Mansion Rescuer Wrestles Bank To The Altar

Esra Tara Naamani had to enlist people in high places to get Bank of America to take $215,000 — and then to get inside a ​“zombie” mansion the bank was allowing to rot.

It might not sound hard to get a bank to accept $215,000. Especially when the bank agreed to take the money in a property sale.

Nor might it sound hard to get a bank to unload a money-hemorrhaging architectural marvel that sat vacant for years.

But logic, rationality, and self-interest haven’t always factored into how BOA has handled the continued fallout of the mortgage crisis eight years after the bill started coming due for the bank’s shady and shaky subprime lending spree.

Naamani (pictured above), a 29-year-old neurology researcher from Istanbul, should perhaps have had no trouble rescuing the crumbling abandoned showpiece at the corner of Central Avenue and Burton Street and creating a multi-generational home for her family in Westville.

Instead it took her five fevered months of battling bureaucracy with the help of officials from New Haven’s Livable City Initiative (LCI) and the bank’s own quasi-anonymous subcontractors to pay the sales price to Bank of America, the house’s delinquent owner, after the bank agreed to the sale.

And when it was all done, Naamani still had to break into her own home to occupy it — and start plugging holes, shoring the sagging roof, punching out mildewed ceilings, and lining up architects for an historic rehab of an ornate pink 4,218 square-foot, three-story, 13-room house originally built for a Whalley Avenue grocer named Charles A. Marvin.

Naamani’s quest adds a coda to a vivid tale of how the national housing crash of 2007, spurred by massive subprime and other risky loans, left cities like New Haven with ​“zombie houses” that irresponsible national lenders refused to foreclose on, sell, or prevent from deteriorating. Her coda echoes the frustrations of the previous ones, but offers a hopeful ending.

“I fell in love with this house,” Naamani recalled. ​“I fell in love with Westville. I was never going to give up on this house.”

If this hadn’t become a love story, 500 Central would have remained rotting and abandoned.

Night Of The Living Lender

In one sense, 500 Central is a typical example of the decay that BOA and other megalenders left in their wake after causing the country’s housing market to crash. It was one of more than 14,000 ​“zombie foreclosures” across the country—properties where the owners had defaulted, but the lender refused to complete foreclosure proceedings.

The lender would start the proceedings. But it wouldn’t want to take title, because then it would be responsible for upkeep or liens. Some properties were underwater, meaning they were worth less than the remaining debt. (BOA was also preoccupied with a federal investigation into its ​“robocalls” and a class-action lawsuit it settled for its widespread fraudulent lending practices.) In addition, BOA had so many properties to keep track of that sometimes it couldn’t complete promising sales that would have benefited its bottom line or cut its losses. Potential buyers couldn’t find a human being to contact to inquire about a sale.

And anti-blight officials in agencies like New Haven’s LCI couldn’t find a human being to contact to take responsibility. So armed with a 2009 local law, LCI started cutting grass, securing abandoned properties from squatters or drug dealers, and keeping track of the bill — so that when properties did finally sell, the city could get paid back.

BOA’s and other lenders’ negligence has affected mostly investor-abandoned houses in lower-income and working-class neighborhoods in New Haven. Click here and on the video for a sample of the headaches BOA caused Fair Haven, for instance.

By contrast, 500 Central is the prize property in a middle-class stretch of Westville, a grand corner home. Its owner, attorney Anthony Wallace, loaded up on loans he couldn’t handle, including a $440,000 mortgage inherited from another central housing-crisis culprit, Countrywide. BOA won a foreclosure judgment against Wallace in 2009.

But BOA refused to complete the foreclosure or sell the house, despite inquiries from potential buyers and mounting liens, especially from LCI. The agency was stuck mowing the lawn, shoveling the sidewalk, and erecting a fence so no kids would fall and crack their skulls in the unguarded swimming pool.

Years passed as neighbors (including this reporter, a.k.a. ​“me”) watched the house decay. Squatters got inside. Ivy devoured one of the walls. Roof leaks gradually wore away at the interior. The front porch supports started wearing away. A package mysteriously mailed to the front porch was picked up by a suspected drug courier.

