The week in review...

JEEZE...

1. Looks like we're beginning to make some new people upset...
2. We're making some SERIOUS MONEY in the Grove!
3. Even more money in the Grove and the root of all Real Estate evil!
4. Our balls and the consequences of real estate fraud for the rest of us.
5. Even more expensive homes in the Grove!

DAMN YO!

More homes busted out in the Grove!

Yes sir! The more we look the worse its getting! Lets start with the home located at 3309 William Ave which closed for $511/square foot while it still had a blue tarp on the roof from Hurricane Wilma! Here is the warranty deed from when seller "A" transferred ownership to party "B":

Again, based on the documentary stamps (60 cents/$100) we arrive at a sales price of $165,000 on June 5, 2008. We then find the following warranty deed for a sale from part "B" to buyer "C" THE VERY NEXT DAY:

Once again, based on the documentary stamps we arrive at a sales price of $450,000 LESS THAN 24 HOURS LATER! That's a $285,000 profit! NICE!

In researching the home on William Ave we stumbled upon another transaction that the same seller had conducted on another property close by, the home located at 3773 Frow Avenue. In this case the same party "B" from the transaction mentioned above buys this home at foreclosure on July 17, 2008, here's the deed:
Party "B" purchased the property for $129,900 then ON THE VERY SAME DAY SHE SELLS THE HOME! Here is the deed for that transaction:

Sold the same day she purchased it to buyer "C" for $500,000 THE SAME DAY SHE PURCHASED IT! That's a $370,100 profit! HOLY $HIT! What makes these two transactions even more interesting is that the seller in both cases is also one of the principals of the title company that conducted the transactions! CAN YOU SAY CONFLICT OF INTEREST?!

Take a step back now and consider once again that no one is being accused of any wrong doing or any criminal activities. To our readers I submit the following facts:

• 3146 Hibiscus St- Bought and sold the same day with a $285,000 profit.
• 107 Frow Ave- Bought and sold the same day with a $252,000 profit.
• 3309 William Ave- Bought and sold the next day with a $285,000 profit.
• 3773 Frow Ave- Bought and sold the same day with a $370,100 profit.

Between just those four homes we have a total of $1,910,000 in gross sales with a profit of $1,192,100!!!!! HOLY CRAP! Lets not lose sight of the fact that one title company handled the first two and another company handled the other two not to mention that at least in the last two cases the seller WAS ONE OF THE PRINCIPALS OF THE TITLE COMPANY! Use your imagination, there could be all kinds of monkey business going on here or could I be wrong? Is it really this easy to make money in real estate? Four deals and over a million dollars in profit within a day of the purchases? Could it be real?

WTF PEOPLE?! Four transactions and over a million dollars in profit yet the people involved haven't been touched? Does any of this make sense? Does anyone else think that this is the first time the Mortgage Fraud Task Force is hearing of any of this?

WHAT UP JORGE? Where are my Grove activists at?

HEY JORGE! I know you've been keeping up with our little story here, I'm not sure if you understand what we're talking about though. Must be tough to think with all the attention we've been giving you over the last few months...


I know you were trained as a mortgage fraud investigator, but we know you have a hard time with the subject at hand, so I'll try to make it as simple as possible. See the homes that we talked about over the last week? I know you're busy searching for peoples stolen hubcaps now, but going back to your days at the Mortgage Fraud Task Force, do you remember what a Warranty Deed is? Did you notice that the people who sold the homes to the current owners didn't own the homes until the day of the closing? Did you notice that the people who sold the homes to the current buyers didn't even have a recorded mortgage for the properties that they sold? You see what I'm saying here Jorge? In case you don't, someone in the Economic Crimes Bureau please sit Detective Baluja down and draw him a picture.

