Callahan’s Cleveland Diary

Coincidentally (or not), four of Deutsche Bank’s recent selloffs of foreclosed homes were to Destiny Ventures LLC, the Tulsa, OK company tried and sentenced yesterday in absentia for code violations by Housing Court Judge Ray Pianka.

Destiny Ventures bought the Harvard Avenue home in July 2006. It sold the house to another company, Younts-Moore Ltd. of Texas, in April, three months after being cited by the city.

Destiny Ventures is a creature of America’s foreclosure crisis and was drawn recently to the Cleveland area by a caseload that is among the highest in the nation, Nodine said.

The company, active in 37 states, scoops up property on the cheap from inundated lenders, Nodine said. It buys houses by phone or on line, sight unseen, usually paying less than $5,000 and selling for slightly more.

Destiny Ventures is currently listed as the owner of 104 Cuyahoga County properties — ninety-two in the city of Cleveland, eleven in East Cleveland and one in Lakewood.

Forty-five of these properties were acquired from Deutsche Bank. Ten apiece were acquired from Ameriquest/Argent and Bank of New York. Smaller numbers came from JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, US Bank, WM Specialty Mortgage and other sheriff’s sale regulars. (The house at 11024 Harvard Ave. that cost Destiny Ventures a $40,000 fine in Housing Court yesterday — now owned by Younts-Moore Ltd. of Austin, Texas — was originally taken at sheriff’s sale and sold to Destiny by WM Specialty Mortgage, a subsidiary of Washington Mutual Bank of Seattle.)

From the Destiny Ventures website:

We work effectively with numerous major banks, servicers and outsourcers to help them dispose of problem assets. Whether the assets are aged, have negative equity, title issues, low value or a combination of these problems; we offer a disposal strategy that is both fast and economically feasible for all parties involved.

That pretty much says it all. Except, of course, that “the parties involved”, for whom “economic feasibility” is offered, don’t include the neighbors.

Here’s the map of Destiny Ventures’ current Cuyahoga County properties…

… courtesy of GPS Visualizer. (Click for a bigger map.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 at 5:21 am and is filed under Foreclosure crisis, Poor Cleveland, Shrinking city. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.