New Haven Independent

Those were the results this week as the deadline passed on an aggressive new city effort to combat the foreclosure crisis.

As the number of abandoned houses spirals in town (800 at last count), officials have had trouble tracking down people responsible for upkeep. That’s because many of the homes are in the hands of distant lenders, many of whom hold subprime or other unpaid mortgages that have changed institutional hands multiple times.

Under a new law, the city set a Tuesday deadline for lenders holding or foreclosing on city properties to register a local contact.

The city has vowed next week to go after the balance, or fine them big time.

According to Cathy Schroeter, deputy director for administration of LCI, of the 250 bank-owned homes in New Haven, 58 thus far now had registered a local contact as of Tuesday. The city released a spreadsheet on Friday listing the now-registered properties, which have grown to 60.

Click here to see the spreadsheet.

A total of 10 lenders own the 60 registered properties. EMC Mortgage Co. owns the most, 22. Next comes Countrywide Home Loans, a leader purveyor of the subprime mortgages that helped cause last fall’s Wall Street collapse. Countrywide owns 18 on the list.

Of the 60 homes listed, 12 are noted as abandoned, two as vacant. The rest are apparently occupied.

“That’s about 20 percent” Schroeter said of the response so far. She said a robust effort has begun to track down over the next 10 days the remaining 190 whose bank owners should have registered between January and April, but have not.

Within a week and a half Schoreter said the non-compliant entities will receive another letter telling them they have five more days in which to register with the city or face fines of $250 per day.

Eventually, if the city continues to get no response, it legally can take control of the properties to collect unpaid fines.

One of those people scrambling to register properties and avoid a fine is Toni Ross. She’s the “REO” — that is, real estate owned — property manager for Weichert Regional Properties, which is headquartered in Orange.

She said she couldn’t give a specific number of the properties Weichert is the local contact for, but estimated about 30.

“We think the registration is a good thing, and we’re aware of the possibility of the fines,” she said, “and we’re scrambling to get the city what it has requested. We feel very positive about this.”

According to Cathy Schoerter, Weichert is the local contact that handles the largest portion of the bank-owned properties in the city.

The two largest owners of bank-owned properties in town are Deutsche Bank and Wells Fargo.

Ross confirmed her firm is handling properties owned by Wells Fargo, among others. As to Deutsche Bank, she said, “We don’t deal with DB directly. Sometimes they give their properties for management to asset management companies and then we deal with those companies.”

She indicated that even she, the local contact, in doing this work often has a long and murky paper trail to follow in order to get to the owner and to find the appropriate info.

“We’re actually also trying to figure out who may already have registered directly, so we don’t have to do it again for them.”

Ideally the ordinance will short-cut calls and paperwork when the city has a sudden fire or crime problem with a property and LCI or other official needs to make quick contact with an owner.

In a case in point, Schoerter said that last week a property at 295 Lloyd Street had what she called a “fire condition.” The fire marshall called LCI, but its staffers, led by Frank D’Amore, the administrator of property, needed three days to follow the paper trail to get to an owner.

The ordinance will make such occurrences, it is hoped, far less common.

The href=”http://www.newhavenindependent.org/archives/2008/10/this_property_i.php”> ordinance, crafted by Fair Haven Alders Erin Sturgis-Pascale and Joey Rodriguez, spells out that owners of foreclosing properties need to list a local contact with phone number in Connecticut. New foreclosures must do this within seven days. It was designed to allow the city to be pro-active in heading off properties falling into disrepair and abandonment.

Sturgis-Pascale said she was pleased with the numbers thus far.

She said she hoped the bill would continue to be “an incentive for banks to maintain their properties in the city of New Haven.”

“All the 192 who haven’t registered absolutely know that registration is required,” said Schroeter, “either through press reports, or the letters or when we go through the lis pendens filing we find the lawyers handling the foreclosure and write to them. Our letters tell the lawyers they need to get in touch with their clients.”

Lis pendens is the legal filing announcing the beginning of a title change in real estate, and usually is the opening shot of a foreclosure.

Schroeter said that the two law firms handling most of the foreclosures by out-of-town banks are two Hartford-based Hunt Leibert Jacobson and Bendett and McHugh. They apparently are about to receive a lot of letters.

“In the end,” said Schroeter, “the point of the registration is to get information that will allow us to act right away if there’s an issue like fire or criminality. It will help people protect their own assets and help us keep the city protected from the effects of buildings having to be boarded up.”

Ross, of Weichert, agreed. “We’re going to do whatever we have to to put this on track. Especially with the vacant properties, you know, we do put stickers on the houses so the city can be in touch with us if there’s a problem. We do that already.”

So far, Schroeter said, there have been no calls to the fire marshal or other problems with any of the 60 properties with a local contact already registered with the city.

So many of the banks, Schroeter suggested, have bought up smaller banks, that the larger ones often don’t even know what they own. Thus the difficulty in finding a local contact, and the raison d’etre for the ordinance.

