Foreclosure Auction

A foreclosure auction of Baltimore's beleaguered Senator Theatre has been set for 10 a.m. April 20 at the Baltimore City Courthouse, 111 N. Calvert St. Baltimore's 1st Mariner bank, which holds a mortgage of some $900,000 on the 70-year-old North Baltimore landmark, announced earlier this month that it would be foreclosing on the theater, after owner Tom Kiefaber had missed several months of scheduled payments. Kiefaber closed the theater March 15, saying he could no longer meet payroll.

A bankruptcy judge has approved an auction of The Inn at the Black Olive, a boutique hotel in Fells Point, according to court records. The sale is scheduled for mid-June. First Mariner Bank foreclosed on the hotel's developers, the Black Olive Development Co. LLC, in January, listing mortgage debt of $5.4 million. A foreclosure auction of the 12-suite luxury inn on South Caroline Street was scheduled for late March but was canceled after Black Olive Development filed for bankruptcy.

One of the last undeveloped parcels near Baltimore's Inner Harbor is likely to remain a parking lot for the foreseeable future after its owner filed for bankruptcy protection to prevent a foreclosure auction. An affiliate of Philadelphia-based ARC Wheeler Equities, owner of the former McCormick & Co. spice factory property at Light and Conway streets, filed for protection on Thursday. That resulted in the cancellation of a foreclosure sale that was scheduled to take place Friday.

The family owners of The Inn at the Black Olive in Fells Point hope a bankruptcy filing Thursday will give them time to try to attract investors and keep operating the 2-year-old boutique hotel, their bankruptcy attorney said. The Black Olive Development Co. LLC's Chapter 7 filing in Baltimore's U.S. Bankruptcy Court prevented a planned foreclosure auction of the 12-suite luxury inn on South Caroline Street from going forward Thursday morning. Chapter 7 permits an orderly liquidation of assets to repay creditors, but the case could be converted to a Chapter 11 reorganization if the company finds investors.

The shuttered Northwest Ice Rink in Baltimore's Mount Washington neighborhood was sold Wednesday at a foreclosure auction to a top bidder for $490,000, including a mortgage payoff amount. The buyer, who was not identified, plans to use the Cottonworth Avenue facility for something other than an ice rink, said Paul Cooper of Alex Cooper Auctioneers Inc., which handled the sale. The ice rink, formerly owned by Northwest Family Sports Center Inc., closed in August 2008 after 50 years in operation.

Monday's scheduled foreclosure auction of the Senator Theatre has been canceled, as city officials work on plans to acquire the 70-year-old North Baltimore landmark. C. Larry Hofmeister, an attorney representing mortgage holder 1st Mariner Bank, said Tuesday that there are no plans to reschedule the auction at this time. Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon announced Saturday that the city, which is the guarantor on $600,000 of the Senator's $950,000 mortgage, would seek to purchase the mortgage from 1st Mariner.

The Washington company that owns the mortgage on the Colonnade hotel and condominium bought most of the complex at a foreclosure auction yesterday for $4.2 million. Only three of the building's nine remaining condominiums sold to third-party buyers.The complex was put up for auction after a partnership led by developer Richard Rymland defaulted on a $16 million mortgage on the West University Parkway property in Baltimore. Marine Midland Bank of Buffalo, N.Y., sold the loan to an affiliate of Washington-based Bresler & Reiner Inc., a real estate development company, for $10 million.

Even on a frigid day like yesterday, the parking lot was full at Belvedere Square and the market was buzzing with customers. Melanee Stroovman and Randy Cornish, colleagues who work in Mount Washington but come to the market nearly every day for lunch, were among the patrons warming themselves with soup from Atwater's soup counter and bakery. "Whenever we come in, especially during the week ... these tables are always full," Stroovman said. Indeed, Belvedere Square in North Baltimore has seen a resurgence in recent years.

Peerce's Plantation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday, hours before a scheduled foreclosure auction that would have added it to the list of area restaurants to have closed in the last few months.The restaurant's lawyer said he anticipates that the court will allow the 62-year-old picturesque restaurant to continue operating while undergoing reorganization."To employees and customers it is business as usual," said Lawrence Yumkas, partner with Rosenberg, Proutt, Funk & Greenberg LLP of Baltimore.

The historic Congress Hotel on Baltimore's west side, built in 1905 as one of the grande dames of city hotels and converted to housing nearly a decade ago, sold at a foreclosure auction Tuesday for $2.35 million. The renovated 36-unit apartment building was bought back by its lender, Congress Financial LLC. That entity is made up of "investors with significant local ties," said Y. Jeffrey Spatz, an attorney representing the winning bidder at the auction outside the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse.

