Squatters Move Into $1.4 Million Vacant Foreclosed L.A. Mansion

Buried in an article in the Los Angeles Times is this excerpt about a foreclosed, lender-owned home that has apparently been taken over by squatters:

• "In another Los Angeles cul-de-sac, this one off Coldwater Canyon Drive near Beverly Hills, the neighbors have the opposite problem. Here's a foreclosed house that should be empty and isn't. The mansion in question was bought by a man in early 2005 for $1.4 million. By last fall he was gone and the property was in foreclosure. HSBC, a major lender that was carrying the biggest note on the house, asked Leo Nordine, a real estate agent who specializes in foreclosures, to represent it for sale. Nordine went to check out the property and realized that people were living there. He left them a polite letter on the kitchen counter. There was no response to that letter, nor to follow-ups that he mailed. Neighbors, who asked that their names not be used because they were worried about their safety, said the occupants were a group of men apparently in their 20s and 30s. The men take the trash out every week, but that was the only good thing the neighbors had to say. Nordine said that HSBC was pursuing a formal eviction but that it would probably take many months. The HSBC manager in charge of the foreclosure didn't respond to questions. On a recent evening, the front door was open. The inhabitants declined to respond to a reporter's queries. Authorities and real estate agents say similar problems arose during the wave of foreclosures in the 1990s, when houses stayed empty for months."

For more, see Blight moves in after foreclosures (Untended properties become eyesores. Then there are the uninvited guests: mosquitoes, vandals and squatters).

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