the ongoing legal battle between the owner of the 7.68-acre site at the corner of West Alabama and Dunlavy where the Wilshire Village Apartments stood until last summer and Wedge Real Estate Finance, the lender that’s been trying since then to foreclose on the property. All that time, Matthew Dilick, the managing partner of property owner Alabama & Dunlavy Ltd., has been using a portfolio of delaying tactics to forestall foreclosure — hoping to sell or refinance the property before it’s taken from him and “two unnamed limited partners.”

According to Wedge, a Feb. 2 foreclosure sale marked the fourth month in a row such a sale had been scheduled, only to be halted by court actions.

Conspicuous among the court documents was a check for $1 million from Tour Partners Ltd., of Spring, Texas, to Wedge, dated Jan. 29 with “Alabama Dunlavy funding” written on it. The address on the check matches that of the Augusta Pines Golf Club.

The president of Tour Funding, Dennis Wilkerson, who signed the check, did not return calls from the Examiner. Neither did attorneys for either party in the lawsuit and foreclosure proceedings.

However, a few pieces of the puzzle were available through court documents:

Negotiation to lease the property for use as an H-E-B grocery store have been conducted by a “purchaser” identified as R.H. Abercrombie.

Photo: Swamplot inbox

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Foreclosures
02/10/10 11:18am

Wilshire Village Owners Say Nevermind About that Lawsuit

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Lancaster Place, Land for Sale, Neighborhood Disputes, Quicklink
4 Comments

WILSHIRE VILLAGE OWNERS SAY NEVERMIND ABOUT THAT LAWSUIT Those plot twists just keep twisting! The owners of the former Wilshire Village Apartments at the corner of West Alabama and Dunlavy have dropped the lawsuit they filed at the beginning of this month — the one that claimed their about-to-foreclose lender, Wedge Real Estate Finance, interfered with the owners’ attempts to sell the now-vacant 7.68-acre property. Why? Explains a source: “Whether that is because the claim became moot, or was settled, is unknown.” Of course, they can always refile later! [Swamplot inbox; previously on Swamplot]

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Demolitions
02/09/10 6:28pm

Wilshire Village Owners: Wedge Made Us Tear Those Buildings Down

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Financing, Foreclosures, Lancaster Place, Neighborhood Disputes
15 Comments

Wilshire Village rubberneckers: Pull on over; you are in for quite a treat! The gift that keeps on giving — the tragicomedy of real estate errors at the corner of West Alabama and Dunlavy in Montrose — has come through with another rich round of jaw-dropping twists. It’s up to us to recount and gawk.

We’re still combing through documents filed in the recent lawsuit for more goodies. But a reader who’s a few steps ahead of us has dug into them already and found these gems:

The property has been appraised at $26.8 million. Alabama & Dunlavy (“the partnership”) claim that they were jerked around by Wedge [Real Estate Finance, LLC] as follows:

At the instruction of Wedge, the partnership demolished the buildings on the property. They did this in an effort to prepare the site for development and increase its value by “millions of dollars.” Wedge demanded that this be done because Wedge purchased the Amegy $10 million loan, held the $3 million Wedge loan, and wanted to foreclose. Wedge allegedly stated that if the partnership demolished the buildings and increased the value of the property, Wedge would work with the partnership to avoid foreclosure.

So, the partnership – at great expense – “evicted squatters” and demolished the buildings. But, alas, Wedge decided to foreclose on the partnership and also seize $1,000,000 the partnership held in an amegy account that the partnership planned to use to help fund development.

Among the juicy tidbits…

What? There’s more!?

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Foreclosures
02/09/10 2:57pm

More Squabbling Over the Remains of Wilshire Village. What Can You Say?

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Lancaster Place, Neighborhood Disputes
2 Comments

Swamplot is hearing a couple of unconfirmed items about Wilshire Village, the 7.68-acre site at the corner of West Alabama and Dunlavy that’s sat vacant since the 70-year-old yellow-brick garden apartment buildings long left to decay on the site were cleared of their pesky tenants and torn down last year.

First comes a source telling us that on February 2nd the property was somehow foreclosed on — despite the fact that the the owner of the property, an entity called Alabama & Dunlavy Ltd., declared bankruptcy back in November for the apparent express purpose of avoiding such an event.

The next item is even more fun: There’s a lawsuit!

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