The foreclosure auction of a 43-acre plot of waterfront land in Westport that was scheduled for Thursday has been canceled because an involuntary bankruptcy petition has been filed against the land's corporate owner, according to the auctioneer. Inner Harbor West LLC, a company affiliated with developer Patrick Turner, owes a construction firm and a land consulting company more than $200,000, according to the petition, filed last week by the consultant and builder. The auction had to be canceled because of the petition, said Andrew L. Billig, a member of the auction house A.J. Billig and Co. The land's trustees will have to convince the bankruptcy judge that the sale should proceed, he said.

A large waterfront parcel in Port Covington sold for $2 million at foreclosure auction Thursday to an investor who declined to identify himself. The site contains 5.2 acres of land and about five additional acres on two piers that jut into Winan's Cove. It is assessed for tax pursposes at $521,000. The site's previous owner, Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse, defaulted on a multimillion-dollar mortgage, resulting in the trustee-ordered sale. The now-defunct developer owed more than $10.7 million for the land in South Baltimore off East Cromwell Street.

You could be forgiven for putting "shadow inventory" in the same category as the boogeyman or leprechauns -- made up. We've been hearing for years about the huge wave of foreclosed homes just about to hit the housing market. But the numbers sure look substantial. The owners of more than 90,000 Maryland homes were at least three months behind on their payments as of the end of March, more than 40,000 of which were in the foreclosure process. Total number of homes (all homes, not just foreclosed ones)

An Owings Mills man has been arrested on charges of forging loan modification documents that led five homes into foreclosure proceedings, state licensing officials said. Rodney Getlan, 45, has been charged by the Baltimore County State's Attorney with felony theft, operating without a license, mortgage fraud and other counts, according to a statement Friday from the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation. For three years, from Jan. 2009 through Jan. 2012, Getlan forged documents that showed his victims had been approved for loan modifications by their mortgage lenders, according to the licensing department.

The shuttered Northwest Ice Rink in Baltimore's Mount Washington neighborhood was sold Wednesday at a foreclosure auction to a top bidder for $490,000, including a mortgage payoff amount. The buyer, who was not identified, plans to use the Cottonworth Avenue facility for something other than an ice rink, said Paul Cooper of Alex Cooper Auctioneers Inc., which handled the sale. The ice rink, formerly owned by Northwest Family Sports Center Inc., closed in August 2008 after 50 years in operation.

The online portal HOPE LoanPort and GMAC Mortgage have teamed up on a program to allow Maryland homeowners and participating mortgage servicers to exchange documents in foreclosure mediation cases electronically. The statewide program, announced by HOPE LoanPort on Wednesday and scheduled to launch in October, is aimed at streamlining foreclosure mediations. A new state law allows homeowners to request mediation with their lenders before a foreclosure auction can occur. GMAC Mortgage, which is funding the portal's development, is the first mortgage servicer to use the system.

A foreclosure auction of the Summerwoods townhouse development in Owings Mills was canceled yesterday after a group of unsecured contractors and suppliers filed two involuntary bankruptcy petitions in federal bankruptcy court against Manor Builders Inc. and Summerwoods One LLC, the owners of the project.It was a strategic move by 18 contractors and suppliers to stop the auction of the partially completed 64-unit development, according to lead attorney William M. Rudow, who represents Number One Supply Corp.

Senator Theatre owner Tom Kiefaber is "months" behind in loan payments to 1st Mariner Bank, the bank's chairman and chief executive confirmed yesterday. And with federal regulators pressuring the bank to get its own fiscal house in order, officials there had little choice but to call the loan and schedule a foreclosure auction. "The guy's in arrears big-time," Ed Hale said. "He hasn't paid for months." With the likelihood of a mid-April foreclosure auction looming, potential bidders for the Senator, a North Baltimore landmark since 1939, have started to surface.

A Baltimore judge summoned attorneys from a large foreclosure law firm Monday to explain whether signatures on key documents were genuine, part of the fallout from revelations last year that foreclosures nationwide were being processed based on deficient — or fraudulent — paperwork. Virginia-based Shapiro & Burson was the third law firm called this year before Baltimore Circuit Judge W. Michel Pierson. He has heard admissions from several attorneys — at Shapiro & Burson and elsewhere — that their signatures on affidavits required to foreclose on homeowners were sometimes made by other people.

A Baltimore County-based developer on Tuesday effectively gained control of one of the last major undeveloped parcels near Baltimore's Inner Harbor when an affiliate of Questar Properties of Pikesville submitted the high bid for the former McCormick & Co. spice plant property in a foreclosure auction. The Light Street parcel was acquired for $11.5 million by 414 Light Street Associates LLC, an affiliate of Questar Properties and the primary note holder on the property. About three dozen people gathered at the property for the auction, handled by GoIndustry DoveBid of Owings Mills.