I doubt this will catch on, but it would be great if it did:
Like many people, Terry Hoskins has had troubles with his bank. But his solution to foreclosure might be unique.
Hoskins said he’s been in a struggle with RiverHills Bank over his Clermont County home for nearly a decade, a struggle that was coming to an end as the bank began foreclosure proceedings on his $350,000 home.
“When I see I owe $160,000 on a home valued at $350,000, and someone decides they want to take it – no, I wasn’t going to stand for that, so I took it down,” Hoskins said.
***Hoskins said he’d gotten a $170,000 offer from someone to pay off the house, but the bank refused, saying they could get more from selling it in foreclosure.
Hoskins told News 5’s Courtis Fuller that he issued the bank an ultimatum.
“I’ll tear it down before I let you take it,” Hoskins told them.
And that’s exactly what Hoskins did.
Video here. He is planning on bulldozing his business in a couple weeks before the bank can sieze that, too.
GReynoldsCT00
I saw this on Consumerist earlier. Good for him!
Mithras
OT, but everyone should know how high quality the Balloon Juice store merch is.
GReynoldsCT00
@Mithras:
Ditto that, my mug arrived yesterday and coffee tasted good this morning!
soonergrunt
Can the bank stop him from doing it? Can they file an injunction or something like that, or do they only have the right to secure the property once the foreclosure has started?
Any lawyers out there know?
Michael
In my state, I’ve seen prosecutions for the crime of intentionally destroying recorded collateral. At the very least, you’re open to a nondischargeability complaint in bankruptcy (complete with punitive damages).
Leo
Disregard. The legal doctrine I cited appears not to apply. Michael’s answer is better.
soonergrunt
Thanks, Michael and Leo.
Of course, he was pretty much screwed anyway, wasn’t he?
r€nato
yeah, what are they going to do to him? LOL good on him.
The bank should be grateful he doesn’t burn it down then crash an airplane into one of their offices…
Napoleon
@soonergrunt:
They could have a receiver appointed to take possession. I suppose they could get an injunction which would mean when the person then bulldozes the house they are in contempt of court and subject to fine and jail (whereas otherwise as long as they pull the right permit they could legally tear it down).
On big potential downside to someone doing this though, liability from wrongful acts (like shooting someone, not negligently hitting someone with a car) is not dischargable. I wonder if a court would look at the damage you do a bank in that manner and refuse to let you discharge the debt in bankruptcy.
Michael
In my state, they can only secure the property on clear abandonment. It would be dicey on getting a “no destruction” injunction, although I think they’d get one on a clear, up front threat like this guy gave.
Napoleon
Looks like others beat me to it.
Rathskeller
This is psychotic, and nothing to be applauded. On the other hand, it would have been nice if that Austin fellow had limited his rage like this — to the merely self-destructive instead of the murderous.
brantl
I don’t understand how they could stop him from taking the loss on the 170,000 deal, as long as they got their money. He owed 160, he was going to get 170, that’s 10 more than he owed. I wonder if a judge wouldn’t take that maliciousness/greediness of the bank into account.
Does anybody know? It isn’t really the bank’s business to make the most money off of this possible, after the deal has already been struck, only to get what they are owed, isn’t it?
Steaming Pile
@soonergrunt: Injunctions only work if you care. If you’re past giving a shit, it’s like one of those restraining orders the court slaps on abusive husbands – essentially useless except to help put the guy in jail later…after his wife suffers another attack.
Jon H
I’m sure his neighbors love this. Not.
Michael
My guess that the story is incomplete on the state of the title. I figure there probably were some wraparound liens on the business debt, and the tax liens have complicated the matter further – in short, the bank’s position is probably correct, and this destructive moron doesn’t understand that.
cleek
nose, face, knife, spite.
