Thursday
Apr242008
Tenants in Foreclosure - Part 1
Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 10:28AM
So here's the story of our very sudden and unexpected move recently...
We were happily settled in our Midtown Atlanta condo, eighteen months into a two-year lease thru July 2008, paying our rent on time each and every month -- see Urban Pioneers. It suddenly came to our attention, on February 15th, that the owner of the condo had not been making the mortgage payments -- we discovered the condo was listed on public record for sale at foreclosure on Tuesday, March 4th -- just two weeks away.
Panic sets in.
Apparently, this experience, tenants in foreclosure, is not as unusual as we might think, with the huge increase in foreclosures because of the economy and the 'sub-prime mess.' I read a statistic somewhere in my frantic research about "Tenants in Foreclosure" that it could be expected that at least 1 in 8 foreclosures involve renters, who very often -- too often -- know nothing about the foreclosure until the Sheriff knocks on the door to evict them, because all of the paperwork is sent to the homeowner.
We were very fortunate that it came to our attention, in part because I noticed a drastic increase in increasingly formal-looking mail coming to the condo with the owner's name on it. Because we were there almost two years, we had stopped receiving mail to the owner, but then, all of a sudden, we were receiving dozens of letters, clearly not of the "re-finance your mortgage with us!" or "we can save you money with GEICO Insurance!" junk mail variety. We forwarded the letters and then bundled up a bunch to give to the property manager.
I knew there was something wrong. This was correspondence from attorney's offices and then several came along with "File No: XXXXXXX" typed on the outside of the envelope. I passed it all forward, unopened, unexamined, but then on February 15th, the second week of this deluge, I Googled the attorney's office on the Internet. Lo and behold, it's one of the largest foreclosure attorneys in the state of Georgia. And Tennessee. And right there on the website, they have "Foreclosure Listings." I had the File No. and within seconds was looking at the public record of this property listed in the foreclosure sale scheduled for March 4th.
We immediately contacted the property manager who handled our lease. The owner of the condo lives in Florida, it was an investment property, we had never met, heard from or spoken with the owner. The property manager got in touch with the owner in Florida. He then assured us that everything was all right -- the owner had made "arrangements" with the bank, the property was not in foreclosure and the owner was going to fax proof, which he would share with us to allay our fears. Everything was fine...except the proof never came, and the property remained on the foreclosure sale schedule.
We started to frantically search for somewhere to go, all the while caught in a Catch-22, since our lease was thru July 2008 and if the property was not in foreclosure and we vacated, we would then be breaking the lease. We were caught, resulting in many sleepless nights between Feb. 15th and March 4th, the day of the foreclosure sale. Still nothing but assurances from the owner via the property manager that "everything is fine" -- but it wasn't.
Finally, on the day of the foreclosure sale, I contacted the foreclosure attorney, indicating that I was very interested in the status of this property at the end of the day, since we were living in it, with three children. I received a response by email at 5:35pm that afternoon, which I forwarded to the property manager:
"The property sold back to the bank. You will likely be hearing from some representative of the lender regarding the status of occupancy. I don't know if we will be referred the matter; it might even be a real estate agent hired by the lender. I suspect that contact will be made in the next week or so..."
Super. Suddenly, we were essentially homeless squatters in a condo we had been paying rent on for almost two years...To Be Continued...
Tenants in Foreclosure - Part 2
Tenants in Foreclosure - Part 3
We were happily settled in our Midtown Atlanta condo, eighteen months into a two-year lease thru July 2008, paying our rent on time each and every month -- see Urban Pioneers. It suddenly came to our attention, on February 15th, that the owner of the condo had not been making the mortgage payments -- we discovered the condo was listed on public record for sale at foreclosure on Tuesday, March 4th -- just two weeks away.
Panic sets in.
Apparently, this experience, tenants in foreclosure, is not as unusual as we might think, with the huge increase in foreclosures because of the economy and the 'sub-prime mess.' I read a statistic somewhere in my frantic research about "Tenants in Foreclosure" that it could be expected that at least 1 in 8 foreclosures involve renters, who very often -- too often -- know nothing about the foreclosure until the Sheriff knocks on the door to evict them, because all of the paperwork is sent to the homeowner.
We were very fortunate that it came to our attention, in part because I noticed a drastic increase in increasingly formal-looking mail coming to the condo with the owner's name on it. Because we were there almost two years, we had stopped receiving mail to the owner, but then, all of a sudden, we were receiving dozens of letters, clearly not of the "re-finance your mortgage with us!" or "we can save you money with GEICO Insurance!" junk mail variety. We forwarded the letters and then bundled up a bunch to give to the property manager.
I knew there was something wrong. This was correspondence from attorney's offices and then several came along with "File No: XXXXXXX" typed on the outside of the envelope. I passed it all forward, unopened, unexamined, but then on February 15th, the second week of this deluge, I Googled the attorney's office on the Internet. Lo and behold, it's one of the largest foreclosure attorneys in the state of Georgia. And Tennessee. And right there on the website, they have "Foreclosure Listings." I had the File No. and within seconds was looking at the public record of this property listed in the foreclosure sale scheduled for March 4th.
We immediately contacted the property manager who handled our lease. The owner of the condo lives in Florida, it was an investment property, we had never met, heard from or spoken with the owner. The property manager got in touch with the owner in Florida. He then assured us that everything was all right -- the owner had made "arrangements" with the bank, the property was not in foreclosure and the owner was going to fax proof, which he would share with us to allay our fears. Everything was fine...except the proof never came, and the property remained on the foreclosure sale schedule.
We started to frantically search for somewhere to go, all the while caught in a Catch-22, since our lease was thru July 2008 and if the property was not in foreclosure and we vacated, we would then be breaking the lease. We were caught, resulting in many sleepless nights between Feb. 15th and March 4th, the day of the foreclosure sale. Still nothing but assurances from the owner via the property manager that "everything is fine" -- but it wasn't.
Finally, on the day of the foreclosure sale, I contacted the foreclosure attorney, indicating that I was very interested in the status of this property at the end of the day, since we were living in it, with three children. I received a response by email at 5:35pm that afternoon, which I forwarded to the property manager:
"The property sold back to the bank. You will likely be hearing from some representative of the lender regarding the status of occupancy. I don't know if we will be referred the matter; it might even be a real estate agent hired by the lender. I suspect that contact will be made in the next week or so..."
Super. Suddenly, we were essentially homeless squatters in a condo we had been paying rent on for almost two years...To Be Continued...
Tenants in Foreclosure - Part 2
Tenants in Foreclosure - Part 3
Reader Comments (1)
How awful! Especially with children to consider, you must have been under so much stress. It sounds like everything worked out well, though. You have me hanging at the edge of my seat - I can't wait until part 2.