City Left Holding Foreclosed House

What happens to a long-vacant foreclosed house when city government is the only interested buyer?

Attorney John Mills (pictured) posed this question as he considered the fate of the boarded-up house at 155 Poplar St. that sold to the city for $11,100 Saturday.

“What are they going to do with it?” he asked. “Sell it? Raze it? How do they expect to get their money out of it?”

The house, which had an appraised value of $50,000, came encumbered with $5,506.16 in back taxes and and $8,797.96 in water and sewer bills. Rich Votto, who inspected the property along with business partners Victor Zayas and Bryant Thomas, said the price just seemed too steep.

“It’s too much for over $20,000 — you’d have to put too much into it,” he said.

Ridgefield real estate agent Paula Pendleton (pictured, left), who came to the auction with business partner Al Dexter, was initially happy to beat the city’s bid by $1, but retracted her offer when she learned about the taxes.

“I guess I just don’t think it’s a $20,000 or $30,000 house,” she said.

The home’s previous owner, Jayotis Jones, purchased the house for $165,000 in 2005.

Rafael Ramos, a deputy director at New Haven’s Livable City Initiative (LCI), said finding a buyer capable of turning such a property around and making it livable again can be a challenge.

“For a private buyer, it’s difficult to get a mortgage on a house that needs a lot of major repairs,” he said.

In most cases, he said, the city prefers to sell vacant buildings off to nonprofit developers with the means to rehab them as affordable housing for first-time home buyers.

“Unless a building is literally falling down, the chances that it would be demolished are very small,” he said.

The Poplar Street house, he said, came to LCI’s attention after a complaint in September of last year noted that it was “vacant and trashy and open to vandals.”

Andre “Flaco” Diaz (pictured), who lives across the street and said he sometimes does rehab work for Votto, said the vacant house has become a source of trouble in the neighborhood, a source of drug-dealing and worse.

“This homeless guy used to sleep in there, and I heard he robbed some drug money, and they either killed him in there or he had an overdose, and they found him in there dead, one of those two,” he said.

Overall, the number of vacant houses in New Haven, which dipped to a low of around 300 during the housing boom, has risen to about 800 in recent months. Including the Poplar Street house, the city itself now owns 14 vacant residential buildings.

Previous Independent coverage of New Haven’s foreclosure crisis:

• WPCA Fails To Uproot Family
• A New Haven Dream Foreclosed
• This Is The Face Of Deutsche Bank
• Out-of-Town Bankords Respond To Call
• Banks Duck City On Foreclosed Homes
• Rescue Squad Hunts For “Tipping Points”
• John Wins A Loser
• Still A Bargain, Foreclosure Price Zooms
• Flippers Get 2nd Shot At Fixer-Upper
• Suburban Cop Finds A City Steal
• Absentee Banklords Thwart Foreclosure Sales
• City Forecloses On 40 Lots
• Crowd Seeks Cure For “Mortgage Distress”
• 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.