A report from NBC Miami in Florida. “The clock is ticking for hundreds of people living in the Heron Pond condominium in Pembroke Pines. In July, the city gave residents until the end of August to vacate their homes after the entire complex was deemed unsafe. Cecilia Picon, 83, called Heron Pond home until September 2023 when she was ordered to vacate her unit at the complex. ‘They did not give my mother an ETA, as far as to when she would be able to come back,’ said her son Edward Picon. In January, his mother’s apartment was burglarized. On top of that, she now owes around $10,000 in a special assessment for the condo repairs. ‘She relies solely on social security and social assistance. She doesn’t have that kind of money. She just doesn’t,’ Edward Picon said. ‘A person that has never owned anything in her life,’ he said. ‘She finally owns something, and now she doesn’t have it.’”
“‘There basically was like a lack of maintenance,’ said Pembroke Pines Assistant City Manager Michael Stamm Jr., adding the city was left with no option. ‘The current reports will show you, there was a lot of unpermitted repairs made to the buildings,’ Stamm said, ‘They put stucco over rotted wood in some situations.’”
Fox 13 Tampa Bay. “In 2021, Ruth and her husband moved from Michigan to Central Florida– when the freedom of working from home, and COVID restrictions up north drove a mass migration south. They picked a home in Polk County. Ruth said she loved Florida—until she learned how property taxes shoot up when homes change owners and tax caps go away, and she discovered the soaring costs of home insurance (fueled by a mix of storm damage, climate change, and fraud). After three years of scrimping and trying to balance a budget, they’re bailing out. ‘And if we’re lucky being gone by the end of September,’ Allen noted. They’ve already picked a neighborhood in Tennessee, which has no income tax like Florida. ‘It would be at least $300-400 every month that we’d be saving,’ she said. She’s saving around three thousand dollars a year in home insurance, around $1,400 in car insurance, and she’s paying less for groceries and utilities.”
From Bloomberg. “Weeks after a busted wind turbine washed onto Nantucket shores, residents of this wealthy Massachusetts enclave are still angry. Some even liken the accident to an oil spill. Federal regulators ordered Vineyard Wind to halt construction and electricity production after the accident. In Nantucket, there’s a growing sense that the roughly 50-square-mile island has become a casualty in the push for cleaner energy. Although the company promised motion sensor lights for aircraft that would preserve Nantucket’s beloved night sky, locals say that hasn’t happened. ‘When we got here in June, it looked like a landing field out there,’ says Surfside resident Bonnie Carr, whose beachfront property looks out on the wind farm.”
ABC 7 San Francisco. “On his podcast and frequent social media posts, a Northern California man dreamed of becoming a billionaire by selling tiny homes. But now, his offices are closed and hundreds of customers across the country are wondering where their money went. ‘I think that becoming a billionaire is a worthy goal because in order for that to happen, I’m going to have to become a completely different version of who I am today,’ said Colton Paulhus. For someone who loves to appear on social media, Paulhus has been very difficult to reach. And many people want to talk to him – customers, employees, contractors, and several hard money lenders to whom he owes money.”
“After more than 20 years of teaching, Margot Simpson is planning for retirement. She told the I-Team’s Dan Noyes, ‘I’m deaf with cochlear implants and a teacher of the deaf in Hayward.’ To make some extra money, she thought she had a perfect spot for an ADU or ‘accessory dwelling unit.’ Simpson hired Anchored Tiny Homes to build the ADU and gave them $28,000 to start, but it’s all gone. She cried, ‘Well, it’s my retirement.’ Their offices in Fair Oaks closed before she could even break ground.”
“Left in the lurch are retired Teamster truck driver, Steve Boldway, and his wife, Pina. They wanted to rent a tiny home to traveling nurses in Napa but Anchored stopped paying the subcontractors in the middle of the project. They lost $65,000 and are using their own money to finish it. ‘How do you feel about what happened?’ Steve Boldway: ‘Hurt, angry. Went through all the emotional roller coaster.’ Jessica Cathey tells us Paulhus owes her $79,000, what amounts to her life savings. ‘There are hundreds of clients left with either a hole in the ground or a wall half built or no permit at all and they’ve paid in full,’ Cathey said.”