After this story appeared in the Independent last fall — detailing Wallace’s struggles and LCI’s battles with BOA — the bank agreed to put the house up for an online auction.

Which is how Naamani entered the story, having no idea she was about to fall in love — and into a mess that would consume her family’s life, for half a year and counting.

“Cinderella’s Castle”

Naamani’s in-laws inspired her to bid on 500 Central. She comes from a family that runs a construction company in Turkey. She met her husband, Ziad Naamani, during her undergraduate years at Cornell University. They live now with their two young boys back in Istanbul, where Ziad works for the company.

Ziad’s family had come to the New Haven area from Lebanon 20 years ago. His parents wanted better educational opportunities for their children. They were willing to sacrifice: The father, Mohamad, an accountant in Lebanon, worked as an attendant for ProPark near Yale-New Haven Hospital in New Haven’s Hill neighborhood. The mother, Najwa, worked on a Gillette assembly line. Their three boys went on to Ivy League educations and high-paying careers. Mohamad and Najwa retired in a West Haven senior facility; their children moved them to an apartment in a multi-family home near the Yale Bowl in New Haven’s Westville neighborhood.

“They’re the most self-sacrificing people I’ve ever met,” Naamani said. ​“They never need anything. They love Westville. They can’t speak English — but they’re somehow friends with all their neighbors.”

Naamani and husband Ziad decided they wanted to buy a nicer home where their parents could live, rent free, with more space, and around family. Where Mohamad’s and Najwa’s two other sons, who work in the region, would also spend part of the week. Where Naamani could bring her sons Memo (who’s 5) and Nedim (1 1/2) to live in the summers.

Naamani figured they’d spend around $200,000 for a fixer-upper, then invest in restoring it. From her Istanbul home, she discovered the pending auction for 500 Central.

It was love at first sight.

“This looks like Cinderella’s castle,” she gasped. The starting bid price was $190,000.

She phoned her brother-in-law, who lives at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, to ask him to do some in-person intelligence for her. Visiting the house, he ran into a real-estate agent representing another potential buyer. He put the agent on the phone to talk details with Naamani on FaceTime.

Naamani, who had never visited New Haven before, purchased plane tickets for a closer look before the scheduled bidding deadline. She had no idea what the inside of the house looked like, what the surrounding neighborhood looked like.

Then, before she could leave, the bank moved up the deadline — she had hours to put in a bid. So she put in a $215,000 offer, sight unseen.

On April 14, the bank accepted her offer. Naamani had beaten out a well-known problem landlord in the neighborhood. A closing date was set for May 11. Naamani and the boys boarded the plane for an envisioned two-week stay to wrap up the deal.

Trachten Spots A Clue

Upon arrival, Naamani got to work. She lined up an experienced local real-estate attorney. She freed the cash for the closing. And then …

… nothing.

The closing date approached. There was no word from Bank of America, or from Ocwen Loan Servicing LLC, which BOA hired to handle the foreclosure and the sale. Or from Altisource, the company Ocwen hired to conduct the sale. Naamani emailed them all. No one responded. She tried phone calls, never reached a human being who could help her, and couldn’t reach the bank’s closing agent. She needed to convince someone at Altisource to convince someone at Ocwen to convince someone at BOA to proceed with the closing or at least approve an extension.

“I didn’t know,” Naamani recalled, ​“what I was getting myself into. We got stuck in a black hole.”

She started worrying that she would lose the house if the closing date passed without a closing.

Meanwhile, she visited the city building department, where she learned the rules for making renovations. She visited LCI, where she met a staffer named Evan Trachten. Trachten, LCI’s property acquisition and disposition coordinator, knew the story of the house. He told her about a tax deferral program that could help with renovations on historic properties. She told him about the ​“black hole.”

“This house is deteriorating. If someone wants to make it beautiful, why wouldn’t I do everything I can to help?” Trachten told her.

Naamani kept working the phone. She reached a human at Altisource. He had a foreign accent. She asked where he was working from. Answer: India.

