I like this video thing BRO has going on. iAMbuffalo is right about these kids not being a production studio, but when you take a look at all their video in the video channel it's impressive. The slide shows are fun and the video is informative and I like not having a slick news anchor and production crew. This is local tv for peole who don't care about fires and drug busts.
Great job, BRO!
Denzien, BRO isn't exactly a high-efficiency production studio, but they get the word out about great work done by locals in their own communities like this, so maybe you can cut them a little slack here. Great background on a very historic area that has seemed to have eluded many throughout our city. As mentiooned previously in BRO, the West Village Renaissance Group is also working to redevelop some properties in tandem with the Community Preservation Corporation. They are a very forward thinking group that had started out as a one street block club into a neighborhood club and are now a stand alone nonprofit group. More block clubs could learn from their meteoric rise. I am waiting for the next in this series from the new owner Mike at Horizon. The property that this series seems to be focused on has really come of its own under their management and I congratulate them on their work and their willingness to work with the West Village Renaissance Group. It makes things better for the other neighborhoods surrounding this area.
The challenge is to monitor investors & quickly identify who is good or bad.
Week after week low end West Side real estate transactions (under $50K) are dominated by far-away-investor-speculator-flippers, as home ownership plummets.
Two years ago then-23 year-old Jessica Doucette "bought" 60 quickly-flipped foreclosed houses for no-money-down from NYC-based East Coast Captial (ECC), now defunct. In addition she was given small amounts ($10K-$15K?) for rehab. In return she agreed to pay 9%-13&% on inflated mortgages averaging $50K. Doucette was so ambitious, she "purchased" 34 houses in one week of October 2005.
The mortgage scam, totaling about $3 million, was ECC's paying $10K-$15K per house, adding the $10K -$15K of rehab funding & administrative overhead . . .& pocketing the rest . . on $50K or so mortgage notes sold to NYC investors . . . who were promised 9%-13% return on short-term mortgage notes, total investments returned in 2 -3 years, when the inflated mortgages would be resold for higher inflated amounts.
In a city with 25,000 vacancies, or so, the 'house of cards' soon collapsed. Half the houses were unfit for occupancy, & tenants were hard to find. She was hailed into housing court, but closed her Bailey Avenue Homestar Realty office & disappeared. When she finally reappeared, she was jailed by Judge Nowak on $1 million bail.
When I discovered the scam, merely on of her 60 houses was rent-registered. That triggered inspections showing half the houses with major violations.
Then her partner-brother Joshua, who served as housing manager was jailed too. Her Rochester realtor mother Elizabeth, who served as advisor has so far eluded charges.
So all of her houses, 17 on the West Side, are in limbo. One is burned-out 156 Normal Ave, which damaged adjacent vacant 154 Normal. The status of others in dozens of struggling neighborhoods is unknown.
Repeated inquiries to the Mayor's Anti-FlippingTask-Force (AFTF) have gotten no responses. Media has been inexplicably silent about a major flipping scandal as well.
Investors need to be watched carefully in a city where Scott Wizig's several hundred slum house got massive media attention, followed by a steady stream of new investor-scammers, many of who get no media attention at all.
A new name to watch is busy new flipper Adam White of Hamburg (DBA: White Holding of WNY INC) who serves as disposal agent for other specualtors who are stuck with worthless houses. White, operating out of a PO mail box at 266 Elmwood (Mailboxes R Us?) flips them to the world.
His most recent caper is the April 4 sale of 7 virtually worthless houses to brand new "Chapin-White I LLC". He paid merely $2500 to $8555 each for the houses, selling them for $18500 to $27500 each after merely several months of ownership.
He paid a total of $34,610 for the seven houses, flipping them with a mark-up of $105,895. I estimate his profit to exceed $75,000 after several months of ownership of 7 worthless houses. But nobody will talk about Adam White.
Watch out, some investors are dangerous.
Dick Kern (in Mpls)
Mr. Kern, while we appreciate your intensity, this article is about an out of state investor who came in and made good. However, to piggy-back on your missive, the WVRG brought Adam White into the Save Our Streets program regarding one of his properties in our area, effectively putting him on notice that we are very attentive to his practices and will not allow them to interfere with the rebuilding of this area. We also contacted the out of state owner, Charles Mark Harmon of New Mexico, that Mr. White is supposedly acting as property manager for (who he sold the 10th Street property to) and spoke directly to him regarding the issues we were experiencing here, also placing him on notice that we are ever-diligent in watching his interest or inattention to his property. No one is getting by the WVRG, ever, you have our word.
Since incorporating, the WVRG has created a problem property data base that provides us with full documentation of information regarding each address, issue, owner and manager information, and subsequent action. Through this database, we are able to produce timely reports. Once the "flag" system is approved after beta testing, we will share the fields with other groups throughout the city in order to assist them in their record keeping and timely follow up on issues. In this manner, accountability can be enforced.
Now, back to the article. Thanks for your diligence, Mike and Horizon, this is the first time this property has been calm, clean, and drug-free.
"Thank you" Mike Hananel/Horizon Realty. I hope your decision to invest in Buffalo proves profitable to you. Then, not only will your development strategy here continue, I'm sure your success will get to your West Coast "connections." It sounds and looks like you are committed to doing the best for our neighborhoods too. Thanks for the leap of faith...way over here.
WVRG
Apologies for my expanding on your far-away-investor-success. However, I watch with dismay a silent invasion by investor-speculator-flippers into countless low income neighborhods, with virtually no discussion of who they are.
It is heartening to see that you are monitoring highly dubious Adam White, who has filed 57 deeds as "White Holding of WNY" since 10/28/05, most of them "flips" to "foreign" investors such as Charles Mark Harmon from New Mexico. White paid $6K (1/6/06) for 14-16th 10th Street in your neighborhood, flipping it to Harmon for $30K 5 months later (3/24/06).
White flipped 5 Bflo houses to Harmon betwn 3/06 & 6/06, all for $23.5K to $30K, for which he paid $6K to $11.5K each several months earlier. The other White-Harmon addresses are 543 7th, 94 Riley, 48 19th, & 211 Grote.
Please share your data system so other less organized neighborhoods can defend against scammers such as White & a host of others most have never heard about.
This virtual invasion by "foreign" investor-scammers, often facilitated by unscrupled local realtors or lawyers, has been a silent crisis in Bflo for several years, but nobody seems willing to discuss it.
Dick Kern
Very informative, but you guys seriously need to work on direction and editing these videos. What could have been a great composition on a very cool topic, ended up as a boring cable-access caliber production.
I have admired this area for many months but was disappointed when I went to look at a house for sale that had been sold within just a few days. Guess I have to jump quicker on the next one that becomes available. This WVRG group has performed wonders for this neighborhood and it shows in their willing collaboration with Mr. Hanenel and many others. The attempt to remedy the Adam White case as mentioned above, proves their dedication to community. If only there was more collaboration like it in our city we could create better communication with out of town investors to make their investments really work to our advantage.
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