Tag: Foreclosures

Apartments
09/09/09 4:24pm

Plenty of Room in the Pool: What’s Available at Greenbriar Park North

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Buying and Selling, Foreclosures, Greenspoint, Renovations
4 Comments

Globe St.’s Amy Wolff Sorter says the buyer of the foreclosed Greenbriar Park North apartments near Greenspoint has “a strong track record” of rehabbing complexes. That should help:

Wade Schmitz with Hendricks & Partners’ Houston office tells GlobeSt.com that CNC Investments was the former owner and like many owners during the mid-2000s, had bought too much with too much debt that couldn’t be refinanced. Schmitz, who marketed the asset for Bank of America adds that the 1980s complex at 818 Richcrest Dr. attracted a great deal of interest. . . .

“There were down units that needed to be brought back online,” Schmitz says. “The property had been neglected, and needed someone to take care of it.”

How neglected? Of 400 units in the complex, only around 60 are occupied.

Don’t want to miss out on all the foreclosed-apartment-complex rehab fun? Be patient, more is coming:

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Attractions
08/19/09 5:02pm

Pearland Mansion Mystery — Unrevealed!

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Brazoria County, Foreclosures, Manvel, Pearland, Quicklink, SouthFork
2 Comments

PEARLAND MANSION MYSTERY — UNREVEALED! Having been indoctrinated into the bizarre cult of the 64,000-sq.-ft. unfinished residence-like warehouse she calls the Pearland Mystery Mansion, Katharine Shilcutt appears dedicated to keeping its secret: “What became of the house after Dr. Watkins abandoned it and went on to build the halfling mansion next door isn’t a matter of public record, suffice to say it’s a bizarre story of its own that deserves to be told one day. What will happen to the houses is anyone’s guess. The bank that owns both houses has had a feasibility study performed to determine whether or not they would be appropriate for group homes or assisted living facilities. Having been inside, it seems like the most fitting application for at least the larger of the two, if not both. It’s difficult to imagine why someone in their right mind would build what is — essentially — the world’s largest shotgun shack (or, more to the point, what architect conceived of this monstrosity as a residence). But it’s not at all difficult to picture these two buildings on this serene piece of land housing elderly or assisted care patients one day.” [Hair Balls; the house next door, featured on the Neighborhood Guessing Game]

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Buying and Selling
08/19/09 12:39pm

Flushing Foreclosures Through the System: What’s Lurking in the Line?

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Forecasts, Foreclosures, Home Prices, Houston Data, Price Trends
3 Comments

HAR’s real estate sales report for July is out! And Swamplot’s housing-market reader-analyst uses the data to piece together a better picture of Houston’s still-somewhat-mysterious foreclosure scene:

The press releases in 2009 have included a running commentary on the % of foreclosure sales in the month. This month’s release featured an interesting nugget — foreclosure sales from the prior year’s month! It is new information, and a few future monthly releases of it will allow us to fill in the data gap in the graph [above].

The foreclosure graph can be looked at in two ways. The glass half full crowd can cite the fact that a wave of foreclosures has been passed through the system — like a painful kidney stone — and it hasn’t led to piles and piles of unsold homes on top of each other in a negative feedback loop. Inventory is down to 6.5 months, backing this view.

And what if you aren’t sure there’s enough water in that glass to, uh . . . pass those stones?

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1031 Exchanges
08/11/09 11:54am

Okun Gets 100 Years; How Many for the West Oaks Mall?

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Alief, Buildings for Sale, Commercial Real Estate, Foreclosures, Fraud, Leasing, Malls, Retail
4 Comments

High-stakes real estate swindler Edward H. Okun was sentenced last week in a Virginia courtroom to 100 years in prison for absconding with about $126 million in funds entrusted to his qualified intermediary company by 1031 exchange investors. Meanwhile, back on the corner of Westheimer and Highway 6, one of his former properties went up for sale.

Okun’s Investment Properties of America bought the West Oaks Mall for $110 million in 2005. The sellers of the bankrupt property might expect to get $20 million for the million-sq.-ft. mall today, reports Globe St.‘s Amy Wolff Sorter:

The mall’s anchors include Dillard’s and Macy’s, which own their own space, and Sears, which is on a lease. [Holliday Fenoglio Fowler’s Robert] Williamson says the Sears lease is up in 2010, but negotiations are underway to keep the retailer in place.

When Okun bought the mall from Somera Capital and CoastWood Capital a little less than four years ago, the asset was 95% leased, and sported $10 million worth of exterior and interior improvements. IPA had even larger plans for even more renovations on the 33-acre site, Williamson says.

Less than a year later, the owner was able to secure $86 million of permanent financing for the mall. Yet by late 2007, IPA had filed for bankruptcy protection to stave off foreclosure. Okun’s troubles and a failing economy dropped the mall’s occupancy to a little less than 70%.

How’s the mall looking these days?

