Westville neighbors got a rare firsthand glimpse at the housing crisis from a Willard Street lawn Saturday. Inside, a tenant’s future was thrown into flux.
Attorney Frank Capone (pictured) oversaw a bidless foreclosure auction from the lawn Saturday. In the absence of bidders, the light-green two family house at 190 and 192 Willard St. went back to the bank. A bid of just one dollar over the bank’s bid of $270,000 would have won the three-story house, which was recently appraised at $350,000, said Capone.
A small group of locals, unaccustomed to foreclosure auctions in their neighborhood, gathered to see how the process happened. “In this neighborhood, it’s not common,” said Jennifer Blemings (pictured, at right), of 48 Willard St. “It makes people curious.”
Blemings said that she had seen the house for sale at least three times in the 10 years that she’s lived nearby, once for as much as $599,000. “Values are plummeting,” Capone said later. He said that the house’s recent appraisal was $20,000 less than an appraisal just a few months earlier.
One half of the duplex is currently occupied by a renter, Vicki Hemphill, the other side is vacant. The owner of the house was not present on Saturday.
After the lawyer had left, Hemphill emerged from the house to confirm her suspicion that no one had bought the house. She had been watching from her living room window.
“I was hoping someone would purchase it,” she said, “but… oh well. I guess on Monday I’ll go looking for another place.” Hemphill assumed that the bank would be asking her and her three kids to move out.
Hemphill, a nurse working the night shift at West River Health Care in Milford, was still wearing her work clothes: hospital scrubs with a Strawberry Shortcake design. She said that she usually goes to bed after getting off work at 7 a.m., but that she had stayed up to see the auction. “I guess I stayed up for nothing,” she said wearily.
Hemphill was not optimistic about her chances of locating another place to rent. “It’s not easy finding anything,” she said. “It took me two years to find this.” Hemphill said that she’s lived in the house for two years. “I thought I’d be here till I died,” she said.
In a post-auction phone call, Capone speculated that the bank was trying to cut its losses by offering a bid that was low relative to the debt owed on the house. “To attract buyers they put it at $270,000. Maybe that was their thought process.”
Capone said that in 45 to 60 days, after the courts process all the paperwork, the bank will own the house. He said that the bank, located in California, “has thousands of foreclosures. They outsource them to brokerage firms to sell.”
As for Vicki Hemphill, Capone was not sure that she would have to move out. “Nothing is definite,” he said, it depends on what the bank wants to do and who they sell the house to.
There may be an interested buyer already. Yale divinity school student Frank Brown and his wife Irina Brown, a doctor, were in the neighborhood with their broker, Margaret Butterworth, looking at houses.
Hemphill let the trio (pictured center in the photo above) take a look at inside her unit and answered their questions about the neighborhood (it’s quiet) and the heating bills in the winter (they’re high). As she left the house Butterworth was so excited about what a great deal the house was that she even asked a nearby reporter if he could delay his story for “about a week” to make sure no one else bought the house first.
Read previous Independent coverage of New Haven’s foreclosure crisis:
• DeStefano: Foreclosure Plan Ready
• Can They Help?
‚Ä¢ “We Should Over-Regulate These Bastards”
• Rosa Hears of Rescues
• WPCA Grilled on Foreclosures
‚Ä¢ WPCA’s Targets Struggle To Dig Out
• Sue The Subprimers?
• WPCA Hearing Delayed
‚Ä¢ Megna’s “Blood Boils” at WPCA Tactics
• Goldfield Wants WPCA Answers
• 2 Days, 8 Foreclosure Suits
• WPCA Goes On Foreclosure Binge
• A Guru Weighs In
• WPCA Targets Church
• Subprime Mess Targeted
‚Ä¢ Renters Caught In Foreclosure King’s Fall
‚Ä¢ She’s One Of 1,150 In The Foreclosure Mill
‚Ä¢ Foreclosures Threaten Perrotti’s Empire
‚Ä¢“I’m Not Going To Lay Down And Let Them Take My House”
The following links are to various materials and brochures designed to help homeowners avoid foreclosure.
How to prepare a complaint to the Department of Banking; Department of Banking Online Assistance Form; Connecticut Department of Banking, Avoiding Foreclosure; FDIC Consumer News; Statewide Legal Services of Connecticut, Inc; Connecticut Bar Association Lawyer Referral Service.
For lawyer referral services in New Haven, call 562‑5750 or visit this website. For the Department of Social Services (DSS) Eviction Foreclosure Prevention Program (EFPP), call 211 to see which community-based organization in the state serves your town.
Click here for information on foreclosure prevention efforts from Empower New Haven.