Friday, December 14, 2012

New Legal Foreclosure Scam?


A friend of mine who is in the real estate business in Las Vegas told me about this new way of scamming people who had just bought a house that had been in foreclosure and it just simply blew my mind at first and then wondered if it was legal.

This is how the new “scam” works:  You are in the market for a new house to buy and you find your dream house in an area that is in area where a Homeowners association is in operation and your dream house is in foreclosure.

The previous owner ran afoul of the Homeowners Association and got some fines for not cutting your lawn enough or parked your car in a way that pissed off the HOA.  Because you hate the HOA, you refused to pay the fines, so the HOA slaps a lien on your house.

So, you buy your house and the banks that holds the first lien on the house gets paid off the money they are owed.

But then you find out that the HOA has sold the lien they ha on your house to a 3rd party and they hold the lien over the buyers head, basically hold the buyer hostage.

Say the new 3rd party lien holder bought the lien from the HOA for $4000, they then turn around and demand $6000 or more to have the lien removed.  And if you don’t pay the 3rd party’s lien, guess what, you don’t buy the house.

Most people are rolling the lien into the buyer’s mortgage, to lessen the shock.

But, how can it be legal for a 3rd party come in, buy a lien, jack up the price and basically hold the new buyer hostage where they say- pay the jacked up price of the lien or you don’t get the house?  
Al Capone could not have come up with a better plan.

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