Monsey, NY – A heap of wooden shards and the scarred trunks of cedar trees were all that remained of a house at 1 Carlton Road.
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Two residents of the neighborhood called the media, concerned that the house had been knocked down at dusk on Sunday without a permit and before natural gas service was terminated.
While no utilities were still being delivered to the house, it was indeed torn down without a demolition permit, the town of Ramapo confirmed after a reporter’s call about the incident and the residents’ concerns.
The demolition occurred four days before the property was to be auctioned after a mortgage default.
Code Enforcement Officer Peter Muzzi issued a summons to the last known owners of the property, Brookline Enterprises LLC of 14 Manor Drive in Monsey.
The owners are due in Town Court to answer the summons on Feb. 24, when he faces a maximum fine, as it is for all zoning-building code violations, of $5,000.
The property was scheduled for an auction tomorrow in the lobby of the Rockland County Courthouse in New City after the default of a mortgage held by U.S. Bank National Association.
State Supreme Court Justice Alfred Weiner authorized the sale judgment of foreclosure. Court documents indicated that $588,955.97 was owed on the property.
Brookline Enterprises were listed as defendants in the case.
It appeared that the house had not been occupied for some time. There were no building plans filed with the town for the .35 acre property, which is at the southwest corner of Carlton and Blauvelt roads.
The propertyis in the town’s R15-C zone, a lucrative designation for builders who can either replace single family homes with as many as six units on the same lot.
why would this happen?
#1 : Here’s how it sounds to me, based on what my father told me about real estate law. The couple that missed mortgage payments knew they would be foreclosed, and sold the property. They walked away with the money from the deal. It sounds like they sold to a developer who then demolished the single family home so they could build a multi-family dwelling. They did this without the proper permits, however, and will be fined for that.
Back the story, if a property in foreclosure changes hands, the NEW owner loses the property unless they took out title insurance, which would pay off the previous owner’s mortgage. This is how the law is set up. It’s very unfair to the new owner, because a title search does NOT always show a home is in foreclosure, as the foreclosure might have been filed too recently to come up in a search. This is why is is so important to get title insurance!
The law is set up this way to protect the BANKS who lend the mortgages – the law allows the first owners, who failed to pay their mortgage, to walk away with the money from the sale. The law allows the new owners, who purchased the home in good faith and has met their payments – to have the home pulled oput from under them by the bank, for the previous owners default. The law fails the innocent citizen.
I know all this because my father was a real estate attorney and explained it to me – and because it happened to us! We were living in our new home about 6 months or a year, when two9 men knocked on our door and served us foreclosure papers! Thank G-d we has title insurance, which pais off the previous owners’ default, or we would have lost our home along with the downpayment!
The moral of the story is: ALWAYS get title insurance when you buy a home!
Something smells here…. Maybe it was easier to sell at auction so your friends can buy it back
How is there $589K owed on the property if it sold 1 1/2 years ago for $499K? Prices peaked by then and you couldn’t have gotten additional loans against the property.
Does the lein have to be placed by a ba’al korei? What do non-Jews do?
So the house is knocked down the 5K fine which may or maynot be payed, then the 6 family house goes up! What a plan! CSL what will you do about it!!!!
On the bright side! With all this massive building going on in once beautiful Monsey, at least we won’t ever again have to concern ourself with trees falling on our head! About where the kids can play? Perhaps we’ll do as the Brooklyner’s currently do.. Just close down several blocks to vehicle traffic several hours of the day. Oh.. Welcome to Kaser!
Impossible. If they did a itle search the initial mortgage from when the loan was taken out would show. Regardless of the foreclosure action having enough time to hit title, the new owner would request at closing that the mortgage be paid off, or thew were aware of the mortgage and were willing to assume the mortgage.
in any event, what happened here had nothing to do with a sale, it probablyha dsomething to do with the initial owner.
Eli, don’t say impossible – it happened to us! The owner we bought it from flipped us the house – it was the owner before him who defaulted on the mortgage, and yes we would have had the house foreclosed if we didn’t have title insurance. The whole *purpose* of title insurance is for the event where the title search *failed* to find a problem, because sometimes that does happen! It really isn’t nice to tell someone (me) that what we went through didn’t happen.
“A title search or examination will uncover any judgments, mortgages, taxes, assessments, charges, or other liens which may encumber or adversely affect the title of a property. In particular, a historical search or examination will be made of the prior owners of the property.
Once the examiner or searcher has completed this process, the title company will compile the information and prepare a Title Commitment that reports on the status of title. The Commitment will list as exceptions or exclusions to title all encumbrances, liens, or other adverse matters that were found. This process is completed before you purchase the property. If these matters are not cleared up or resolved by the end of the closing or settlement, the matters will be excepted from the coverage provided by the title policy, and the policy will not cover any loss caused by or arising from the excepted matters.
Unless the title company takes a specific exception in the title policy, THE POLICY WILL PROTECT YOU FROM HAVING A FINANCIAL LOSS BECAUSE OF, or arising from matters such as someone else owning your home, a forgery or fraud in the prior title, lack of legal access to the property, or THE EXISTENCE OF UNDISCLOSED LIENS SUCH AS taxes, ***MORTGAGES***, assessments or charges, as well as many other matters which affect the ownership of the property.”
In other words, title insurance protects the NEW owner from a mortgage held by a PREVIOUS owner that the title search FAILED to uncover. For all who continue to doubt a fellow Jew’s suffering, go ahead and buy your next house without title insurance, and rely just on the title search alone!!!
with all the craziness and ugliness in building these days, I am not surprised at all. No matter where u buy a home in Monsey, wesley, forshay, n.hempstead, there is always some builder nosing around some area next to your house, buying it up…and then..boom! You’ve got a multifam looking straight into your window every day. Noise level through the roof, kids throwing their garbage on your lawn, cutting thru, etc..I hat this. Cant we stop it already???
“Title insurance is essential because it protects the homeowner of their ownership. Title insurance safeguards the homeowner from loss due to problems with the title. Your policy states that your title company will provide legal counsel should any problem with your title occur. The title insurance company offers a complete and thorough background investigation on your property searching for anything that could affect the title, such as: tax information, historic matters of importance, purchasing information, other claims to the property, etc. — essentially all matters which could affect ownership.
However, *even in the most thorough investigations*, it is possible to miss something important, and therefore, you buy title insurance. This protects the homeowner as well as the title company. Once the settlement is final, the homeowner is completely responsible for any valid claims made against the property in question. Title insurance protects your investment.
If “clouds” do arise, title insurance protects the buyer and lender from any losses, including the cost to fix the errors, up to the value of the policy or the original purchase price. This is due to the fact that the title search failed to turn up this information.”