Bassett Blight Flipper Pockets Quick $148K

A California-based ​“lease-to-own” company flipped a vacant Bassett Street eyesore to a local megalandlord for a nearly $150,000 profit, in the latest example of middlemen cashing in on properties they barely touch.

That boarded-up Newhallville property is located at 84 Bassett. The new owners have started cleaning things up with renovation plans in the works.

According to the city land records database, on Sept. 2, the Mandy Management-affiliated holding company ABCD Investments DE LLC paid $200,000 to purchase the three-family Bassett Street property from T&B 21 LLC.

That’s a full $148,574 more than the $51,426 that the holding company Nationwide Community Revitalization LLC paid less than two months earlier on July 15, when it purchased the property from HSBC Bank USA.

In between those two sales, on Sept. 2, Nationwide Community Revitalization LLC quit-claimed the deed of the property to T&B 21 LLC for $0.

The connective thread between the two LLCs that legally owned 84 Bassett before flipping the property to Mandy is Kevin Kolteryahn.

Kolteryahn works as the operations manager for California-based Nationwide Community Revitalization LLC. He signed as the authorized agent for both T&B 21 LLC and Nationwide Community Revitalization LLC on various quit claim and warranty deeds related to the property’s recent change of legal hands.

Kolteryahn and representatives from Nationwide Community Revitalization did not respond to multiple requests for comment by the publication time of this article.

“I know nothing about Nationwide Community LLC or how they operate,” Mandy Management’s Yudi Gurevitch told the Independent when asked about the previous owner’s flip of 84 Bassett to a Mandy affiliate.

Gurevitch also said that Mandy is responsible for the plywood boards covering the groundfloor windows and entry. They’re also responsible for cleaning up the mounds of trash left behind by the previous owner in front of the house and in the side driveway. A sizable pile of trash remained in the vacant property’s backyard as of Friday morning.

“We boarded up the property to avoid squatters from getting in,” Gurevitch said by email on Wednesday. ​“The trash that was left from the previous occupants was already cleaned up by our crews. This is a classic example of the good Mandy Management does in the community. We buy houses that sometimes have been seriously neglected by its previous owner. We come in and spend a lot of money in renovations and clean the place up.”

He invited the Independent back to the property in the next few months to check out the rehab Mandy plans to complete at the currently derelict site.

Nationwide Community Revitalization’s website describes its mission as ​“providing hardworking families throughout the nation with an affordable path to homeownership.” They strive to do so through a so-called lease-to-own program, a controversial real estate model whereby tenants have the option to purchase a property from a landlord before their lease runs up — and bear the costs of all repairs to a property, even while they’re still renting.

A call to Nationwide Community Revitalization’s corporate phone number was answered by an automated message identifying the business as Integrity Wealth Building, which shares the same San Clemente, Cal., address as Nationwide. That company’s mission statement includes a corporate promise to its real estate customers ​“to make the buying, selling, and long-term hold strategy as cost effective as possible.”

The city’s online building permit database shows that no new building permits have been pulled for 84 Bassett St. since 2010.

Several renters and homeowners who live nearby on Bassett Street have plenty to say about the current disheveled state — and their future hopes — for 84 Bassett St.

“I wouldn’t pay no $200,000 for that,” said Bassett Street renter Joann Angel, eyeing the building’s boarded up windows from across the street. ​“I’d hate to see what they left in there.”

Angel said someone lived in the property not too long ago. ​“He moved out because the bank bought it,” she said.

The city land records database shows that HSBC Bank bought 84 Bassett St. for $154,000 at a foreclosure sale on Sept. 10, 2018.

“Look at all that trash,” Angel marveled. ​“I wouldn’t want to clean that out.”

Wesley McBride sat on the front steps of a Bassett Street three-family house just a few doors down from 84 Bassett, eating breakfast in the morning sun.

“They should fix it up,” McBride said about his hopes for 84 Bassett. ​“There’s a lot of homeless folks” who need a place to live, he said. He should know: He was homeless himself up until a few months ago, when he moved into an apartment on Bassett Street.

How does he like living on the block?

“It’s all right here,” he said, ​“besides all the traffic.”

Joanne Scales (who declined to be photographed for this article) said she has lived in a family-owned home on Bassett Street ever since the early 1950s.

She said the biggest change by far that she has seen in the neighborhood over the decades is a decrease in homeownership, and an increase in absentee landlords and rundown rental properties.

“I’d like to see people who own it live there,” she said about 84 Bassett St. She said she hopes Mandy Management regularly checks in on the tenants they bring in to 84 Bassett, assuming they fix it up for rental, to make sure that the property is safe and well-maintained.

Another Bassett Street renter who asked not to be named or photographed scoffed when she heard about the $200,000 purchase price of the boarded-up eyesore across the street from where she lives.

“They’re gonna lease it like that?” she questioned. ​“They could have just given it to me.”

See below for previous stories about recent property flips. 

• Newhall Flipper Promises Property Fix-Up
• Flip Enriches Middleman, Burns Tenants
• Do-Nothing Flipper Pockets Quick $80K

See below, and click here, for a full list of recent local property sales.