Napoleon
@brantl:
They can’t stop him, which tells me he was getting less then he owes them what he says to the contrary notwithstanding. Either he has a bunch of default charges on top of the $160k or what he is not telling you is that after settlment charges (not counting the bank though) he is really bringing in something like $150k.
daveNYC
I call bullshit. If he actually owes the bank $160k, then he can simply pay the $160k (depending on pre-payment penalties) and own the house free and clear.
Either he doesn’t have the money, or the amount he owes is greater than what he says it is.
Rommie
Wow, this is how Little House on the Prairie ended, just with dynamite instead of a bulldozer. Darn stubborn Religious Folk, going Scorched Earth to an level that would have made Stalin get misty-eyed.
If this *really* caught on you’d see legislative action moving at Warp 9, with the people in power endangered.
Wordsmith
How is this different than the guy setting his house on fire yesterday and flying a plane into an Austin office building?
TruthOfAngels
@soonergrunt:
He’s already done it.
Michael
No deaths. I’d say it is a pretty large difference.
joes527
@Wordsmith:
No one died?
John Cole
@Rathskeller: Of course it is, and you can tell from the video that this guy is a first class PITA. On the other hand, you have to wonder if banks would operate under a different calculus if more people were willing to take this “option.”
There is a reason the DFH crowd wanted cramdown (and why we need it).
Michael
I could give you a bankruptcy fix real quick – unwind 2005 BAPCA, save for the provisions that created a uniform national set of exemptions, and enact a cramdown on first money mortgages as a matter of equal protection.
AhabTRuler
@21: well, he didn’t try to kill anyone for starts. Is that a big enouh diff?
EconWatcher
Sorry, John, not with you on this one at all. The banks are the primary evildoers in our current predicament. And there was a lot of predatory lending, with unsophisticated people corralled into funky mortgages that were not in their interests.
But there were also a lot of ordinary people who should have known better who borrowed money to buy things they could not afford and now want to leave the rest of us with the tab. Many BMWs and big-screen TVs were bought with the proceeds of home-equity loans that squeezed out every last dime of equity based on completely illusory values. I know of whole communities of McMansions, filled with people living on nothing but leverage, who wanted to pretend they were aristocrats (and temporarily projected snobbery as if they were royalty). It was a grotesque binge, and you can’t absolve the people who binged by saying the banks made them do it.
In the last year, I got the deal of the century on a foreclosed house whose occupants trashed it and stole everything they could pry loose on their way out. Worked out great for me, because the look of the place scared other buyers off, and some money and elbow grease are putting it back in shape. But the social waste from this kind of behavior is massive. And the prior owners were a classic symptom of the bubble; they simply bought a house they could not remotely afford (and that I could not remotely afford at the price they agreed to–with all borrowed money and no down payment, as I learned).
You can be mad at the banks without cheering on people like that. Not sure if the guy you mentioned is an example, but they are legion.
Xenos
@brantl: You are right that his numbers don’t add up – it could be that the house is worth a lot less than he thinks it is, or that a junior IRS lien is taking up the rest of the value. What sort of duty the bank owes him through the foreclosure process is a matter of Ohio law.
Since the reporter did not mention IRS liens I suppose there are judgments that are lined up and ready for execution. I would bet that he never had much skin in the house or the business from the beginning.
Lee
I agree there is something hinky with the story.
If he truly owed $160k on the loan he should have been able to just pay it off and walk away from the bank.
In Texas (one of the few things we got right) there is no pre-payment penalty on loans. But YMMV.
joes527
Looking at the before pictures, this does look like a crime. I mean $350K for a wooded estate? The house might have been a dump up close … in which case he did the bank a favor by clearing the land.
I don’t know about Moscow, but that lot without anything on it would go for way more than $350K around here.
The bank is probably laughing at him for doing what they were going to do anyway.
Lee
For the uninformed (and scared to google the term at work) what is cramdown?
WaterGirl
Help! I have a macbook pro and must have accidentally hit a shortcut key that made everything, in all programs, suddenly large enough to be read by the legally blind. Anybody know what I did? When it happened, I was in the neighborhood of shift, function, control, option and apple keys, and I think I might have been trying to do apple-r to reload the BJ page.
