Saturday, June 18, 2011

Booted Foreclosed Homeowner Attempts To Fight Off Multiple Jail Threats Over Now-Dilapidated Former Home That Bank No Longer Wants

In Paulding County, Georgia, WXIA-TV Channel 11 reports:

  • It is 95 degrees in the shade, but 46-year-old Curtis Neeley, with high blood pressure and heart trouble, doesn't have time to rest. His old yard had to be cut by the close of business Wednesday or he could have gone to jail. Even now that it's done, he could still end up behind bars.
  • "Cutting the grass today is keeping me out of jail," he said, sweating in the oppressive heat. "But if the house doesn't get demolished in 14 days, I'm going anyway."
  • It's all part of an apparent snafu with the bank that Curtis and his attorney say took possession of the property during a foreclosure and bankruptcy two years ago. "I left the house two years ago," Neeley said. "The mortgage company came in and changed all the locks on the door so I couldn't get in."
  • After taking the Paulding County house -- and maintaining it -- the bank is now trying to foist it back on him, Neeley claimed, saddling him with the cost to tear it down; something he doesn't have the money to do.

***

  • The county says its goal is simply to get the property cleaned up, and unfortunately for Neeley, marshals consider him to be the owner. After trying to track him down for months, they finally located him on Facebook.
  • However, officials will likely now hold off on any further threat of arrest, at least until their lawyers can cut through the blur of the bank's role with Neeley's property.

For the story, see Facing arrest, man cleans up home he says isn't his.

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