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Commercial Real Estate
08/07/09 9:44am

Houston’s Commercial Foreclosure Boom

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Foreclosures, Houston Data, Quicklink
2 Comments

HOUSTON’S COMMERCIAL FORECLOSURE BOOM The far greater numbers of residential foreclosures — currently spiking now that moratoriums have been lifted — may be sucking up the attention. But there’s plenty of excitement in Houston commercial foreclosures too, the Foreclosure Information & Listing Service reports: “The number of commercial properties posted for foreclosure in Harris County in the past three months is up 84 percent over the same time last year. Records show 335 commercial properties were posted for foreclosure in Harris County in May, June and July compared to 182 during the same months in 2008. Just over 20 percent of the commercial properties posted for foreclosure from May through July 2009 actually passed through the foreclosure process by going back to the lender or getting purchased at public foreclosure auction by a third-party buyer. During the same time period last year, only 15 percent of the properties were foreclosed. Ralph Murdock, president of Foreclosure Information, says most postings don’t result in foreclosures, but a significant increase in the number of postings shows that more property owners are having problems.” [Houston Business Journal]

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Buying and Selling
07/22/09 10:38am

Houston Real Estate in June: Top of the Summer to You!

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Forecasts, Foreclosures, Home Prices, Houston Data, Price Trends
11 Comments

“The increase in local unemployment reported this week is sickening,” reports Swamplot’s local financial correspondent. But don’t the latest HAR numbers show Houston home prices at some sort of record high?

Historically, the peak for home prices comes in July or August every year. The increase in the median and average over the past several months has been due to two factors. First, seasonality –summer prices are always the highest. Second, a change in the “product mix” of Houston homes –the % of foreclosed homes has fallen every month for several months straight . . . So the change in the product mix means that the value of any given house probably has not risen, only a change in the product moving through the system is reflected in the numbers.

Is it okay to get excited about the foreclosures, then?

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Foreclosures
06/16/09 6:36pm

Now Haunting Theaters: Late-Payment Horror

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Hazards, Movies
2 Comments

On second thought, foreclosure is hell. That freaky-eyed lady asking for another extension on her mortgage payment? C’mon, go ahead and give it to her. You won’t feel bad about it. Plus those little in-house exorcisms have a weird way of chewing through the value of the underlying collateral.

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Condos for Sale
06/11/09 10:32am

Pine Village North Open House Welcome

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Crime, Foreclosures, Pine Village North, Public Health
37 Comments

What happens when an investor who owns 200 out of 500 units in a north Houston condo complex defaults on his loan, leaving many of his properties vacant? Reporter Allison Triarsi visits Pine Village North, just south of Hamill Rd., west east of the Eastex Fwy.:

“It’s just an open house for gang members to come. Anybody can come,” said homeowner Ann Loyd.

Walk inside any one of the open units and you could find anything from gang graffiti and dead roaches, to the bones of animals.

“I don’t know if what I’m standing in [is] some kind of mice droppings or rat droppings,” said Loyd, while escorting 11 News through a vacant unit.

In addition to debris, there were pink pills on a counter, and clothing and blankets on the floor where people have either left them behind or kept them there in case they needed a free place to sleep.

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Foreclosures
05/18/09 4:08pm

Foreclosure Homebuying Excitement!

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Homebuying, Quicklink
3 Comments

FORECLOSURE HOMEBUYING EXCITEMENT! The tally from all those rounds of speed-buying at the George R. Brown REDC foreclosure auction yesterday: 106 properties, totaling $7.7 million dollars — plus a few giddy new homeowners: “It happened so quickly that Shamika Hayes wasn’t quite sure how it happened. ‘I wasn’t paying attention and kept raising my hand,’ Hayes told us. But in an auction where houses were selling in 90 seconds or less, the family of four bought their very first home sight unseen. Understandably they were a little nervous about that last fact.” [abc13]

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Condos
04/09/09 1:40pm

League City Condo Trap: Bad Conversion at the Fairways

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Foreclosures, Fraud, Hazards, League City, Real Estate Investing
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Just how did a group of Israeli investors get stuck with 114 condo units in this quaint converted apartment complex in League City? And why are they now suing the project’s developer and property manager?

The Galveston County Daily News‘s Laura Elder explains:

The investors never intended to live in the units but instead were seeking to generate income by renting them to others, according to the lawsuit. Through agreements, the units owned by the investors were put in a rental pool managed by the defendants, according to the lawsuit.

But while Westcorp Management Group, of which Roni Amid is vice chairman, had been collecting rent from tenants, it failed to pay proceeds to the mortgage company or the investors for some units, according to the lawsuit.

Without rental income, some of the investors are unable to pay their mortgages, leading lenders to begin foreclosure proceedings on at least 30 units in the complex, said Danny Sheena, a Houston attorney representing investors.

