After viewing a $500,000 property with a real estate agent, Harris decided it would be a good idea to move in without the owner’s permission.  It turned out to be a remarkably bad idea.

He’s now sitting in Westmoreland County Prison.

Police reported he visited the home with the real estate agent, who refused to give him the keys.  He later broke a window, removed the ‘for sale’ sign and moved in any way.  The police were notified when the caretaker noticed someone was in the home.

Harris was charged with burglary, criminal trespassing and criminal mischief.  When the police searched the home, he had been squatting in the house for a few days.  The officers found drinks in the refrigerator, a sleeping bag and other personal items in the home.  Harris also parked his Chevrolet in the garage.

Harris has an outstanding warrant in the Allegheny County Sheriff’s Office on similar charges, but further details weren’t available.  Online court records don’t list an attorney for Harris.

At least his new home already comes with a bed and three square meals.

A homeowner can become desperate looking for ways to avoid foreclosure. Perhaps he or she attempted to do a loan modification, deed-in-lieu and even a short sale, seemingly exhausting all conventional options.

The situation appears hopeless. That is until another, considerably more unconventional option emerges.

Adzookie recently announced that it will pay someone’s mortgage in exchange for turning the distressed homeowner’s house into a giant billboard.

But there’s a catch.

The person who hires Adzookie must own the home. The paint must remain on the home for at least three months, but it may be extended up to a year. And if after three months the homeowner changes his or her mind, Adzookie will repaint the home back to the original color(s).

The CEO of Adzookie, Romeo Mendoza, has reported that the company has already received more than 3,000 responses so far. One of the responses even came from a church.

Hells bells.

Powered by Twitter Tools

Observations:
20% of RealtyStore.com listings sampled appeared on foreclosure.com as “inactive,” while the listing on RealtyStore were either “new” or “active.” Many times this signifies stale or outdated information.

Example 1:
113 Viaduct Pescara, American Canyon, CA 94503 is listed as “active” on RealtyStore.com. See image below:

The same property on Foreclosure.com is listed as “inactive” and with the address: 113 Via Pescara- which also happens to be the correct address. See image below:

When cross referenced with the listing broker’s web site, the property located at 113 Via Pescara (or Viaduct Pescara) was no longer in the active listing section.

Example 2:
240 E 76th St Apt 5a, New York, NY 10021 is listed as an auction property on RealtyStore.com. See image below:

The same property on Foreclosure.com is listed as a foreclosure- post auction- property. Meaning the home that is listed on RealtyStore is not longer up for auction and is now owned by the bank.

According to Urban Turf, a DC real estate guide, the listing web site Redfin had the White House listed, of all things, “for sale by owner.” Yup, the 55,000 square foot presidential pad was listed for sale for a cool $10 million, with a price per square foot of $182.00.

On CBSNews.com Redfin released a statement regarding the data faux paus:

“At Redfin we want to show all the homes for sale. So in addition to showing you homes for sale from MRIS, the MLS in DC, we also get for sale by owner homes for sale from Zillow, ForSaleByOwner.com and Oodle,” the statement said. “Oodle in turn pulls for sale by owner homes from a number of different sources. Turns out one of those sources, Owners.com, shows the White House listed for sale.”

At least the company acknowledged the comedic value in the whole situation and stated that the White House would be a “steal” for $10 million.

With a pretty thorough understanding of real estate listing web sites and their data collection methods, which many times include aggregating data off other web sites; it is understandable how the mistake occurred. But perhaps it gives further credibility to complaints about accuracy within these online listing services.

According to a recent article in the Orlando Sentinel, Florida is now home to the ‘largest house in America.’ The palatial, French provincial modern home dubbed ‘Versailles’ is a whopping 90,000 square feet and offers 13 bedrooms and 23 full baths. The home located in Orange County outside of Orlando is currently under construction and is for sale at an asking price of $75 million.

David Siegel, a time share mogul, and his wife currently own the home and plan to see it to completion for the new owners. Some of the home’s over-the-top features include a 20-car garage, a professional-grade kitchen complete with a hibachi grill and seating area, a bowling alley, a baseball field, a roller rink and an arcade.

I found Reply.com advertisements all over the place. Reply.com now has foreclosures? Further investigation showed that they apparently have found a little loophole in Google’s double ad showing policy.

Google Adwords prevents individual companies from having multiple ads appear at the same time for the same keywords. This is called ‘double ad serving.’ This halts companies with deep pockets from buying up all the ad space for their niches. Makes good sense.

Lead generation companies such as Reply.com, who have no real product to speak of, have found a way to get around this policy and make some good money out of it. They are contacting companies in the different niches across the Internet with a solution to this Google policy.

In researching this foreclosure ‘double ad serving’ violation (at least the spirit of the policy), I have found that Reply.com ads are running in conjunction with the ads of their clients. For example a search of ‘Miami Foreclosures’ yields an ad from Reply.com to a splash page on Reply’s side. The user inputs a zip code ‘on the Reply.com’ and conducts a search for foreclosures. This search then redirects to a website such as hudforeclosed.com which had an ad running on the original search page of Google for ‘Miami Foreclosures.’

Feeling this was a violation of the spirit of the Google rules (how could it not be?), we contacted Google. Google took our information. Their policy is not to divulge the results of their investigation (huh?). We made our initial inquiry back in April and Google still has these double ad serving ads running.

I guess when Google has shareholders to answer to, the axiom ‘Do No Evil’ goes out the window.

It has also been brought to our attention that Reply.com is looking to go public on the stock market. I love the web. How do you go public without having a real product? Reminds me of a ‘show about nothing’ that was chosen as the most popular sitcom of all time.

This is a strange world we live in.

• So Much for the Lone-wolf Terrorist Driven by Foreclosure http://bit.ly/aD97jD #
• Organization helping homeless squat in foreclosed homes: http://bit.ly/c7Uk8X #
• FL and CA make up 5 of 13 housing markets that 'will never recover according to biz insider: http://bit.ly/aj1Cks #
• POLL: U.S. consumers are less interested in buying a foreclosed home than they were a year ago http://bit.ly/bWTzqJ #

Powered by Twitter Tools

The Madoffess Morgen is set to pay $9 million in restitution to her victims. However, whether or not that kind of money is still available remains a question.

Morgen was allegedly running a Ponzi scheme, promising investors large profits from real estate investments in the Reno, Nevada area while actually paying previous investors and skimming for herself. The properties that the company did in fact acquire were done so by liar loans and by other fraudulent means.

The scheme came to a dramatic halt when Morgen threatened to jump off a building when confronted by the police and her impending arrest.

Washington Post: In an attempted to curb Maryland foreclosure rates, state legislation passed a program giving the homeowners a legal right to mediate with their lenders. Under the mediation program the lender is required to send a loan modification application to the defaulter.

Reuters: According to a recent poll, “U.S. consumers are less interested in buying a foreclosed home than they were a year ago.” Reporter Lynn Adler suggests this could lead to an increased backlog of foreclosed homes furthering the housing slump.

CNNMoney.com identifies 5 ‘economic fault lines’ that may hasten a full recovery: Jobs, housing, credit, government and spending, and Europe.

PR Newswire: Recent press release reports strategic default workshop offered by Oppenheim Law.

CNNMoeny.com: Headline, “Foreclosures plateau – finally. Repossessions soar.” Well which is it; Foreclosures or Repossessions? Because they are one in the same.