Collateral Damage
I read the comments that people had posted about that story. The comments were mixed. A lot of people wanted to know where they could refinance into a loan like that. Their rate was something like 4.4% fixed. Other people just thought they were dumb to sign the loan documents in the first place. Whatever. One of the postings caught my eye.
This woman from somewhere in the Tampa, Florida area posted that she had given rent money for a house and went to start moving in and discovered that the house didn’t belong to the landlord anymore. There was a foreclosure notice on the door, not a notice that it was going to foreclosure, but had actually been sold the day before. So between the time that she gave the landlord the rent, plus deposit, it had gone on the auction block and sold, probably back to the lender. She said she gave this landlord $3,700. So she went to the sheriff. Sheriff told her it was civil, because there may not have been criminal intent.
Apparently she was able to get a partial repayment out of the landlord and a promissory note that she would be paid back next Tuesday. I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday … So that’s why the sheriffs maintain that it is a civil matter and not criminal. I always thought that was for a judge to decide, and a tricky business even for the judge. How do you know what’s on someone’s mind? Since foreclosure auctions are scheduled months in advance, the landlord had to know his house was going on the block.