Edit: The print is so large that most of the screens and menus are off the page, making it difficult to poke around or google to figure out what went wrong. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Hob
@brantl: Yeah but “an offer” isn’t money in the bank. If foreclosure had already started, the bank isn’t obliged to put everything on hold so the guy can negotiate a possible sale.
Joey Maloney
@Lee: Giving bankruptcy judges the power to decree new mortgage terms, lowering not only the payments but the outstanding principal. (Is that the right homonym? I can never keep the usage straight for this case.)
Redshirt
As mentioned above, how many of these foreclosures are because people got greedy and went well above their means, and now have to pay the piper? I have hard time feeling for these people, because their anger strikes me the same as the teabaggers yelling out at a rally “Get them Gummint out of my Medicare!”. They don’t get it.
Joey Maloney
@WaterGirl: Command-alt-minus (that is, the key between the 0 and the = in the top row) should zoom your view back out.
Then go to Preferences > Universal Access and disable Zoom.
Napoleon
@Lee:
Basically a bankruptcy court looks at the value of the collateral and then if the value is less then what is due on the loan the court splits the claim into 2 claims, a secured claim in an amount that equals the value of the collateral and an unsecured claim. The bankrupt then will need to pay on the secured claim like you would ordinarily. It is done all the time in bankruptcy but in 2005 the law was changed to screw the average homeowner out of that option, while someone like Bernie Madoff would still have it available for his vacation condo in Vail.
Michael
Think “Slumburbia”. I think some of those neighborhoods are going to be turning into real wastelands. Unmaintained, with bored and highly educated kids with no remaining opportunities with nothing left to do but while away the unemployed and uncolleged hours by tearing shit up and tagging/burning abandoned houses once they’re tired of being stoned in them.
lol
The impression I got from reading was that he owned the property and the house free and clear. But because of his bad business debt, a lien/loan/whatever was put up against the property (not necessarily the house which he built). The bank started foreclosing when he couldn’t pay. He found a buyer to cover the debt, the bank said no because they thought they could get a better offer. The guy realized only the property itself was collateral, not the house. So he told them to take the offer or he’d bulldoze the house and they’d get a lot less. They wouldn’t take the offer so he bulldozed the house. Bank is now free to try and sell their new vacant lot.
I could be wrong though.
WaterGirl
@Joey Maloney: Thank you! The keyboard shortcut didn’t work, but I went to preferences, strangely enough the radio button for zoom indicated it was “off”. But since I had no other option, I clicked the radio button for zoom “on”, and that returned everything to normal. How bizarre. But happily I am back to normal. Yay! I can’t thank you enough.
MattR
@Mithras:
Ellie agrees
Also.
Justin
There is a reason the DFH crowd wanted cramdown (and why we need it).
Exactly. I’m not sure what it will take to get the banks to listen to the American people. (Clearly voting for Democrats didn’t do anything.) Maybe this will.
PurpleGirl
I read the article in the link. There is more to this story than is presented. This action will get him into more trouble. And what was the lawsuit with his brother about, how did IRS get involved in it? Did he build the house and the loans were not actually mortgages? But he did manage to cut off his nose to spite his face.
Thinking a bit more about Stack: He probably set fire to his house to deny IRS any assets or property that could be sold to pay his bills. Another genius action. Not.
fortygeek
@lol: Yep…that’s how I read it too.
I think it’s a stupid move, but well within his rights if the paperwork is correct.
Laura W
@MattR: OH Good Lord. That made my day! Ahab’s too, no doubt (and SGEW’s and Evelyn DeHais’! Probably John’s, depending upon whether or not he has PT today.)
@GReynoldsCT00:
@Mithras:
Thanks so much for these reports of satisfaction! Needless to say, if merchandise does not meet expectations, we want to hear that too. CP has a 30-day-no-questions-asked return policy, but we need to know in case it’s our fault so we can go in and adjust the graphic or whatever needs doin’.
