Cathy Schroeter told distant banks to check in and pay up. Most of them have.
Schroeter has been tracking down distant companies that are responsible for abandoned and otherwise imperiled properties that have been foreclosed on in New Haven. She’s doing it as part of an ambitious new registration ordinance aimed at helping New Haven get on top of the foreclosure crisis.
The deputy director for administration at City Hall’s anti-blight agency, the Livable Cities Initiative (LCI), reported that as of Tuesday the city has succeeded in having 190 out of 250 bank-owned properties registered with a local contact responsible for upkeep.
The deadline had been April 22 to sign up and to pay a registration fee to the city.
At $100 per fee, that translates into $19,000 into the coffers of the city’s general fund. But the point of the ordinance, Schroeter emphasized, was never the money. Rather it was to have an accurate local contact LCI’s area specialists can call in case of a problem with a property such as crime, fire, grass growing as high as the roof, or other blight.
Click here to a view an updated city spreadsheet of the properties.
Click here to read about the first wave of registrants, and here to read a story about Deutsche Bank, owner of approximately a third of the bank-owned properties in the city, which responded to Schroeter’s invitation for a meeting.
It turned out the bank itself knew only a fraction of the people servicing its area properties.
Of the total pool of 250 properties targeted, said Schroeter, the majority are owned by out-of-state banks. The 250 include ten properties in the pipeline but not yet officially registered. Fourteen or so involve recent bank-initiated foreclosures in which the foreclosing bank must now register a local contact within a week of filing an “LP,” orlis pendens, initiating the foreclosure action.
Schroeter, who has worked for the city for 13 years, has in effect captured all but 35 or 40 properties delinquent in registration.
“I just don’t have the person power,” she said, to be proactive in going after these last 35 or 40.”
She said that those local contacts now in her database ran the gamut. “They can be servicers or brokers who are authorized by their servicers or management companies.”
She said another wave of letters is going out to some of the known lenders and servicers which did not come to a previous gathering attended by Deutsche Bank and some of the other lenders and servicers known by the city but not in contact. “By a process of elimination, I hope to get some more registered.”
For those that remain delinquent, Schroeter said, “We’ll capture them when a problem arises.”
Because there’s often a long trail between an owner listed on a title down through a trustee to a servicer to a broker, it can take days to find a local contact for a property if the owner isn’t forthcoming. So Schroeter won’t be proactively tracking them down. But she’s ready to start fining them when problems arise.
“When the specialist or a the fire or police department or a neighbor reports a problem with a building,” she said, “then we’ll act and that’s how we’ll capture the balance.”
The fine is $250 per day, so that in the weeks and months ahead, deadbeat owners of properties could be facing heavy per diem fines. The entity fined is not the local contact, whoever that might be, but the owner as registered on the title of the property.
Schroeter said she has already fined one property owner, of 295 Lloyd St., for not having registered until April 29, which was seven days after the April 22 deadline. The fined owner was Lasalle Bank. It was reached through the local contact, Weichert Realty of Orange. At $250 per day, that fine was $1,750.
Schroeter helped devise the language of the foreclosure ordinance at the request of ROOF program and sponsoring Alders Erin Sturgis-Pascale and Joey Rodriquez. She said the law is working well in her view. “What remains a big problem, of course,” is that there is not a single servicer that deals with, for example, all of Deutsche Bank properties, but many.”
And sometimes banks serve as trustees or in the role of servicers themselves, which only confuses the trail more, she said, making the provision of a local contact all the more critical.
“If,” said Schroeter, “not just at foreclosure, but every time a property changes hands, the new owner were required to list a local contact on the land records, that would make our lives easier.”
But such an action, she said, would require changes in state statutes.
Previous Independent coverage of New Haven’s foreclosure crisis:
• This Is The Face Of Deutsche Bank
• 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.
Cathy I do not see 16 Rock Street on there??? Is is owned by FEDERAL NATIONAL MORTGAGE ASSO it is not vacant at this time they made a deal with the owner. But it is totally blighted!!! Please help my street with this.