Everyone remember the Coconut Grove residents that were up in arms about the Home Depot that was supposed to go in at the old K-Mart location on the corner of US-1 and McDonald street? They called their organization "The Grove First", Coconut Groves stakeholder community, essentially represented as a group of Grove residents whose raison d'être was to "help maintain the charm and lifestyle of Coconut Grove." Since their failure in keeping Home Depot out of the Grove, it seems like they've adopted a number of other causes critical to the "Grove Lifestyle." Considering how our friends in the Grove cherish their beloved community, I wonder how they feel about their property taxes?

Take a look back at this weeks posts where we illustrated some very disturbing real estate transactions in Coconut Grove, these transactions seem very suspicious to say the least. Regardless of what we think went on, one thing is undeniable, these transactions have increased the assessed values of homes in the Grove which have in turn increased the neighborhoods property taxes! As I said before, sure the banks lose with these busted out homes but the surrounding property owners lose as well! Even if you don't mind empty busted out homes in your neighborhood, you're still going to suffer the financial consequences of these over inflated sales prices, namely INCREASED PROPERTY TAXES! That's right Grove activists, you recently got your property appraisals in the mail, did your taxes go UP? If they did you have the mortgage fraudsters to thank!

So come on fellow Grovites! Lets get together another petition drive and get our property taxes down to where they should be! Lets out these scamsters that victimized these areas in the Grove and used them like six figure check dispensing ATM's! Lets use what we found here to make our case to the Property Appraiser to bring our property taxes back down to where they should be! Good Luck with that! Fact of the matter is, no one gives a crap. The MDPD Mortgage Fraud Task Force is out chasing its tail while the State Attorneys Office is out pursuing nonsensical prosecutions all while the real bad guys have LEFT DODGE! For the mortgage fraud/real estate scammers that haven't been caught, rest easy, no ones coming after you, there's nothing to worry about! Based on what we've seen over the last week and the lack of action from the PD and the SAO, its safe to say that if you're running any kind of scam, Miami's the place to do it!

Once the banks finish their foreclosure proceedings the homes sell at auction and their losses are covered through a web of intricate insurance policies, its the neighborhoods like the Grove that were busted out that are the real losers. Sad to say there's no hope of ANYONE in a position of authority to do anything about it, just another day in the jungle...

De ja Vu and another home in the Grove...

In researching yesterdays mess, I stumbled across another home that was sold by the same buyer as the home on 3146 Hibiscus street (that we didn't mention in last weeks post), not to mention it was closed by the same title company as well. Before we move on to that home though, lets consider for a moment what could have caused the mess that we have in the real estate market today, could there be one cause or one event in the past that we can label as the tipping point? I suggest there is, one man whose charm and late night infomercials could be the cause of all our problems, his name is Tom Vu...


Does everyone remember Tom? He taught his students how to make money with Real Estate with little or no money down, no credit and no experience whatsoever, sound familiar? It sounds a whole hell of a lot like what we've been talking about here over the last few days doesn't it? Lets be realistic, who could resist his sales pitch, after seeing the yachts, the babes, the cars, who wouldn't want to get rich through real estate?!



Ok, lets move on. In researching the home at the center of our post yesterday, I stumbled upon another deal that the same seller and the same title company were involved in, lets take a look at the case of 107 Frow Avenue. Lets start with looking at the Warranty Deed from Seller "A" (yes the same seller from yesterdays post) to Party "B" (again the same party "B" from yesterday):

Based on the documentary stamps (60 cents/100 dollars) the sales price of this home on July 18, 2008 was $218,000. Now lets look at the next warranty deed that was issued by the same title company from Party "B" to Buyer "C" the VERY SAME DAY:



Based on the documentary stamps on this sale we can conclude that the home sold for $470,000 THE VERY SAME DAY! Once again we see a $252,000 profit in a MATTER OF HOURS! Not bad! This case is particularly interesting since it seems that the company that we called Party "B" was created for the sole purpose of purchasing these two properties and flipping them the same day. Whats even more suspicious is that the company we called Party "B" has a name that is virtually identical to the name of the seller we called Seller "A". Why is that important? When the bank that's financing this mess does a review of the title work since the names are nearly identical they're more than likely to overlook the fact that the company that was selling the property didn't even appear on title yet since the names are virtually indistinguishable! NICE!

