Tag Archives: Maryland

Foreclosures and other dead ends

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In case you ever fantasized about making a million or few by house flipping —

There are two avowed official registries of foreclosures that take place in Prince George’s County, Maryland. One is included in the statewide registry maintained by the State of Maryland. The other is maintained by the Department of Permitting, Inspections and Enforcement (DPIE, pronounced “D-Pie,” as in “cherry pie”).

Neither registry is open to the general public. The Maryland Foreclosed Property Registry is, as stated on its website,

an online, password-protected system managed by the Office of the Commissioner of Financial Regulation in the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation (“DLLR”).

By law,

DLLR may grant access to the Registry only to State agencies and local jurisdictions, including counties and municipal corporations

to facilitate code enforcement, etc. The DLLR’s registry is not a before-the-fact research tool in any case; it is not a list of properties coming on the market.

Effective October 2012, in accordance with Maryland Code, Real Property Article § 14-126.1, every residential property purchased at a foreclosure sale must be registered in this system.

Purchasers are required to submit an initial registration of the property within 30 days after the foreclosure sale.

The purpose of the Maryland registry is to close the chronological records gap between the date of the foreclosure sale and the date the deed is recorded,

when unoccupied homes may fall into disrepair and it can be difficult to identify or contact the new owner.

The purchaser still has that 30-day grace period between buying a foreclosed property and submitting the registration. And again, the registry is not publicly accessible.

The information contained in the Registry is by law not a public record, and DLLR cannot grant access to the general public.

Prince George’s County

The registry maintained by the Prince George’s County Department of Permitting, Inspections and Enforcement (DPIE) is also closely held, though apparently in a different sense. DPIE’s public notice, on the agency website, explicitly tells mortgage holders to register foreclosures:

Foreclosure Property Registration Form

Attention Lenders
Please register a property (residential or commercial) that is in the process of foreclosure. After the information is completed, it will be added to Prince George’s County’s Foreclosure Property Registry.

The form itself tells lenders to deliver it in person or mail it to the DPIE “Foreclosure Registration Unit” in an office condo at 1220 Caraway Court, Largo, Maryland. The form includes spaces for the name, address and contact information of the property owner; it does not include any statement or certification that the property owner has been contacted about the foreclosure.

P. G. County DPIE Foreclosed Property Registration Form

Questions have now arisen as to how the Prince George’s County foreclosure registry is used. Like the State of Maryland registry, it is not open to public view. According to a person with close knowledge of the process, “Historically,” the registry kept by DPIE has been “highly restricted.” The County foreclosure list is announced via DPIE website for the purpose of registration, but the list itself is “held very close to the vest.” Access to the registry is applied for through a Maryland Public Information Act request; form linked here. To find out about the foreclosures, you fill out the form and submit it, asking for records. The form then goes up the managerial pipeline through “appropriate channels.” Indications are that even people involved in the MPIA process are not necessarily involved in the resolution of MPIA requests, nor are they necessarily informed about requests granted or denied. The hole in the channels leaves open a realistic possibility that access to the registry may be secretive but may not always be protected. This possibility has been confirmed in interviews and conversations with County officials.

The stated rationale for holding the P. G. County foreclosure registry so closely is the danger of squatting in vacant properties. The County does not release the information on upcoming foreclosures because officials do not want to give advance notice to squatters. “You can read between the lines” as to this claim, this writer was told. I asked whether the list breaks down into foreclosures on abandoned properties and foreclosures on occupied homes. Answer: no.

Where to file if you’re foreclosing in P. G. County

Asking whether interested parties such as house flippers could access the registry, I was told, “You’re on the right track.” There is no in-house mechanism to prevent exchange of friendly influence or sharing information with flippers. Indeed, the Director of DPIE himself, Haitham Hijazi, is closely connected to more than one house-flipping company through immediate family members as well as through his ownership of property on which his relatives operate their businesses. (Previous blogs on this topic linked here and here, among others.) Dr. Hijazi has not returned messages requesting comment or information. His son Abdullah Hijazi, principal of a house-flipping company who has appeared as party and as attorney in numerous foreclosure cases, has also not replied to request for comment.

The foreclosure registry may be somewhat arcane to the general public. However, as someone with knowledge of the operating structure and the registry has said,  “your information is known by a variety of people here”–meaning in the county and in county government. But–“they also know nobody’s doing anything about it.” The problems with foreclosures, the genuine phenomenon of troubled homeowners being pushed out of their homes by people with a vested interest in the houses is “Probably pretty well known among key people in the county,” I was told, but county officials cognizant of the issues seem to be covered by “teflon.”

As previously noted, Hijazi as head of the Department of Permitting, Inspections and Enforcement is one of County Executive Rushern Baker’s few holdovers from the previous county administration. Baker’s office has not yet had time to return a call requesting comment.

