 
More than $100,000 worth of liens have now been placed on the stalled Victoria Condos at 829 Yale St. by contractors that worked on the 40-unit midrise. It’s one of the remaining Fisher Homes properties that the Harris County court system hasn’t yet liquidated as part of its ongoing efforts to pay back the developer’s creditors — including some who’ve sued it for failing to pay their invoices on developments such as the Yale condos.
A rendering put out around the time sales began at the beginning of June 2016 shows what they would look like if they had people in them now:
***
After work on the 7 stories stopped last year, the Harris County judiciary took custody of a chunk of Fisher Homes’s portfolio in order to help pay a $69,489 judgement issued against the developer’s holding company Kavac LLC in court. In February, the court okayed closings on nearly 40 Kavac properties, including the once-bemoned condo midrise at 2802 Morrison St. near Woodland Park and townhome clusters like the Fisher Estates at Oak Forest (off 34th St.) and Waterhill Homes on Navigation (east of Lockwood), among other developed and undeveloped tracts.
More sell-offs could be next: just last month, a county judge appointed an additional receiver — an official who takes over business assets when their owner’s having trouble meeting its financial obligations — to handle payouts in a separate court case against Kavac for failing to cough up just $9,584 for petroleum products it bought in 2016. The plaintiff in that case, O’Rourke Petroleum, is seeking to recover that money, plus the attorney fees it’s incurred since lawyering up against Kavac in December 2016.
Nine other cases filed against Kavac over floating invoices have now been closed in county court, as well as many more in district court. Still open: litigation against the developer for tax delinquency, a few more instances of nonpayment, a lawsuit alleging that it knowingly used shoddy construction practices that costed buyers money on repairs, and one complaining it just never built the house a customer contracted it for in the first place.
- Previously on Swamplot: Fisher Homes’s Yale St. Condo Midrise Passes Mid-Rise; Victoria Condos Now Rising from That Big Hole by Fisher Homes’ Heights Mansion Office Your Chance to Nab Space in Fisher Homes’s 3 Story Home Office in the Heights; A Heights-Area Homebuilder’s New Home Office on Yale St.; Dogging the Morrison Heights Midrise with Doggerel; Studemont Condo Building Wants To Squeeze in Just North of Washington Ave
Photos: Swamplox inbox. Rendering: HAR
When I nicknamed the condos the “fail on Yale”, I was just poking fun at the architecture. I guess I underestimated my powers.
Old School- Good call! Who the hell hires or invests with that guy? I remember Commonsense – back in the day-saying the guy shouldn’t even have a Discover card or something like that. Fisher is a mess but there’s also several fools and their money that we’re lucky to get together in the first place.
I sensed a disturbance in the force.
Kudos for looking into what has been going on in both county courts (county civil courts at law) and district courts. The two sets of civil courts have overlapping jurisdiction. In county courts, the jurisdiction is limited to $200,000 under TEX. GOV’T CODE § 25.0003(a) (leaving aside eminent domain cases and miscellaneous special provisions), but the cases move much faster and the trials (if it comes to it) are much shorter, and therefore less expensive in attorney fee billings. The more numerous district courts are actually state courts (rather than county courts) which is why many have three-digit numbers, as they are numbered consecutively statewide in order of creation by the Texas Legislature, with the most recently created courts having the highest numbers. Because they are state courts, the Governor fills vacancies by appointment. The county courts at law are simply numbered CCCL1 through CCCL4. Commissioner’s Court fills vacancies on these courts.
Both county courts and district courts have very good electronic docket management systems that allow for access by the public via the Internet not only to dockets, but most filed documents in civil (nonfamily) cases also.
The Ugly Condos on Yale. Likely someone will finish them out but better to tear them down — even a cluster of town home would good compared to that eyesore.
commonsense coming in from left field.
Just another crook using other people’s money. I think back to a jury I was on a few years back where we sentenced a young man to 8 years in state prison for attempted burglary ( He broke a window but was stopped by the homeowner). Fisher will probably receive no time, or very little time away from his home.
Side note: Wasn’t Fisher run out of NY or some other northern state for the same type of financial nonpayment of contractors?
Trump property?
Costed? Was this written by a child?
@cm
The joke’s on you.
http://grammarist.com/usage/costed/
what a crook!
Do YOUR due diligence people. This crook is THE reason why !!
@ Progg: cm is right; the uninflected form is called for in that sentence—”used shoddy construction practices that *cost* buyers money on repairs….”
Previously filed bankruptcy in Iowa
How can they shut down the sidewalks and pedestrian access on Yale for so many years on end? Are they permitted by the city to do so? Is it ADA-compliant? I drive down Yale daily and it amazes me that they have heavy machinery propped up on pallets within INCHES of rush hour traffic flowing at 40+ MPH.
The worst thing of all are the houses on the back side of that thing on Allston. Can you imagine that thing in your previously nice, open backyard?
@Donald (yeah, that one)
.
Agreed, I walk that part of Yale occasionally and have wondered the same thing. Fortunately, most of the businesses near there are on the east side of the street, so the sidewalks in front of this monstrosity are inherently avoidable.
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Also, well played.
You think this is bad? Come see Kavac’s abandoned townhouse development on the corner of Stanford and W. Pierce in the Midtown/Montrose area.