So where are the arrests Mortgage Fraud Task Force? Where are the prosecutions? We've laid out two cases of undeniable wrong doing from the same seller with the same title company acting as an intermediary. We called the title company in question and guess what? They're still in business! WHATS UP GUYS?! Two closings within days of each other, same seller, same title company and a $537,000 profit AND NO ONE CARES?

Getting back to our old buddy Tom, if you didn't succumb to the lure of easy money in Real Estate, you know what he thinks...



Tomorrow, MORE MESS IN THE GROVE PARADISE!

The case of 3146 Hibiscus street

This week were going to take a closer look at some of the homes we mentioned in the Grove last week, we're going to start with 3146 Hibiscus street. What we've been able to glean from the County Recorders office is pretty damning, remember all we're doing here is looking at deeds that are available online and pointing out what we see, we're not accusing anyone of doing anything illegal. We've blacked out names and addresses of the buyers and sellers, take a look at the documents and draw your own conclusions.

Lets start with the Warranty Deed from who we'll call seller "A":


What we see here is that the home was purchased by party "B" from seller "A" on June 3, 2008, there is no mortgage recorded for this transaction so we can assume if the transaction was on the up and up that the home was paid for in cash, specifically based on the $1,230 in documentary stamps we can conclude (based on 60 cents/$100) that the purchase price of this home was $205,000. So far so good.

Now, we find another warranty deed for the same property where party "b" is selling the property ON THE SAME DAY HE PURCHASED IT to buyer "C"! Take a look:


Now on this last transaction we also have a mortgage recorded from Flagstar Bank with buyer "C" as the borrower. Based on the documentary stamps for this transaction we come up with a sales price of $490,000!!!!!! Thats a one day profit of $285,000!!!!!!!!!!!

Now here we have the icing on the cake:


Less than 8 months later Flagstar Bank files a foreclosure suit on the borrower, considering how short the period of time was between the inception of the loan to the foreclosure, one can only assume that there wasn't a single payment made on the loan. Lets take a look at what we got here, the person who sold the property to buyer "C" purchased the property the same day that he sold it and in a matter of hours realized a $285,000 profit, then the mortgage that buyer "C" obtained went into default almost immediately after the closing. Not to mention the fact that the same title company handled both transactions.

Draw your own conclusions. I've checked all the resources available online yet I see no evidence of a criminal case. For our followers in the MDPD, someone please be kind enough to explain to the former ace mortgage fraud Detective what went on here.

More to come tomorrow...

WHOOPS! What did we do?

Damn it looks like we stepped in a pile of $hit! Our cursory review of some recent home sales in a half mile radius of the Oak Avenue home has uncovered a hornets nest of trouble. Homes purchased at ridiculously high over inflated prices, the usual mortgage funny business and most interestingly a few transactions where the homes were flipped the same day the seller purchased them at six figure profits. Very bizarre, huh? I'm sure the Mortgage Fraud Task Force already knows about all this right? Certainly the State Attorneys Office is busy building cases against these guys right? Somehow I doubt it, at the very least there haven't been any arrests made against anyone involved in these transactions, from what we can see, the sellers, buyers, mortgage brokers, appraisers, title agents or any attorneys haven't been charged. Strange, very strange indeed.

I've been contacted by a few people asking me to retract what I've wrote regarding those homes, I wonder why? Seems like there's a few people with intestinal issues right now...

The week in review...

Another week down, let's see what we've uncovered...

1. Another angle on outing the "Victim".
2. Is there someone else interested in our story?
3. Fun in the Grove?!
4. YO! Where's my $2 million?!
5. Damn, these homes in the Grove are EXPENSIVE!
6. We're in home improvement mode!

We're barely scratching the surface and it keeps getting worse.