“I can’t reach my closing agent,” Naamani told him. She asked for the name of the person the agent reported to. Then the name of the person to whom that person reported. The call-center worker in India gave the name. Naamani asked for the person’s email address. The call-center worker responded that he couldn’t do that: that person was a vice-president.

But now Naamani had a name, and the email address of her Altisource agent. So she used the same rubric to send a heartfelt email to the vice-president, Dawn Chitwood, at 1 a.m.

“Please help me!” Naamani begged.

To her astonishment, she soon received a call. ​“Hi, I’m Dawn,” said the voice on the other line. ​“I can’t believe what’s happening to you. I’m going to make this right.”

“Darling,” Chitwood informed her, ​“Bank of America has no idea you’re buying the house.”

This was two months after the closing.

Naamani didn’t receive more phone calls from Chitwood. But she got responses. She would email Chitwood when she couldn’t obtain answers — and within 30 minutes she’d get an email or phone call from someone she needed to reach. She would get extensions of the closing so she wouldn’t lose the house.

In fact, Bank of America would extend the closing seven times.

And still Naamani couldn’t figure out why.

“Why is it so hard,” she wondered, ​“to give this bank $200,000?”

Evan Trachten at LCI — who has a knack for spotting clues to real-estate mysteries (like this one) — figured out why BOA was moving so slowly. In addition to the basic bureaucracy problem (knowing that a closing was scheduled), the bank had accumulated close to $100,000 in liens on 500 Central. It didn’t want to swallow that loss.

The biggest lien was from LCI, about $80,000, a combination of fines and fees for all the work the agency had done at the property during the years of BOA’s absenteeism. BOA now wanted LCI to waive that $80,000. LCI felt it couldn’t, because it would set a precedent for banks to shirk responsibilities, avoid responsibility for keeping up properties, charge taxpayers to do the basic maintenance, and then avoid paying.

Naamani said she ​“completely agreed” with LCI’s position: ​“They put up the fence. It was about to crumble. They deserved all the money they were owed.”

Meanwhile, Naamani was spending days at the house, checking out the property, meeting neighbors. Though she didn’t yet own it, she picked up trash. She wandered inside (until BOA’s agent locked the door) and drew floor plans.

One day someone backed a car into a trash can on the property. Naamani opened the lid and discovered ​“five million maggots.”

She closed the lid and knocked on the door of a neighbor across the street, who offered rubber gloves, bleach, and a helping hand. Naamani got all the maggots back in trash bags.

Another beautiful old house (pictured) came up for sale a block away, on Alden Avenue. That house’s owners had already done the historic renovation. Naamani’s two-week New Haven stay had already lasted months, with no end in sight. This house offered a simple solution.

Naamani and her husband bought the house, for $450,000. But she couldn’t give up on Cinderella’s castle; it had won her heart. Instead they rented out the Alden Avenue home’s three apartments, enlisting her in-laws as the property managers, while Naamani continued the quest for 500 Central.

A ​“Win-Win”

September approached. Naamani needed to get her oldest child in school. She signed him up for Hamden Hall, in case she had to stay longer. But her husband missed the family; they needed to return to Istanbul. Naamani and the boys boarded a plane home.

Seven times the closing had been extended. Naamani appealed again to Dawn Chitwood for help. Chitwood dispatched the company’s ​“go-getter” regional manager to travel from Boston to New Haven to negotiate with LCI on the lien.

LCI refused to waive the $80,000. BOA asked for a 50 percent discount.

It was a tough decision. LCI has collected over $1 million in anti-blight fees and fines in the program’s first four years, according to LCI Deputy Director Frank D’Amore (pictured). It stands to collect another $2 million once sales close on properties still in foreclosure.

Never before had LCI waived a lien. Then again, noted D’Amore, never before had fines and penalties risen anywhere near that high. Never before had they risen so high as to jeopardize a sale, and a new owner’s ability to reverse neighborhood blight.

LCI agreed to accept $60,000 of the $80,000. BOA accepted the deal.