The suit also claims the defendants used the investors’ units at the Fairways at South Shore as collateral for a $23 million loan from Deutsche Bank obtained behind their backs last August. Which means, the suit claims, the investors can’t sell their units.

And that Israeli connection? Looks like it’s all in the family:

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Foreclosures
04/06/09 1:17pm

Crumbling from the Outside In: The Poop on 2008 Houston Home Sales

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Houston Data, Online Resources, Price Trends
5 Comments

The Houston Chronicle‘s annual neighborhood-sales-data extravaganza came out this weekend. Since it covers the 2008 calendar year, the survey is timed just right to document the continuing drop in sales and prices of far-flung lower-priced homes — but maybe a bit early to catch the extended Wile E. Coyote-style midair hang a fair number of closer-in half-a-million-plus homes on the market are currently experiencing.

A few highlights:

Sales activity dropped in all counties for non-foreclosure transactions. All counties showed a rise in sales of foreclosed homes.

And those foreclosures are also clearly missing the bullseye: In 2008 there were only 362 foreclosures inside the Loop and 2,556 between the Loop and Beltway 8 — but a whopping 9,342 outside the Beltway. In total, foreclosures were only up about 11 percent over the previous year. But the number of non-foreclosure sales dropped by almost 22 percent. So in 2008 foreclosures accounted for just under 22 percent of all sales.

Where did the prices fall last year?

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Economic Conditions
03/10/09 5:59pm

Your Chance To Be in the Foreclosure Spotlight

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Foreclosures, Quicklink
No Comments

YOUR CHANCE TO BE IN THE FORECLOSURE SPOTLIGHT KHOU-TV reporter Dave Fehling is trying to find people who might have interesting perspectives on how foreclosures are affecting various local neighborhoods — for a Channel 11 teevee news story he’s putting together. Can any Swamplot readers bail him out? Or maybe just point him in the right direction? Send Fehling an email (link at the bottom) with your sobering story. But really, if you’ve got something truly juicy to tell, we’ll want to hear about it too! [Swamplot inbox]

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1031 Exchanges
02/02/09 12:17pm

JCPenney at West Oaks Mall: To the Bank

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Alief, Commercial Real Estate, Financing, Foreclosures
2 Comments

Buyers didn’t show up for the latest sale at the old JCPenney building next to West Oaks Mall. So Wachovia Bank will foreclose on the property soon, the CoStar Group reports.

The bankruptcy trustee for the collapsed financial empire of Edward H. Okun had listed the vacant building, which Okun’s 1031 Tax Group had bought for $4 million. But no buyers were willing to pay even the amount of the financing, which was $3 million.

The Houston JCPenney building and a mall in Salina, Kansas — also now facing foreclosure — are Okun’s last remaining properties.

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Apartments
01/09/09 4:59pm

Mosaic Avoids Foreclosure, Files for Bankruptcy

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Condos, Condos for Sale, Financing, Foreclosures, Hermann Park, Highrises, New Construction: Residential
9 Comments

The developer of the Mosaic highrise overlooking Hermann Park — a limited partnership between Phillips Development & Realty and publicity-shy Florida Capital Real Estate Group — declared bankruptcy earlier this week to avoid foreclosure on a $71 million loan from Chicago lender Corus Bankshares. Florida Capital, originally the equity partner, will be taking over as the general partner.

The bankruptcy covers just the first Mosaic tower. The second tower, rebranded the Montage, has not yet defaulted on its separate $71 million Corus loan.

So how have sales been going at the Mosaic? It depends, the Houston Business Journal‘s Jennifer Dawson learns, who you ask:

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Apartments
12/30/08 5:15pm

Phillips Development at the Mosaic: Short-Term Rentals, Short-Term Stay?

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Condos, Foreclosures, Hermann Park, Highrises, Leasing
13 Comments

Need a place to crash somewhere in Houston for a short visit — say, a week — but don’t want to stay in a hotel?

Phillips Development & Realty, developers of the Mosaic and freshly rebranded Montage towers across Almeda from Hermann Park, is handling rentals of Mosaic condos owned by investors — as well as rentals of the many units the developer has been unable to unload. Now a source passes on a new rumor to Swamplot: Some of those available rentals may be extremely short-term.

Not a bad idea for a property that’s close to the Med Center! With that rumor, though, come a couple more:

Phillips’s Corporate Leasing Director will be taking over management of the Mosaic’s homeowners association from the company that had been running it since the building opened last year. But Phillips’s new tenure at the HOA may be a short-term one too. Why?

Because Florida Capital Real Estate Partners, the Mosaic’s lender, might just be foreclosing on Phillips’s property soon — both the Mosaic and an apartment complex in Tampa called the Casa Bella. Swamplot’s source also suggests that Camelot Realty Group — the company that’s clearly been very busy handling the Mosaic’s many condo sales — may already have had discussions with Florida Capital about taking over onsite rental duties from Phillips once the foreclosure takes place.

Photo of Mosaic and Montage: Swamplot inbox

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