Re: Government extorting money from dentists.
From: ares (ares_at_verizon.net)
Date: 01/20/05
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Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 23:51:14 GMT
Why do they have to write this in a way that they say the same thing over
and over and over; get to the dang point already........
ares
"Joel M. Eichen" <joeleichen@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:t6gqu0tffha1pmftei2ef5l2fgat890fjn@4ax.com...
>> Its a Sheriff's Sale of worthless properties ..........
>
>
> Posted on Tue, Jan. 18, 2005
>
>
> Jill Porter | Buyer beware, too late
>
> Woman thought she bid on a house. Instead she paid a $1,700 down
> payment for a crumbling water tower.
>
>
> DENISE Berry is standing in an auditorium filled with other
> dream-seekers. Her heart pounds as she bids again and again and then
> realizes: everyone who was competing against her has sat down.
>
> Tears sting her eyes. She's done it.
>
> Years of drug addiction, prison and homelessness can be put behind her
> now.
>
> With her daughter's help, she's bought a house at sheriff's sale.
>
> "I was crying, I was saying, 'Thank you, Jesus, I got me a home,' "
> Berry recalled of that moment last June 24. "I had to get out of the
> seat and run to the bathroom, because I was crying."
>
> Berry paid the $1,700 down payment with money her daughter gave her.
> And the two of them drove to Overbrook to see the house again and
> marvel at their good fortune.
>
> It was then that Berry learned the agonizing truth: She hadn't bought
> a house at all.
>
> She'd bought a crumbling stone water tower behind a house that once
> belonged to a steam-heat company.
>
> And the new life she envisioned for herself was still an elusive
> dream.
>
> "I can't understand why they didn't let people know," said Berry, who
> I've identified by a pseudonym because she's embarrassed about her
> past - and by this latest setback.
>
> "Why would a homeless person be getting a water tower?"
>
> Naive and unsuspecting people often buy properties at sheriff's sale
> that aren't what they'd hoped. The house is uninhabitable, say, or
> they mistakenly bought an empty lot.
>
> But this isn't just about the unforgiving world of sheriff's sales,
> where "buyer beware" is the motto - and there are no refunds.
>
> This is worse.
>
> This is about worthless property that should never be for sale to
> begin with.
>
> This is about old water towers, drainage ditches, access roads and
> other unusable land that remain on city books and end up at sheriff's
> sale.
>
> It's about the people who discover it's there - in this case, a law
> firm foreclosing on tax liens - and do nothing about it but recycle
> the properties, allowing other unwitting buyers to be duped.
>
> These properties amount to a trap, however unintentional, that
> victimizes unsophisticated people who buy properties that no savvy
> investor would.
>
> Fortunately, in Berry's case there's a chance of a happy ending.
>
> But how many similar stories are out there?
>
> This property is one of thousands foreclosed on as part of a
> complicated tax lien sale the city conducted seven years ago.
>
> Berry, 58, thought she was buying a single home in Overbrook. The
> official description in the sheriff's notice of sale didn't identify
> it as a water tower.
>
> The clue that Berry missed - as could anyone unfamiliar with the
> process - was the letter "R" after the street address.
>
> That meant "rear."
>
> Not that Berry didn't check things out.
>
> Sure, she was a recovering addict who'd been in prison and had made a
> lifetime of mistakes, she said. But she was determined to do this
> right.
>
> "I did some things in my life I'm not too proud of, and I was trying
> to get myself together. I know that the first thing you need is
> somewhere to stay."
>
> "People were saying that with sheriff's sales, you can get a house for
> little or nothing and do a little work and fix it up," Berry said.
>
> Even a dilapidated house she could fix up room by room would be better
> than the way she lives now - paying a friend rent for a place to
> sleep.
>
> Her 31-year-old daughter has a corporate job out of state and she
> wanted to help her mother start a new life.
>
> She's not wealthy, but she was willing to borrow from her retirement
> account to buy the house.
>
> "She's a completely different person," the daughter said. "It was a
> chance to start over."
>
> So Denise Berry traveled the city, looking at properties on the
> sheriff's sale list.
>
> The house at 5860 Woodbine Ave. seemed to be all she hoped for: a big
> house on a decent block in seemingly good repair.
>
> Still determined to avoid a mistake, Berry knocked on the door and a
> young woman answered.
>
> "I asked her was this the address, and I told her it was a sheriff's
> sale," Berry said.
>
> "I think I'm helping them out, letting them know the house is on the
> list."
>
> Unfortunately, the wrong person answered Berry's knock that morning.
> If Gislaine Michel would have answered - the way she did when I
> knocked on a recent morning - she'd have told Berry the facts:
>
> The house wasn't for sale. The eyesore in the back yard was.
>
> The two-story stone tower has been there since the 1920s, when it was
> built by the Overbrook Steam Heating Co. The company, which provided
> water and steam heat to customers in Overbrook, went bankrupt in 1973.
>
> The medieval-looking tower remained and is now so deteriorated that
> it's been declared dangerous by the Department of Licenses and
> Inspections. It would cost a fortune to demolish.
>
> And that's what Berry had bought, as she and her daughter discovered
> to their shock immediately after the sheriff's sale.
>
> City Consumer Advocate Lance Haver - no fan of sheriff's sales for
> inexperienced buyers to begin with - interceded on Berry's behalf.
>
> "It's such a gut-wrenching thing to need a place to live," he said,
> "and, under the auspices of government, to be offered a bargain - only
> to find out this is not something that's appropriate."
>
> Haver asked the law firm handling the foreclosures to refund Denise
> Berry's money.
>
> But managing attorney Sharon Humble, of Linebarger, Goggan, Blair &
> Sampson - which is executing the foreclosures on behalf of Wachovia
> Bank, the trustee for the bond sales - replied with a three-page
> letter on July 2 that basically said: Not a chance.
>
> Humble claimed that the sheriff's notice for the sale, which described
> the property as an "irregular lot" in the "rear" owned by the
> Overbrook Steam Heat Co., "should give any average citizen pause to
> believe that the subject property is not a residence and that research
> should be conducted before bidding on the property."
>
> When I called the lawyer last week, at first she continued to insist
> there was nothing she was legally required to do, or could do, about
> the travesty.
>
> "We have no duty to sell a property that's developable or habitable,"
> she said. "It's simply foreclosing a tax lien and putting it up for
> sale for whatever purpose somebody might buy it for."
>
> And moral responsibility? To help out a hapless buyer who got stuck
> with a property she can't use?
>
> To spare other unwitting buyers from the same fate?
>
> Because that's exactly what could happen. Berry forfeited her down
> payment, which means the water tower now can be reslated for sheriff's
> sale.
>
> Eventually, Humble agreed that she could and - what do you know -
> would ask the city solicitor's office to declare the tax liens
> defective. "And if they will, then I can set aside the sales," she
> said.
>
> And so city officials will meet this week with all the parties
> involved to to see what can be done, mayoral spokesman Dan Fee said.
>
> Perhaps the story of Denise Berry's broken dream may have a happy
> ending after all.
>
> But it's appalling that she had to endure this much heartbreak.
>
> And it makes me wonder: who else has fallen victim?
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