More to come

 

Jurisdiction, courts, and filings

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Searching for trustee filings is not a quick-and-easy process.

The idea is that the filings would show which houses will be coming up on the market in foreclosure sales; this is the kind of tip passed along in online conversation threads for would-be investors who want to dabble in real estate. In Maryland, however, getting such information is easier said than done. I just spoke with a nice clerk at the Prince George’s County Circuit Court, who told me clearly that “we are not required to keep any lists or [that] information.”

Let’s backtrack a little. In an earlier post, I clarified on the basis of information received that, in Maryland, the Circuit Court handles foreclosures. A Circuit Court judge explicitly confirmed the language of the law in writing to a troubled homeowner. All District Court judges know that house foreclosures are not to be handled in the Landlord-Tenant division of the District Court. Regrettably, this crystal-clear law has been repeatedly violated, especially in Prince George’s County, and in the chambers of Judge Crystal Mittelstaedt–where, regrettably, foreclosures have in fact been processed. In legal terms, the District Court lacks jurisdiction to help a house flipper foreclose on a homeowner.

Trying to track down ‘substitute trustee’ filings in Prince George’s County corroborates the principle. When a bank or lender plans to foreclose on a homeowner, often it will arrange with a ‘substitute trustee’, as previously written. By law, a record of the arrangement has to be filed with the county. As one typical legal website explains,

The trustee named in the deed of trust carries out the foreclosure action.  While the original trustee named in the deed of trust may institute the foreclosure, the lender will generally appoint an individual, firm, or company that is experienced in foreclosure matters to be substituted in place of the original trustee.  This is accomplished by the execution of a written document properly recorded in the county where the real property collateral is located.  N.C.G.S. § 45-10 and 11.

Figuring that since foreclosures have in fact been processed in the District Court in Hyattsville, Maryland, I should start there, I called up the court to ask how to look up trustee filings. A nice clerk in the Hyattsville building told me that was “not something we actually handle here,” and transferred my call to the District Court in Upper Marlboro. Another nice clerk there told me, very politely, that the information I wanted “sounds like it may be Circuit Court,” and transferred me there.

Once in Circuit Court, it still took a couple of tries to land in the Foreclosure Department. Note that foreclosures are indeed a department in the Circuit Court, not in the District Court. To put it bluntly, beware of anyone pushing a foreclosure who proceeds through the wrong court. Furthermore, it is a sound principle that the records should be kept in the building where the cases are adjudicated.

Last resort

Even in the right department, however, it would not be an easy or at-a-glance task to look up forthcoming foreclosures by means of substitute trustee filings. One would need a case number and would have to come in requesting to see a specific case.

With that information, one could go to Maryland Case Search, or to some law firms; some large banks have foreclosure sections in their websites; real estate firms have access to foreclosure listings. Everything is easier if you have the information already.

For example, if you already know that one major ‘foreclosure mill’ attorney is John S. Burson, you can find ready confirmation with a quick look at the multi-page list of some of his cases. If you know that the Wittstadts are walking foreclosure mills, you can easily look them up. Each of these names generates more than 500 results in the quick Maryland look-up.

Looking up the name Hijazi also generates more than 500 results. Many of these cases belong to Abdulla Haitham Hijazi, the attorney son of P. G. County DPIE Director Haitham Hijazi. Some of Mr. Hijazi’s foreclosure cases–indicated as such in the Maryland case list–are actions in district courts in Maryland. Mr. Hijazi did not communicate in reply to a request for comment.

Each page shows 25 results. One can find the results here, or go to Maryland Judiciary Case Search and fill in the search boxes with the name/s.

In a quick search of the first page, I counted two cases in the District court in Hyattsville, six in the District court in Frederick County, and five in the District court in Silver Spring. These are all cases involving real property in which Hijazi is listed as “Attorney.” In fact, Hijazi is a party in each. On the entire page of 25 cases, only seven were handled in Circuit Court (none of those in P. G.).

Second page, another 25 results. All 25 were handled in District courts–fourteen in Rockville; one in Glen Burnie; ten in Hyattsville. For those of you keeping score at home, seven of the Hyattsville cases date from 2016 or 2017 and are currently listed as “ACTIVE.”

Presumably there is still hope for those homeowners. Sadder are all the cases listed as “CLOSED.”

Third page, another 25 results. Not all are indicated as foreclosures, but most involve real property and are being processed in District courthouses with Hijazi as the “Attorney” for his company as party–twenty in all, with five in the Upper Marlboro District Court and the rest in the Hyattsville District Court.

As a citizen, I am beginning to wish that our Judicial Disabilities Commission would take an interest in this pattern.

It also looks like a viable class action lawsuit. That could be hard to pull off, admittedly; people who have already been forced out of their homes might be hard to find.

