NYC Amnesty for Environmental Control Board Judgments

The NYC Council passed legislation earlier this year requiring the NYC Dept of Finance (DOF) to give property owners amnesty as to outstanding judgments entered in the Environmental Control Board (ECB). If the requirements are met, the property owner is free from default penalties and interest. Here are the requirements:

• The ECB judgment was filed prior to 6/12/2016.
• The owner resolves the judgment between 9/12/2016 and 12/12/2016.
• All judgments listed on the Department of Finance's website for the property are resolved, including monetary fines and all work required to clear the violations that resulted in a judgment.

For more information see the NYC DOF's amnesty page

Property Theft is Alive and Well

It's easy to understand how to steal a car or a diamond ring. But a house? That's a little harder to wrap one's head around. Yet every day we see or hear reports of con artists attempting to steal people’s homes and properties. This is a particularly bad problem in Brooklyn because real estate prices make the crime very attractive. Most of the victims are elderly, or out-of-town members of a deceased owner’s family.

Today's New York Law Journal reports that one Carl Smith of Brooklyn has just been sentenced to prison time for stealing multiple properties. Let's look at what he did, and how you can protect yourself from scams like this.

According to Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson, “This defendant shamefully stole houses and other property from their rightful owners by using forged documents, engaging in deceit and committing outright fraud. He did so solely to exploit the lucrative real estate market in Brooklyn,”

Smith, 50 years old, stole a Fort Greene Brownstone at 139 Vanderbilt Avenue, between Myrtle and Park Avenues by forging, back-dating and filing a fraudulent deed. He looked up the prior owner and found her death record. All of that is public information. Smith did the same thing with two Bedford-Stuyvesant properties at 45 Lewis Avenue and 64 Hart Street. He actually sold one of the properties twice, to two different buyers.

All this happened in 2011 and 2013, but Smith had done this before. In 2003 he used the same techniques to steal another Bed-Stuy property at 543 Lexington Avenue. He couldn't evict the tenants, though, and he was never prosecuted.

Smith finally got caught because he couldn't produce clear title histories when he attempted to close on the fraudulent sales. To make matters worse, he pretended to be an attorney for the owners.

Smith was convicted of grand larceny, criminal possession of forged instruments and unlawful practice of law. The judge sentenced him nine to eighteen years in prison.

So how can you protect yourself from scams like this? Sign up for New York City's free Recorded Document Notification Program. Once you sign up, you will get an email any time someone files a deed or other document against your property. If the filing is genuine, you don't have to do anything more. But if the filing is fraudulent, you can take action before any damage is done.

You can access the Document Notification Program on our firm's website, www.LevyNau.com. Click on the Links tab and scroll down to the Safeguard Your Property Title button.

As always, come in, call of click for help or more information. We’re here for you.

Call, visit or click for more information:

Levy & Nau P.C. / attorneys at law

844-LEVY-LAW or 718-622-8149

854 Fulton Street, Brooklyn NY 11238

www.LevyNau.com

Property Rights vs. the Right Thing to Do

A disturbing decision was just issued by the Appellate Division of New York’s Supreme Court. In an effort to return an already-evicted tenant to his apartment, the court held, in effect, that the landlord was required to lend the tenant money at zero interest.

The case, Lafayette Boynton Housing Corp. v. Pickett, involved a disabled man subsisting on social security. He had lived in his Bronx apartment for some 30 years. In 2011 the landlord started eviction proceedings for non-payment of rent. At that time the tenant owed $5,200 in arrears.

Over the next two years the tenant and his legal aid attorney he convinced a housing court judge to stay the warrant of eviction seven different times, based on promises to pay the arrears. By the time the tenant paid any arrears, however, he owed even more, because he was not paying his current rent each month. So the arrears kept climbing higher, and the promises to pay kept coming.

Finally, in 2013 the housing court refused to give the tenant any more chances, and the eviction went forward. A full month after the tenant was out of the apartment, he got additional public assistance and grant money and paid the judgment amount to the landlord. The full amount at that time, including the landlord’s legal fees, was $14,000.