A measure of the challenge is that there were 60 vacant structures in the city in 2006, whereas today there are approximately 800.

“The work is very intensive,” said Schroeter, “but we’ll get there.”

In addition to education reform and violence prevention, proactive interventions to keep people in their homes and to prevent forclosure-caused blight is one of the major features Mayor DeStefano has announced for his re-election campaign.

Mayoral spokesperson Jessica Mayorga said “LCI is diligently coordinating this effort with very limited resources.”

Previous Independent coverage of New Haven’s foreclosure crisis:

• Rescue Squad Hunts For “Tipping Points”
• Flippers Get 2nd Shot At Fixer-Upper
• Suburban Cop Finds A City Steal
• Absentee Banklords Thwart Foreclosure Sales
• Donovan: “Help Is On The Way”
• Judge Forces WPCA To Give Mom A Chance
• WPCA Uproots Tenants, Too
• Home-Rescue Squad Ignores WPCA
• Sewer Agency Unloads House
• Foreclosure Evictions Halted
• Let The Bank Have It, This Time
• Hazel St. Sale Reflects Economic Climate
• Hill Foreclosure Triggers Memories, & Prayers
• Foreclosure Fee-Slashing Judge Leaves Town
• She’ll Be Watching Deutsche Bank
• A Last Pre-Foreclosure Look At A Lifetime Past
• New Yorker Snags Foreclosed-Upon Gem
• Foreclosure Dream Goes Sour
• Judge Slashes Foreclosure Bounty
• Tax Break Saves Woman’s House
• Bank Replaces “Gunshot Alley” Landlord
• Foreclosure Bill OK’d
• Singh Seeks Home For A Song
• Foreclosure’s Neighbor Worries More About Speeding
• Networking Replaces Foreclosure at Christy’s
• Foreclosure Bargain — & Renewal — Jeopardized
• Bank Outbids Akbar; Family May Keep Home
• “So Don’t Worry About Pablo”
• Bankruptcy Postpones Foreclosure
• Next-Door Foreclosures, 53 Years Apart
• They Met On Foreclosure Way
• Little Garage Draws Big Bids
• A 2nd Chance on Lewis Street
• Foreclosure Attracts New Breed of “Specialist”
• In Foreclosures, Judge’s Hands Tied
• Home Saved From Foreclosure. Cycle, Too
• A House For Precious?
• Deutsche Bank Grabs Dixwell Condo
• Reluctant Bidder Snags F. Haven Bargain
• Well, There’s Always Powerball
• Neighbors Retrieve Home From Bank
• Somebody Has Plans For Bassett Street
• Foreclosed, the Khennavongs Leave the Santanas
• Foreclosure Steal May Be Too Good
• 2nd Foreclosure in 3 Months Dims Bright St.
• After Foreclosure, W’ville Owner Still Hopes To Sell
• He’s Not Buying, Yet
• Quiet Foreclosure on Porter Street
• 3 Minutes Too Late
• Historic Gambardella Property Foreclosed
•2 Homes Lost, 1 Gained
• “Everybody’s Got To Eat”
• More Foreclosures, More Signs
• Foreclosure Sale Benefits Archie Moore’s
• Rescue Squad Swings Into Action
• A Bidder Shows Up
• Bank Beats Tanya’s Bid
• Westville Auction Draws A Crowd
• DeStefano: Foreclosure Plan Ready
• Can They Help?
• “We Should Over-Regulate These Bastards”
• Rosa Hears of Rescues
• WPCA Grilled on Foreclosures
• WPCA’s Targets Struggle To Dig Out
• Sue The Subprimers?
• WPCA Hearing Delayed
• Megna’s “Blood Boils” at WPCA Tactics
• Goldfield Wants WPCA Answers
• 2 Days, 8 Foreclosure Suits
• WPCA Goes On Foreclosure Binge
• A Guru Weighs In
• WPCA Targets Church
• Subprime Mess Targeted
• Renters Caught In Foreclosure King’s Fall
• She’s One Of 1,150 In The Foreclosure Mill
• Foreclosures Threaten Perrotti’s Empire
•“I’m Not Going To Lay Down And Let Them Take My House”
• Struggling Couple Sues Over “Scam”

To learn about the ROOF Project, a community-wide effort to help New Haveners navigate the foreclosure crisis, click here.

The following links are to various materials and brochures designed to help homeowners avoid foreclosure.

How to prepare a complaint to the Department of Banking; Department of Banking Online Assistance Form; Connecticut Department of Banking, Avoiding Foreclosure; FDIC Consumer News; Statewide Legal Services of Connecticut, Inc; Connecticut Bar Association Lawyer Referral Service.

For lawyer referral services in New Haven, call 562-5750 or visit this website. For the Department of Social Services (DSS) Eviction Foreclosure Prevention Program (EFPP), call 211 to see which community-based organization in the state serves your town.

Click here for information on foreclosure prevention efforts from Empower New Haven.