Wednesday, November 17, 2010

End Drawing Near For S. Fla. Foreclosure Mill? Stiffs Landlord On Office Rent; Affiliate Enters Into Loan Forbearance Over $12M Credit Line Default

In Plantation, Florida, The Miami Herald reports:
  • The Law Offices of David J. Stern, which has helped banks seize thousands of homes from homeowners who missed mortgage payments, is now having trouble paying its own bills. One of its subsidiaries is seeking bank forbearance for defaulting loans, and the shrinking company has fallen behind on rent payments at its Plantation offices, according to a regulatory filing Monday.

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  • The law firm has already stopped paying some of its bills. The company also has not paid its rent for the month of November at its office space at 900 S. Pine Island Road, in Plantation. [...] Much like the troubled real estate market, Stern's firm has been enduring a post-boom decline of its own recently. After the growing five-fold in the last five years to more than 1,100 employees, a lightning round of negative news has leveled the foreclosure-processing giant in the last few months.

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  • The same day layoffs were announced, employees from a document shredding company spent hours taking boxes from the firm to a truck parked outside. The DJSP stock price fell 32 percent on Monday to close at $0.48. It has plunged more than 95 percent since April, when it peaked at $13.65. In a letter announcing the layoffs to Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation, a Stern representative wrote that a complete closing of the firm "remains a possibility.''

For more, see Foreclosure attorney Stern struggling to pay his bills.