Based on that payment, the housing court ordered the landlord to take the tenant back and to reinstate him into his old apartment. The Appellate Division upheld the lower court, noting that the tenant had made a good faith attempt to cure the arrears, and that it wasn’t the tenant’s fault that couldn’t pay up on time. It is not clear from the decision whose fault the judges thought it was.

Justice David Saxe, in a written dissenting opinion, said that the court’s majority decision “forces landlords to serve as de facto no-interest lenders to low-income tenants.” Justice Saxe also suggested that the housing court’s decision to give the tenant relief even after the warrant of eviction was executed went beyond the authority given by the applicable law (Section 749(3) of the Real Property Actions and Proceedings Law, which only allows relief from eviction “for good cause shown” before the warrant of eviction is executed.)

Maybe this decision was inevitable. Anyone and everyone would want to help an elderly disabled person living on social security. But there is great danger in letting emotion go too far in applying the law. The law is supposed to be objective and impartial. Emotion is never objective or impartial. Do we want a society where rules are applied evenly and predictably? Or do we want a society where rules depend on how our judges, executives and police feel when they get up in the morning? All I can do is ask the question.

Getting Ahead with Reverse Mortgages

Reverse mortgages, like any other tool, can be very useful if you know how to use them. There are big differences from regular mortgages, and you need to know those differences to make the right choices.

Let’s start with what is the same. A reverse mortgage is still a mortgage. A mortgage is what gives your lender the right to take your property in foreclosure if you don’t pay back a loan in accordance with your promissory note. The promissory note creates the debt. The mortgage connects the debt to your property. That part is the same with a reverse mortgage. You sign a promissory note, which creates a debt. Then you sign a mortgage, which ties the debt to your property.

Next we’ll look at the differences that make reverse mortgages such a powerful financial tool.

Your credit score doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how good or bad your credit score is. The primary factor is your age.  The youngest person on the deed to your house must be at least 62 years old. If that’s true, you are eligible. The only other tests for eligibility are whether or not you are delinquent on any kind of Federal government debt (income tax, for example) and whether or not you can afford to pay your real estate taxes and other home-related expenses.

Most property types qualify. If you live in a one to four family house, your property qualifies. Most condominiums and certain “manufactured” homes will qualify too, but co-op apartments and mixed-use buildings will not. Those restrictions come from the Federal government (HUD and FHA), not from the banks.

No payments during your lifetime. Now here is the fun part: you don’t have to pay the money back as long as you live in your house. Typically the money is paid back by your estate after your passing.

Flexibility. Reverse mortgages are very flexible. You can use the money for anything whatsoever. (You do have to pay off any existing mortgage as part of your closing, however). You can take the money in an up-front sump sum, or in the form of monthly payments from the bank to you. You can even take a reverse mortgage as a line of credit, just like a conventional home-equity line of credit (HELOC). Unlike a HELOC, however, any money you take does not have to be paid back until you are no longer in the home.

Most people want to know up front how much of their home equity they can tap through a reverse mortgage. The answer depends on your age (the higher the age, the higher the percentage of home value you can get), on the value of your property, and on what current interest rates are doing. The government has set a maximum reverse mortgage amount of $625,000 as of this writing. There are many reverse mortgage calculators online that will tell you how much you can qualify for. You plug in your age, home value and address, and the amount will be calculated for you. One that I like can be found at www.bitly.com/MorCalc.

 Despite all the advantages for senior homeowners, reverse mortgages are not the right financial tool for all situations. For that reason, the government requires you to speak to a HUD-certified counselor before you proceed. As always, get independent legal advice before signing any papers that affect your money or your property.

Call, visit or click for more information:

Levy & Nau P.C. / attorneys at law

844-LEVY-LAW or 718-622-8150

854 Fulton Street, Brooklyn NY 11238

www.LevyNau.com