Pawsome.
dr. bloor
Seems pretty clear the whole story isn’t being told here (and why would a reporter let complexity and facts get in the way of good footage?). It’s also pretty clear that this guy is a few forks short of a complete placesetting. But it’s also a pretty sad commentary about the times that a lot of folks will react to this by getting a vicarious thrill rather than dismissing it as a fundamentally crazy, self-defeating act.
Sanka
Yeah. F–k contract law. F–k responsibility. Screw the banks.
If the Bank is worth its salt, they will haul this guy into court for triggering events of default, which I’m sure apply here.
That this idiot is willing to destroy his home and his business property says that he is obviously deeper in the s–t than this story is letting on and, that he is a deadbeat.
Also, FATCAT BANKERS!!
Idiots.
PurpleGirl
@lol: As an explanation for what happened this makes a lot of sense. His decision to bulldoze the house still doesn’t help him.
Eric U.
Is there any other future for this guy other than becoming homeless and destitute? I guess if he becomes a folk hero.
The explanation that bank doesn’t own the home makes sense, otherwise this is definitely a crime. There was a video of a guy trashing his foreclosed house on youtube. IIRC, the cops actually showed up in that case.
Laura W
@MattR: Can I use one of those in the sidebar of a new blog for the effort (John will talk about later tonight)?
Joey Maloney
@Sanka: “F—k contract law. F—k responsibility.”
Yeah, the last thing you want is that attitude spreading downwards from the ruling class to the humble servitors. Can’t have the peasantry getting notions above their proper station.
Comrade Darkness
@WaterGirl: Your MacBook trackpad is akin to an iphone in that it recognizes gestures. If you put your fingers on the trackpad diagonal from each other and spread them apart, it will zoom in on the screen. Likewise if you put them down and shrink them together again.
Two fingers side by side will allow you to pan the front window in any direction. A VERY addictive function to have.
ChrisB
@brantl: @daveNYC: Dave NYC and others are correct. If he pays off the bank in full before the foreclosure sale (and in some states for a period of time after the foreclosure sale), all the bank can do is take the money. If he pays the bank what he owes, the bank is obligated to discharge the mortgage and the foreclosure goes away.
As others have said, the numbers don’t add up. Either there are other liens on the property for taxes or to other creditors or other amounts owed to the bank that are also secured by the home.
Either way he could only have hurt himself by bulldozing the house.
danimal
I don’t know if it would be “great” to see a spate of bulldozings and suspicious fires, but maybe a few, um, irresponsible and illegal acts will knock some humility into the banksters.
celticdragonchick
@Redshirt:
My understanding is that the house had been paid for free and clear, but he was forced to take an additional loan by court order to cover business losses incurred with family members/partners.
The bank saw an opportunity to seize both the business and the house in one fell swoop.
I would do exactly the same sort of thing, although I would be a little more discrete. Concrete down every sewage and water line, take a chainsaw to the interior walls and destroy all the electrical systems before pouring mercury or something equally nasty throughout the building. I wouldn’t advertise it, but I would leave them with a Superfund cleanup nightmare.
Revenge is dish best served cold, so the Klingons say…
celticdragonchick
@Joey Maloney:
After years of seeing how institutions pillage the working and middle classes, I have zero sympathy for the banks at this point. There was a reason why every 40th year in ancient Israel that all debts were cancelled. It was obvious that wealth was steadily accumulating up and poverty would increase. Having witnessed 10 “lost years” with actual decreases in wages and benefits while profits for the Masters of The Universe soared beyond reason, I think it is time for aggressive civil disobedience.
ChrisB
Interestingly, if the bank does have a mortgage on the property and does take it back in foreclosure, it probably can make a claim against Hoskins’ homeowner’s insurance policy for the loss he caused. Hoskins of course couldn’t make a claim (since he deliberately caused the damage) but the bank probably can, if the insurance policy was properly endorsed (and if it wasn’t properly endorsed, the bank probably has a claim against someone else, like the insurance agency or the attorney who handled the loan).
