After Dealing With Homeowner's Multiple Bankruptcy Filings, Foreclosing Lender Winds Up With Trashed Home

In St. Petersburg, Florida, The St. Petersburg Times reports:

• Between 1999 and last January, [Rose] King filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection eight times — a move that kept lenders from forcing the sale of her St. Petersburg bungalow. And when she finally moved out in March, she took everything, including the kitchen sink. "She lived two years for free, I can tell you that,'' says Kelly Goff, who held the most recent mortgage and had to schedule foreclosure sales four times. "I've never had anything like it, and I've had hundreds of loans. It's luck of the draw that I happened to get somebody who knew how to abuse the system and used it.''

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• Goff says he spent more than $20,000 in legal costs before the foreclosure auction was finally held on March 14. As typically happens when property is mortgaged for more than it's worth, he bought the house with a $100 bid. And was appalled by what he found.

• The place was filthy. Everything that could be removed had been, including appliances, electrical outlets, light fixtures, even the toilet and door jambs. "It was total destruction,'' Goff says.

For more, see Chapter 13 standoff thwarts foreclosure on St. Petersburg house for years.

For another Central Florida horror story in which the bankruptcy system was arguably abused to delay foreclosure, see Thirteen times for Chapter 13, where a Palm Harbor couple reportedly together filed Chapter 13 bankruptcies a total of 13 times.

Go here for other posts on serial bankruptcy filings. SerialBankruptcyFilings