Callahan’s Cleveland Diary

Well, this is quite a coincidence.

Company accused of being slumlord for Cleveland housing code violations

But what the heck, it’s a good piece of reporting by Mike O’Mara. Especially tracking down the guy who almost got himself trapped in a contract for the house on West 73rd:

“I’m really frustrated”, said Leonard Meeks. He’s in the process of moving out of the home he wanted to buy on W. 73rd Street in Cleveland.

He says the property owner, Destiny Ventures LLC, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, bought the the home from Deutsche Bank for just $750.

Without investing a penny to fix the leaky roof or the tree growing through the home’s foundation, Destiny Ventures tried to lure him into a purchase contract for more than $50,000.

I understand that one question being asked around the Justice Center is how Destiny Ventures has managed to sell off 29 properties since it was slapped witth a $40,000 fine (more like $50,000 with court costs) in September. Aren’t there court liens against their other properties for that money?

P.S.  The WKYC story says DV owns “125 houses across the city.”  Actually, as of this morning the Auditor’s database shows them with  111 in Cleveland,  14 in East Cleveland and one in Lakewood.  That’s  seven more than were on the books last Thursday. Click below for a map:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 3:55 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.