“It’s a win-win for us,” D’Amore said: The city would get plenty of money, the house would get saved, and creeping blight would get reversed in the neighborhood. ​“We decided we can do something. Ultimately we wanted the buyer to buy it and rehab it. Because it was such a dry, outlier case, we didn’t want” to stop a sale.

Assuming the sale could now close and Naamani could enter her new house.

Just as Naamani arrived home in Istanbul, Naamani’s attorney, Daniel Hoffnung, emailed her a two-word message: ​“It’s yours.”

Then he informed her — she had to call her bank immediately. The closing would take place the next day; she had to make $215,000 liquid. Naamani scrambled.

The closing did happen.

“This was a difficult transaction. It’s not uncommon to not be able to get to the person who makes a decision,” Hoffnung said in a conversation this week. ​“What happens in the business of banks selling bank-owned properties, there are a multitude of layers between the banks and the buyer who handle various aspects — the collecting, the management, the maintenance. Sometimes it appears that one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing.”

Hoffnung used to live in the neighborhood, so he felt a particular reason to appreciate seeing the deal go through. ​“When Sally Endelman owned the house it was gorgeous. It was perfect. I lived not far from there. We’d go by the house and marvel at how lovely it was — the detail, then landscaping. It was just a delightful place to see. It was sad to see it go to seed,” he said. He said he thought the new owners would revive it.

Naamani, with that intention, now had to get her hands on the house she’d pursued from so close for half a year.

“I love you,” she told husband Ziad. ​“But I’m going back.”

Up On The Roof

A week after leaving New Haven, Naamani was back. She went to her lawyer to get the key to 500 Central.

No key.

The seller’s agent had the key. Naamani’s attorney and Naamani called. No answer. She emailed. No response.

BOA’s agent had put a lock with a pinpad on the front door. She couldn’t get the code.

Naamani called locksmiths. Fearful of appearing to commit a crime, they refused to break the lock for her. ​“They hung up on me,” she recalled. ​“I felt like a thief.”

Her husband suggested she break the door herself. Her attorney signed off: ​“It’s your house.” She got a crowbar. And she made it inside.

Then she got to work. First order of business: temporarily plugging holes in the roof to stop the leaks. Water had been gushing into the house.

Naamani called roofers. They refused her request because they feared the roof was too precarious. So she got on the roof herself, lugged tar, filled some holes, started taping nylon tarp. Half the roof was ​“like sand; it’s like you’re walking on the beach.” She jumped from the roof to the front-porch roof. She took a photo (above) and sent it to a roofer. ​“If I can do this, you can come up on the roof,” she argued. So the roofer did.

Naamani also shored up the perilous rotted porch with four-by-fours. She had all the ivy cleared away from the northern side of the house.

She connected with a local historian, Colin Caplan, who helped her research the house’s history. She discovered it was called the Marvin House, named for Whalley Avenue’s first grocer. Charles A. Marvin had it built in 1899; it was completed in 1901.

She even tracked down the great-grandson of William H. Allen, the prominent architect who designed the house. The great-grandson had compiled a 208-page book about William H. Allen. Naamani learned Allen had designed prominent New Haven buildings like the county courthouse and Plymouth Congregational Church.

Most importantly, Naamani interviewed 12 architects in search of the right person to design ​“a full-on historic restoration” of the outside, with original fixtures, like original roof ornaments (like the one pictured) she discovered stored in the garage.

Clearing out dead animals and detritus left by squatters, removing spongy sheetrock, Naamani discovered a blocked-off interior staircase as well as original doors in the basement. She said she also found a prominent Fairfield County-based architect, Allan Greenberg, to agree to redesign the house. (Click here to view some of his firm’s work.)

The plan is to create an intergenerational ​“family house” common in Turkey, she said — just as two generations of the Marvins occupied the house back in the early 1900s, she learned. Naamani’s in-laws will live in half of the spacious first floor. One of Naamani’s brothers, Wael, will move into the house from West Haven and live there full-time. Her other brother-in-law, who already visits his parents every weekend, will stay there part of the week. And Naamani and her family will have their own space on the second and third floors.

Once all the work gets done. It will take a while. But now, with the faceless megabank finally out of the way, Naamani’s dream is becoming a reality.