So Hoskins may not have hurt the bank much at all.
(Reminds me of the first thing said by my professor in my banking law class: “There’s basically only one thing to learn in this class: the bank always wins.”)
@lol: @fortygeek: In all likelihood, that’s not how it works. If a house or other permanent structure is built on the land, it generally becomes part of the collateral.
MattR
@Laura W: Feel free to use them as you would like.
ChrisB
@celticdragonchick: People often trash their houses before losing them to foreclosure. Sometimes that hurts the bank but many times it doesn’t; instead it hurts the people who buy the house at the foreclosure sale (who usually cannot inspect the house, are unaware of the damage and may not be experienced enough to discount their bid appropriately) or it hurts other creditors behind the bank.
HRA
It’s obvious the whole story is not told. Y’all know that saying about not escaping taxes.
It’s been a while but this experience does stick forever. The 1st husband did not pay the state taxes on his business. State came and shut down the business. Lien was transferred to our home which we both owned . Husband dies without a will . State wants the home. Ten years later and many court dates, too, the time for the lien ran out.
What really got me more than angry was the real estate companies calling to ask when they could put up the for sale signs and have open house. I smelled a rat there big time.
Dr. Morpheus
@Wordsmith:
Nobody’s dying? SATSQ
baldheadeddork
This doesn’t make sense. If he owes the bank $160K, that’s all they get, right? If the house sells for $350K, they don’t get to keep the extra $190,000. If the house really was worth $350, the only thing he destroyed was the $190K in equity he had in it. If the foreclosure was on a second mortgage or the house was collateral for a second loan – he still owes the balance of the first. He couldn’t have fucked himself any harder if he was an Alabama preacher sliding into his second wetsuit.
And there’s something else. Look at the pre-bulldozer pics of the house, especially the aerial shot. Ma and Pa’s little country house it ain’t.
I do see a small but annoying connection between this and what happened in Austin. A software engineer who thinks not being allowed to fly his own plane after 9/11 was worth mentioning in his manifesto about how the government ruined him, who can afford a house assessed at a quarter million dollars and a plane that’s worth $100-150K depending on its age, whining about the IRS ruining his life over, $40K in back taxes? And a guy who took out a loan that left him over leveraged pissing about the evil banks when he can’t make the payments.
There’s an attitude of entitlement in both of these cases that makes me a little sick. These are the douchebags you can hear on Limbaugh all day, the white, middle-age guys who think the entire planet should suck the brown out of their ass because they built a relatively successful small business. I hear them crying about being victims and I want to say fuck you.
Barry
Sanka
“Yeah. F—k contract law. F—k responsibility. Screw the banks.”
As a matter of a fact, I agree – f*ck them, up the the *ss, with broken sticks.
“If the Bank is worth its salt, they will haul this guy into court for triggering events of default, which I’m sure apply here.
That this idiot is willing to destroy his home and his business property says that he is obviously deeper in the s—t than this story is letting on and, that he is a deadbeat.”
Getting deep into sh*t is quite easy in this land, just in case you didn’t notice, and being a deadbeat is called being a savvy finanicier, if one is dealing with beacoup bucks.
celticdragonchick
“After years of seeing how institutions pillage the working and middle classes, I have zero sympathy for the banks at this point. There was a reason why every 40th year in ancient Israel that all debts were cancelled. It was obvious that wealth was steadily accumulating up and poverty would increase. Having witnessed 10 “lost years” with actual decreases in wages and benefits while profits for the Masters of The Universe soared beyond reason, I think it is time for aggressive civil disobedience.”
Frankly, if the guy had gone to the banker’s house and bulldozed it, I’d have wanted to see d*mn good aggravating evidence for convicting him, if I were the juror.
Heck, if the entire Bush administration can get off scott free, plus Wall St, plus the real estate industry, it’s time for the common man to get a ‘get out of jail free’ card.