More to come.

 

 

 

Today begins the open enrollment period for health insurance

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Affordable Care Act sign-up begins today

October 1, 2013: Today begins the open enrollment period for health insurance.

Under the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, people who do not have insurance (or Medicare), or who want to switch their insurance coverage, can begin signing up for individual or family coverage.

As we know by now, this move into the 21st century has been stridently opposed–

  1. by people who hate insurance companies and hate the idea of having to buy insurance,
  2. by well-funded lobbyists working for billionaire reactionaries, for the insurance industry, for the tobacco companies, etc.,
  3. and by people who already have some version of insurance coverage, or think they have, and hate the idea that other people might gain some.

 

Benign image

As to these three groups,

I have some gut sympathy for the first bunch. Full disclosure: I have worked stints in insurance companies myself, working among nice people–who typically get employer-provided benefits, too, by the way. But decades of seeing insurance company abuses go unreported tends to undermine one’s faith in unfettered market forces. It doesn’t help that the media outlets thus underreporting are often cross-invested with the insurance industry.

The second bunch are being paid. (End of story.)

The third group is the saddest. In this group, people motivated by race are–as we say–disproportionately represented. The third group also includes a significant number of sad people who are themselves on Medicare or other public assistance, but who are eager to believe that fellow citizens are getting away with something. Remember Matt Taibi’s you-are-there piece in Rolling Stone? A Sarah-Palin-led rally looks like a Medicare convention. I have seen and heard the same thing closer to home.

Ironically, people in all of these groups would themselves have benefited from a reasoned approach to underwriting health care expenses–a single-payer plan. But the major party that represents groups 2 and 3 opposed every such move. It has also opposed almost every move for health and wellness, from lowering the speed limit on highways to limiting access to military-grade weapons of deadly force to reining in the tobacco companies to limiting use of herbicides and pesticides in food growing to limiting deadly emissions in the air to limiting groundwater contamination. Et cetera. The opposition to the Affordable Care Act should be viewed through this prism. Opposition is not a bright-line rejection of ‘government intrusion’. Many individual opponents of the ACA themselves receive public assistance, red states are the biggest drawers of federal funding, and no corporatized industries reject government assistance.

GOP Congress members keep their health coverage

Back to the Affordable Care Act. Some useful links:

For Maryland, go to Maryland Health Connection. Or call 1-855-642-8572. Every plan on the Maryland Health Connection (the Maryland Health Benefits Exchange) includes preventive services.

For Texas, go to http://www.tdi.texas.gov/consumer/cpmhealthcare.html.

Note: The ACA is lowering health care rates for Texans. Gov. Rick Perry is doing his utmost to violate both the letter and the spirit of the health care law, even though Texas has the highest proportion of uninsured people in the nation, including uninsured children.

As the Texas web site states,

“Texas has indicated that it will not create a state-based health insurance marketplace (formerly called the exchange). See the letter from Governor Perry dated November 2012.”

For local workshops in San Antonio Oct. 3 and in Houston Oct. 10, go here.

Texas hearts

Here in summary are some key provisions of the new law:

  • The customer can no longer be denied coverage because of chronic illness or pre-existing condition
  • The customer can include children on the insurance plan until they reach the age of 26
  • There is no annual limit on care (cap on coverage paid by the company, per year)
  • There is no lifetime limit on care (cap on coverage paid by company over lifetime)
  • The insurance becomes effective Jan. 1, 2014, if purchased (in Maryland) by Dec. 18, 2013
  • ‘Navigators’ or assisters are available to help people sign up for coverage
  • For adults at 138 percent to 400 percent of the federal poverty line, tax credits are available through the state health exchanges to help pay for premiums
  • Private coverage is purchased, in most states, through insurance exchanges
  • Some private insurance agents are signing up with the exchanges
  • Medicaid coverage varies by state

Speaking of Medicaid, here is another feature of the Affordable Care Act: the asset base limit got thrown out. In other words, Americans are no longer required to drain or lose everything they have ever earned or saved, over their lifetimes, to become destitute, to become eligible for Medicaid. In states that are not shrinking Medicaid by opposing the new law, Medicaid eligibility will be determined by income.

Anti-Medicaid plotting in red states?

Back to Maryland, and Medicaid:

  • Medicaid in Maryland is expanding to cover adults under age 65, up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line (about $32,500 per year for a family of four, or $15,856 for an individual)
  • Eligibility for Medicaid in Maryland will be based on the federal modified gross income
  • There is no ‘means test’; income verification is provided through IRS returns, Social Security data, and other federal and state data
  • According to the Maryland Health Connection, “Eligibility will be determined in real time in most cases.”
  • Young adults who have aged out of foster care will be eligible for Medicaid up to age 26

Stay tuned.