Do I need legal advice to get out of this mess? - Posted by SHB
Posted by SHB on March 26, 2001 at 13:47:33:
Hello all,
I’m hoping your expertise could help me out here. This is the story:
Last year, I bought an assignment of beneficial interest of a house held in a land trust from a RE investor for a 3-4 brm 2 ba home, nice place with large back yard, nice front yard, decent neighborhood. the assignment cost me $3500. The loan balance on the home was about $62K with I got it with payments of $640/month. It took me 3 months to get someone into the house. Really, the RE investor got 2 people for me, but one had to get out of the deal for one reason or another and the 2nd one is now in the house,
paying $650/month with a purchase price of $72K with $100/month going towards purchase price. (not much spread in payments to say the least).
This RE investor really helped me by explaining things when I had questions (and there were many). But unfortunately, I was VERY green in regards to land trusts and didn’t always know what to ask. The trust already had its
trustee in place when I bought the assignment, whom I had met several times. RE investor and trustee seemed nice enough, though and this investor showed my many other deals he was working on, even introducing me to some of him tenant/buyers. Then the RE investor started telling me things about the trustee, i.e., legal troubles involving driving an uninsured car to the store having a serious accident, trustee was fined, etc, didn’t have enough money to pay fines and almost went to jail, trustee with boyfriend who helps her spend her money, the trustee may be going back to to the coase to settle some things with an
ex-husband or estranged husband after leaving him and all they owned after finding him with another woman, etc. Lots of drama in her life. I didn’t realize the importance of a trustee until I got a little more knowledge from this board and reading more courses i.e. Bronchick, LeGrand, etc.
Next problem - I do NOT know how to contact the owner of the house and I have no access to her mortgage account because the RE investor never had her sign an authorization for me, which I did ask him to do. I don’t even think the owner knows about me. I met her once and I was introduced as the person who MIGHT buy the house, not the one buying beneficial interest (she probably would not have understood anyway). Now, why do I need to get in
touch with the owner? Because her ex-sheriff boyfriend keeps coming over to the house in trust and questioning my tenant/buyer, acting like he does not want her in the house and trying to stir up trouble with stupid things like
“Mrs. Seller” wants to know what happened to her rose bush that was in the front yard because she wants it (I didn’t know anything about a rose bush, but my tenant/buyer said she was not a “flowers” person, so she gave it to a
so-called “acquaintance” of the seller of the house. I told my tenant/buyer NOT make any changes to the house unless she consults me first (which she did when the furnace was about to be shut down by the gas company because it was unsafe and that he the gas man told the owner about it a year ago and she was supposed to fix it before using it again - none of which I was informed of when I bought the assignment. Good thing about that I used my furnace man to fix it and it only cost $100.00)
Problem 3 - I need to change trustees ASAP. I now have a corp. (Success Home Buyers, Inc), and I am thinking I can assign beneficial interest to the company and I or my husband can be trustees. How do I do this when I have
no earthly idea where the present trustee is? I have a mailing address for her and the investor who sold me the interest, but that’s all. BTW, the investor is also handling the house my tenant/buyer lived in and owns prior
to moving into my place, but he put her house in foreclosure (payments are now 7 months deliquent) by not making payments even though he was collecting
rent from a tenant/buyer!!! So, as you can see, the investor nor my trustee can be trusted any further than I can throw them. What a mess huh? Do you think I
should seek legal counsel fo this? Would the local atty here even know what a land trust is? (This is a town of about 105,000). I really would just like to get rid of
the house with the tenant and move on (I just about received my initial investment of $3500 back. I let her pay in installments and she has $900 to go, which she will pay in April. The tenant/buyer and I get along fine, but
she is really hot about the investor). I really don’t want to leave her holding the bag and out of $3500. At any rate, now, my tenant/buyer will not be able to cash me out at LEAST for another 2 years after this mess with her house being 7 months behind. Her tenant/buyer is ready to close the deal, but there are more kinks in the fabric (that’s not my concern, at least).
Hope you can help me figure this one out. Maybe you can at least tell me how to even APPROACH an atty about this. I have one I use whom I have know for about12 years, but I don’t want to confuse him.
Thanks in advance.