City stuck with cleanup bill for foreclosed property

A 13-acre land parcel in Oakland Park, transformed into an informal garbage dump by the recession, has amassed $162,000 in municipal fines, but city officials who want to renovate the site are unsure who owns the land, the Sun Sentinel reported. It’s a situation similar to that of many properties forfeited to now-dissolved banks after the housing market collapsed, where the legal confusion surrounding property ownership has caused land to sit empty or unattended and deteriorate. Charles Delegal purchased the Oakland Park lot in 1998 for $1.4 million and sold it for $4.6 million in 2004. It sold again one year later for the bubble-era price of $19 million. County property records show that the site is owned by Eastside Village Lofts, which is no longer in business. The former company head claimed that he forfeited the property to Orion Bank, which was shut down by the Federal Reserve in November 2009. “I think that this problem, with the uncertainty of who owns the property, is a quintessential example of the foreclosure and housing and property crisis that we are in,” said John Adornato, Oakland Park Commissioner. [Sun Sentinel]

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