MTiffany
The email address for this bank is [email protected] in case anyone feels like, oh, I don’t know, some good old-fashioned venting of spleen.
JenJen
Right here in my own town, Cincinnati.
God, it’s so weird, the way we’re always in the news for really dumb shit like the Buttery Jesus of I-75 and the Creation Museum. Now this. Sorry, but I think that guy is a tool, as are, sadly, most people who live in Clermont County. ;-)
Pococurante
He had ten years to pay it… I suspect I screwed over his brother and the feds, the brother and the feds came after him, and he spent the next ten years still screwing them over.
This guy is not a hero. His nonsense goes way back before the banks went nuts with home loan bundles.
The reporter felt no need to give any backstory because, well look at the bones man! Bulldozers make for a more profitable headliner…
Jason B at Work
It’s probably just a sort of bizarre Apocalyptophilia that I have in me, but shit like this turns me on to no end. I mean, the brass of that guy! Somebody just moved up a notch or two on the Hierarchy of Needs.
Yeah, it’s not a very smart move at all, as I’m positive even sight unseen that the man can and WILL be wage-garnished as a result of this. But still… if you can’t get cramdown passed, and if you won’t repeal the bankruptcy “reform” law, and even the justiciary and the sheriff are coming against you, I can very easily see myself coming to the same conclusion. It might be wrong in the end, but you know what, sometimes mental health is more important than financial health.
Besides, I’d rather be poor with a bunch of cool stories than rich with nothing to show for it.
fledermaus
@baldheadeddork: They make money in forclosure on fees and penalties and other charges that are tacked on to the amount owed. But like everyone else here I think something else was going on because I can’t imagine a forclosure process where the bank can refuse payment in full.
HyperIon
@Justin: I’m not sure what it will take to get the banks to listen to the American people.
Hahahahahahahaha!
It will take pitchforks IMO.
Tax Analyst
@Michael:
Probably the case in most states. Expect a nice, big fat tax bill from the IRS and possibly the state as well. I don’t know if the Mortgage Relief Act of 2007 will protect him at all in this situation…I certainly wouldn’t expect it to.
But I must say that this is a better solution than flying your single-engine airplane into a building full of innocent people.
Tax Analyst
@John Cole:
Holding the house as a “hostage”? “Cancel my debts (and absolve me of any tax liability, too, while you’re at it) or I’ll destroy my house”?
I’m sorry, but that’s gotta be some very strong form of Kool-Aid.
asiangrrlMN
@Mithras:
@MattR:
Ooooh! Very nice. I cannot wait to get my Tunchie swag! It should be any day now. I will post pics when I get…at least of the sweatshirt and long-sleeved t-shirt.
I feel for people in this situation, but I don’t agree with his solution. However, I do know that banks will not take reasonable deals on a foreclosure many times because they feel they can get more (not in his case as he is the owner) despite not getting anything for many months. The whole system is fucked up.
Rick Taylor
I wish Obama had pushed harder on cram down. He did campaign on it.
Whammer
I can appreciate the idea that we should not celebrate the actions of someone who may just be a kook.
However, and I need to emphasize this all over blogistan, the financial crisis was not, under any circumstances, caused by irresponsible borrowers.
There have always been people who want to borrow money and do not have reasonable prospects to pay it back.
The people who loan the money are supposed to deny loans to the people who can’t pay it back.
Everything broke when the lenders decided that it didn’t matter if people couldn’t pay back the loans, because house prices never went down.
So, the lenders were WRONG WRONG WRONG.
Please, never forget that.
Anything that anybody ever says that blames the borrowers is enabling the wingnuts.
So, if you don’t want to enable the wingnuts, DO NOT BLAME THE BORROWERS, EVEN IF THEY ARE ASSHOLES, WHICH THEY VERY WELL MAY BE. THE FRIGGIN BANKS NEVER SHOULD HAVE LOANED THEM THE MONEY!!!!!!!
Rant off.
Hamlet
“From hell’s heart I stab at thee, for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee”