'Mistake'
costs family its home at The Springs
A judge refuses to reverse the auction of a
home spurred by a debt of $1,200.
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Courtesy
of the Orlando Sentinel
Posted
December 21, 2006
By
Rene Stutzman
SANFORD
-- Because of someone else's mistake, Sharon Rousey lost her Longwood home
at a courthouse auction two weeks ago over $1,200 in unpaid homeowners
association dues.
On Wednesday, she tried to persuade a judge to give it back. He refused.
That means Rousey, 48, a single mom who is raising two disabled teenagers
on a fixed income, must now pack up her belongings and get out.
"Things don't always work out the way you desire," she said
after the hearing.
Rousey bought the 2,400-square-foot town house in The Springs, a gated
community near Wekiwa Springs State Park, in May 2005.
The home, though, came with a surprise: She would belong to two homeowners
associations and, thus, had to pay two sets of dues, one for The Springs
and another for Glenwood Village, the town-house neighborhood.
She fell behind on both, according to court records. In addition, she
couldn't keep up her mortgage payment and, for a time, the water company
cut her off.
One of the homeowners groups sued to foreclose, and when Rousey never
appeared and never filed any paperwork, a judge entered a judgment in
favor of the association and ordered the house sold at public auction.
In November, Rousey thought she had solved her problems: Goodbye
Foreclosure Inc., a Winter Park company that buys distressed properties,
agreed to buy her house before the auction. It would pay off her
homeowners association dues as well as her mortgage and leave her with
about $115,000 in cash.
But company Vice President Aaron Herschberg sent a check to an association
-- the wrong one, it turned out -- and assumed the auction would be called
off. It wasn't. On Dec. 5, an Apopka company that buys foreclosed property
agreed to pay $113,500.
Mark Lippman, Rousey's attorney, estimated the market value of her town
house at $275,000 to $300,000.
Still due on the property is a $65,000 mortgage, which the winning bidder
must now pay.
Herschberg admitted Wednesday that the whole thing was his fault. "It
was my mistake," he said.
Because of that, Rousey's lawyer asked Circuit Judge Alan Dickey to void
the auction and give the house back to the family: Rousey and her two
daughters, Kristen, 16, and Madison, 13, both of whom are developmentally
disabled.
"It was not Mrs. Rousey's mistake," Lippman said. "It was
just an office foible."
In fact, Rousey had enough money to stop the sale: $1,200 in back dues
owed The Springs Community Association Inc., she testified. And she would
have paid it if she had known Herschberg had sent the check to the wrong
place, she said.
The judge, though, let the auction stand.
"I can't find any legal basis to set this aside," he said.
Rousey's mistake, Dickey said, was in relying on someone who specializes
in buying homes from people facing foreclosure.
"They took advantage," Dickey said. "They found a woman
whose house was being foreclosed on and didn't have sense enough to hire a
lawyer."
In the end, Rousey won't go penniless. She should walk away with about
$108,000 in cash, Lippman said. That's what will be left over from the
auction proceeds once The Springs Homeowners Association takes out its
share and pays its lawyers.
In addition, the winning bidder, South Investment Properties Inc., won't
force the family out of the home until the first week of January, said its
attorney, Jeffrey Icardi.
Still, Rousey said Wednesday that she has no idea where she'll move her
family, except that they'll stay in Seminole County.
"Wherever they go," she said, smiling at her girls, "I
go."
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