One of our listings in Riverside County has been under the scrutiny of the Riverside Press Enterprises Award Winning Columnist, Dan Bernstein.
Our client has been the victim of State wide cuts in both area of employment (works for a local school district that made massive cuts) to the actual county sponsored 2nd lien that she secured to beautify her home 9+ years back.
Well, the drama begins there! Please read the bureaucracy and try to decipher….it’s a complex scenario that is pending and outcome…favorable hopefully!
By Kris and Kim Darney
SEE Below:
Almost 10 years ago, Sharon Bernard received a RivCo home-improvement grant.
She used the $20K to install new windows and a furnace in her 1,100-square-foot Mira Loma home. New paint job, garage door and irrigation system, too. In return, she agreed to live in and maintain the house for 10 years.
If she left, the government would get its $20K back. There’s a lien to that effect on the house. She’s made it for nine years, two months.
But earlier this year, her full-time clerical job with the Chino Valley Unified School District was cut to four hours a day. Her $2,100 take-home pay plunged to $800 a month. She can’t afford her $870 mortgage and stopped making payments months ago.
Now under water, she’s trying to complete a short sale — “I’m not asking for a penny out of this deal” — but sales keep falling through because title companies won’t insure the transaction. Why? That county lien against her house .Sharon wants to be released from it, but she’s drowning in a sea of post-redevelopment goo. Fasten your life jackets:
In March, Sharon, 57, asked the county to release her from the home improvement grant’s 10-year rule.
On Aug. 1, the county’s Housing Successor Agency, which rose from the ashes of the redevelopment agency, granted Sharon’s request, clearing the way for a short sale.
But title companies balked, saying 1) a county Oversight Board, yet another post-redevelopment creation, also had to approve the request and 2) the state had to approve the approval!
On Oct. 18, with Oversight Board approval in hand, the county asked the state for permission to handle about 500 home improvement grants — including Sharon’s — as it (the county) saw fit.
The state Department of Finance has until Dec. 18 to decide. But Sharon now has a fourth buyer, and the bank wants everything wrapped up by Nov. 28. If it’s not, another sale will tank, Sharon will likely have to pay for another appraisal and, worst of all, she fears foreclosure (a credit-rating crusher) is drawing closer.
When I called the state to ask how long it would take to decide Sharon’s fate, I got a big surprise. Department of Finance spokesman H.D. Palmer: “The county has had the authority to release Ms. Bernard from this grant since August 31.”
State approval, he said, came in response to an earlier county letter. The county’s Oct. 18 request was redundant and unnecessary.
Without saying why, the county disagrees. Maybe the state’s August approval wasn’t any good because the Mighty County Oversight Board hadn’t yet decided to release Sharon from the lien. How could the state approve something the county hadn’t approved? So the county (and, it seems, title companies) await state approval of RivCo’s Oct. 18 request.
Time’s running out and Sharon Bernard feels whipsawed. Everyone wants to help; nothing gets done. She’s kept the house up, she’ll get nothing from the sale (latest appraisal, $140K; she owes $207K).
“I just want to get rid of this albatross.”
Sharon was talking about her home. But she could have been talking about the lien, the county or the state. Or all of the above.
Reach Dan Bernstein at 951-368-9439 or dbernstein@PE.com
