Results tagged “foreclosure”

Foreclosed homes feelings oft beget strong feelings and emotions for owners, but this Riverside man took it way too far. Says the LA Times: "A U.S. Bank representative was checking the house Tuesday in the 1400 block of Orange Street when he discovered several explosives outside the structure. Officers from the Riverside Police Department arrived about 2:45 p.m. and confirmed the explosives were made to look like pipe bombs, officials said in a statement." Daniel Gherman, 42, was booked on several counts.

First Angela Suleman said her daughter Nadya was "obsessed" with having kids and that she wouldn't be around to help her when her octuplets came home, then they seemed to have kissed and made up. But now TMZ is reporting that Mrs. Suleman hasn't been paying the mortgage during the months of her only daughter's most recent pregnancy. In fact, the gossip site explains: "According to documents filed earlier this month, OctoGrandma (who owns the house) hasn't made any payments on her home since May, 2008 -- she's behind $23,224.98."

Welcome to California. We lost 100,000 jobs this past year, unemployment has hit a 14-year record at 8.3 percent (8.9 in LA County) and around 189,000 homes were lost to foreclosure in the first three quarters of 2008. That's why Senator Barbara Boxer released a report today--entitled "The Realities of Recession in California"--that has the results of interviews with every county in the state and a group of select cities.

With the foreclosure crisis happening, homeowners weren't the only ones finding themselves homeless. Renters were too. After all, someone owns those buildings and they can foreclose just as easily. But after a one-year moratorium placed on foreclosure-related evictions yesterday, it will be harder for banks to evict good tenants who pay rent on time.

A mortgage broker contacted police on Monday about a North Hollywood house that was about to revert back to the bank at midnight. That broker's hunch that something was amiss was right: officers found the body of an unidentifiable person in age and gender, possibly mummified over the last year, according to the Daily News. Now identified as an elderly woman and suspected to be Barbara Hunt, who would be 86 years old, police are seeking the cause of death. The woman's son, Robert Hunt, lived with her and was there when police discovered the body, but he was not arrested. Rather, the case was forwarded to elderly abuse investigators. Trash on the property had not been thrown out for 30 years.

There's good news coming out of City Council President Eric Garcetti's district about a problem largely unreported in the home foreclosre crisis. When a landlord goes into foreclosure, renters, even the ones who are in perfect standing, are being pressured by the new property owner--banks--to vacate. Tomorrow, the 13th distric councilman will present a motion to halt this activity via a moratorium. From the press release:

In a BusinessWeek study published this week, they found that cities with strong health care, education, law, energy and government industries would feel less of an impact during the country's current economic woes. In general, they say California will especially not do well if "things get really bad." That's because we're "buried under a growing mass of foreclosures" (after all, 70% of top 10 highest foreclosure congressional districts are here in California).

HotPads compiled a list of the top ten congressional districts with the highest foreclosure rates in the country showing that seven of those districts are in California with five of those in Southern California.

Times are not getting easier for Ed McMahon. First his Studio City home faced foreclosure in June which led to this photo from the set of a rap video for FreeCreditReport.com, a financial Web site owned by credit bureau Experian (the video will come out in October). Now he is being sued over an alleged loan from Merv Griffin's company.

Tomorrow the National Fair Housing Commission will hold a hearing on the foreclosure crisis here in LA. LA Weekly taps into the story wondering what it means for Mayor Villaraigosa. From the press release for the hearing: "Forty years after the enactment of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, significant housing discrimination still exists in Los Angeles and across the country... Los Angeles is among the hardest hit cities in the current foreclosure crisis, and the commission will examine cases of discriminatory and predatory lending, the federal enforcement of fair housing laws, and the state of fair housing in the region."

Celebrity, politician, or regular joe, foreclosures can happen to anyone. It happened to U.S. Representaive Laura Richardson in Sacramento and now it's happening to "heeeeeeeere's Johnny" Ed McMahon at his Studio City home.

Photo of bungalows in Monrovia by Living in Monrovia via Flickr

An article in the NY Times advises renters are better off paying that monthly check to the landlord than actually buying property. In “A Word of Advice During a Housing Slump: Rent” writer David Leonhardt takes data from every metropolitan area (including LA) to forecast the benefits of buying vs. renting. Leonhardt writes: “Over the next five years, which is about the average amount of time recent buyers have remained in their homes, prices...