The Sahan Journal in Minnesota. “The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said in an opinion released Tuesday that contract for deed sales fall under the Truth in Lending Act, which also applies to conventional mortgages obtained through a bank. Contract for deed sales are struck directly between the seller and the homebuyer without the intervention of a bank. They often involve inflated home prices that must be paid to the seller in a shorter amount of time than allotted in a conventional bank mortgage. The opinion comes after the agency looked into contract for deed sales, said Rohit Chopra, the bureau’s director. Chopra said such sales are especially prevalent in the Twin Cities metro area, and are on the rise elsewhere in the country.”
“Many contracts for deed ‘set people up to fail,’ because sellers can kick out homebuyers once they are no longer able to afford monthly payments, he said, adding that sellers then “repeat the whole thing over again with a new family. The Sahan Journal/ProPublica investigation found a rising market in Minnesota contract for deed sales, particularly in the Somali community. Among them was Abdinoor Igal, who purchased a newly built, five-bedroom Lakeville home in 2022 for more than $727,000 for himself, his wife and their six children. It wasn’t long before Abdinoor, a trucker, couldn’t afford the $4,000-plus monthly payments on his home. He walked away from his home last fall, losing an estimated $170,000.”
The East Valley Tribune in Arizona. “During the ceremonial groundbreaking of The Grid over four years ago, Mesa elected officials crowed about the wave of re-investment dollars coming to downtown. But after hitting financial road bumps that’s stalled the project a number of times The Grid at Main Street and Pomeroy is officially kaput. Mesa on Feb. 20 canceled the development agreement and ground lease on The Grid and the developer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on March 30 to stave off contractors owed millions for their work. The highly anticipated development included 196 luxury apartments to be built above Pomeroy Garage, 75 urban flats and 15 three-level walk-up row homes that would eventually wrap around the under-utilized city garage. The project also called for 14,000 square feet of office space as well as first-floor retail and dining.”
“Midland States Bank says it loaned The Grid at Mesa $35 million in December 2021. Citing a number of breaches and defaults, it demanded that The Grid repay what it spent plus interest and late fees, court records show. As of March, the developer owed it $28.4 million. ‘The developer has no funds to pay anything, including expenses to protect and preserve the incomplete project,’ the bank said in its filing in bankruptcy court. ‘What tenants had been obtained are now gone. The developer has no discernable plan to complete the project, no budget for time or expense, and no funds to execute the plan.’”
From 7 News. “The capital region’s unprecedented office vacancy rate is having growing impacts across the local economy. Nearly a quarter of Washington, D.C.’s office space now sits empty—the highest vacancy rate ever recorded, according to CBRE and JLL. The office exodus’ impact has long been apparent to restaurant operators and retailers. But the biggest financial blow may be yet to come. In D.C., commercial foreclosures are up, while property values are down. Just three blocks from the White House, 1750 H Street Northwest, is a renovated office building originally bought for $65 million and sold for less than $18 million in July, public property records show. A property near Dupont Circle, 1776 Massachusetts Avenue Northwest, was purchased for $45 million in 2012 and sold for $10 million in June. These property value drops are not isolated.”
The Oregonian. “The Montgomery Park office complex in Northwest Portland has sold for $33 million to a company tied to the Menashe real estate family, according to property records filed on Friday. On Friday, property records filed in Multnomah County disclosed that Montgomery Park PDX LLC had purchased the building for $33 million, representing an 87% decline in value from its 2019 sale price when a company tied to Seattle-based Unico Properties bought it for $255 million. After those owners defaulted on debt, the building went through a foreclosure auction in February but failed to attract any bidders then, so the lender brought on real estate brokerage Newmark to find buyers. According to data from real estate brokerage CBRE, more than 31% of city center office space is vacant.”
The Globe and Mail in Canada. “When Arash Missaghi was shot and killed in his Toronto office in June, the 54-year-old’s death exposed two decades of serial frauds, victimizing dozens of people and receiving no sanction from the civil or criminal courts. Along the way, he was represented by at least seven real estate lawyers and found to have bullied and threatened some of them. Fraudulent mortgage investments were Mr. Missaghi’s trade, according to multiple civil suits filed against him, as well as two major criminal cases that collapsed. But no matter how many legal advisers he burned through – five were sanctioned by the Law Society of Ontario for roles in their client’s schemes – he was always able to find another lawyer to work with him.”
“Ali Alijanpour, an artist in Richmond Hill, Ont., alleges he was among those defrauded by Mr. Missaghi. He filed a complaint to the law society and today says that such bodies need to do more to protect people like him. ‘It’s like having a car without tires; the lawyers are the tires that enable this fraudulent vehicle to move forward,’ he says. ‘Without the help of lawyers, people like Arash Missaghi would not be able to conduct their crimes.’”
“In 2019, a fifth lawyer, Rasik Mehta, admitted wrongdoing and surrendered his law licence after several real estate deals he worked on crashed. Investors had funnelled more than $3-million into them. He told the tribunal he was then threatened into doing whatever was demanded. ‘If the lawyer had any detailed questions about specific transactions, he usually got answers from Missaghi such as ‘I have ways of quieting down those who ask me stupid questions,’ tribunal records say. Documents aired in those proceedings revealed text messages from Mr. Missaghi. ‘I’m a big man and people fear me. … i can ruin your lives overnight,’ one read. Another message to Mr. Mehta simply said: ‘People who disobey me end up missing.’”
ABC News in Australia. “Amit Miglani projects an image of success to the world. But some of his investors believe trusting him was their biggest mistake. The wordless, piercing disappointment from his elderly father crashed into Karthik Sivasubramanian like a physical blow, knocking the air from his lungs. Mr Sivasubramanian’s parents, visiting Melbourne from India, were sitting down to a meal when he broke the news that his plan to bring them to Australia for good was now in tatters. The $195,000 he had earmarked for two costly family reunion visas had vanished, along with the prospect of reuniting his family.”
“‘I saw a sense of losing the trust in their own son,’ Mr Sivasubramanian said. ‘They need support and they look for someone who’s their own son to support them … and I’m not able to satisfy that simple and basic need. I cried a lot on that day.’”
“His social media pages are littered with pictures of him holding wads of cash and rubbing shoulders with international cricketers. He is also a convicted criminal. It was only later that Mr Sivasubramanian realised he was not the only person chasing Mr Miglani for money. More than 20 investors allege they have lost their life savings to Mr Miglani and those in his orbit, claiming the investment opportunities offered by his ex-wife and staff members were nothing but a scam. Some of the people the ABC spoke to say they were taken in by the sheen of success.”
“‘He was a very good personality and talking very nicely and everything — we thought he had achieved this with his hard work,’ one investor said. ‘We saw his luxury car, we saw he has established his business as a property investor,’ she said. ‘That’s definitely not his hard-earned money, he’s cheating on people like me.’ One community leader, who lost a significant sum and did not want to be named because he was afraid of retaliation, said Mr Miglani knew how important financial security was to migrants. He engaged with the Miglanis in a deal similar to the one offered to Mr Sivasubramanian and alleged Mr Miglani later denied any knowledge of their deal, despite a trail of correspondence. ‘He said, ‘No, I don’t know anything about it,’ the community leader said. ‘He totally washed … his hands, he said I didn’t give you any promise.’”
“Another investor, who knew Mr Miglani from his days as a real estate agent, said Mr Miglani also denied ever taking her money. ‘He simply said, you didn’t invest with me,’ she said. ‘I don’t know any single person who is not from the Indian community. They are all Indians,’ she said. ‘We trust people very soon.’ For some investors like Lucky Singh Saini, who briefly worked with Mr Miglani but was never paid, legal action is a risk he is willing to take. The chauffeur driver, from Melbourne, invested $200,000 with Mr Miglani in the hopes of boosting his retirement.”
“He also loaned Mr Miglani’s business $50,000 after being told that another investor was due to be paid and was told to deposit the money straight into their account. ‘Amit said that they would pay me back within a week,’ Mr Saini said. ‘Each time I called, the duration of time he needed to return increased. Eventually Amit stopped picking up or returning my calls,’ he said. ‘It’s my life saving for last 25 years, it’s hard-earned money. I work mostly 12 hours a day to save that money for my retirement and that is gone into the drain now.’”
“Many of the investors the ABC spoke to are now struggling to make ends meet. Ravinder Singh Makkar, a bus driver from Penrith in New South Wales, invested $30,000. He has struggled to explain to his daughters why they’ve had to cut out the movies, holidays and even McDonald’s. ‘I work hard and that is my saving money and future money, my kids’ money,’ Mr Makkar said. ‘I have no money in my account now, I’m struggling. I’m doing extra work all the time, I need more money for surviving,’ he said.”