Instead of Finding Helpers, Homeowners Found Predators

NEWARK, OHIO - March 30, 2008 - Reathel Patterson thought she had found someone willing to help save her home from foreclosure.

The woman said she discovered too late the “good Samaritan” from the Akron-Canton area only was interested in helping himself.

Patterson, whose husband died the year before, responded to a newspaper ad two years ago that she hoped would prevent the bank from taking her St. Louisville home. Instead, it accelerated the nightmare she hoped to avoid.

“He came in and said he’d buy the mortgage if I’d let him buy 40 acres of my land,” Patterson said. “He’d redevelop it and give me, I believe, 34 percent of the proceeds.”

The man from northern Ohio was not Harry Blausey, charged two weeks ago with 30 counts related to an alleged mortgage fraud scheme, but some of Patterson’s allegations from two years ago appear similar to current claims.

Patterson’s “savior” did not make the mortgage payments he said he would and used her home to borrow $180,000, Patterson said. She lost her home of 31 years, most of her belongings and all 60 acres of land. The bank resold her home and property for $284,000, she said.

“I thought it was all legal, but he lied so much,” Patterson said. “The bank made us get out right now. I’ve cried and done everything but kill myself.”

Patterson, 69, who now lives at Newark Healthcare Centre, said she tried to enlist the help of an attorney, but he wasn’t interested.

The fear of foreclosure increasingly is turning a desperate situation into a disastrous one for Licking County homeowners who say nobody was willing to help them. Foreclosure actions have been filed against more than 300 parcels already this year.

A Licking County woman listed as a victim in the indictment, speaking on condition of anonymity, said she and her husband signed their home to Blausey in a quit-claim deed because he told them the deed gave him the right to represent them to mortgage companies.

“He said he’d try to get a short sale and he’d, in turn, rent the property to us for a year,” the woman said. “Then, at the end of a year, we’d be able to get financing in our name.”

The couple initially got into the desperate situation because of an adjustable rate mortgage, with monthly payments increasing every six months, from $900 to $1,300.

The couple tried to refinance to a lower rate two years ago but were not successful.

“If we can get our payments back to the $900, we wouldn’t have a problem,” she said. “I don’t know why they couldn’t have done that in the first place. I was calling everybody to refinance (in 2006) and couldn’t do it.”

Wes Henry, of Newark, said the advice of talking to your lender did not benefit him.

“I know firsthand this does not work,” Henry said. “All they’re interested in is taking our house. They didn’t care about (mediation). They were just hell-bent on taking your house.”

The non-local bank reneged on a verbal agreement with a mediator, who suggested deferring two or three payments and returning loan payments to a previous lower amount in exchange for an immediate $2,000 payment, Henry said.

He paid the $2,000, but the bank did not lower the payments or defer them.

“To me, they’re shooting themselves in the foot,” Henry said. “If they would work with people, they’d still be getting monthly income off of it. All they had to do was defer a payment or two.

“It sounds like they sold the loan and didn’t own the property. Unless they make it a law they have to work with (a mediator), I don’t think it’ll do any good.”

Others struggling to stave off foreclosure have similar tales but are less willing to speak publicly.

One woman said her problems began after she separated from her husband and the adjustable rate of her mortgage soared from 6 percent to 12.85 percent in just 18 months.

“I started calling my mortgage company right away to try to make some kind of temporary arrangements but was told there was nothing they would do to help me because, after all, these were the terms I had agreed to at signing,” she wrote in an e-mail. “It was a downward spiral from there on out.”

Another Licking County resident and central Ohio real estate investor said attorney fees increased his mortgage payment from about $10,000 to almost $17,000.

Homeowners, he said, give up when they see the huge amount attorneys add to their bills.

Instead of finding helpers, homeowners found predators
By KENT MALLETT | Newark Advocate