Why Staten Island has so many foreclosures

Hi,

I have been sending out foreclosures these past months, and it just occurred to me that many people do not understand why there are so many foreclosures’ on Staten Island; and many more people don’t understand why the country, if not the world, is in such a deep financial crisis. Over a series of short emails, I will try to explain, the best that I can, what happened, and what is going on, and what it all means to us on Staten Island. Feel free to call or email with any questions, and/or comments, that you may have.

I first got involved with foreclosures at the beginning of the crash, a couple of years ago, when Merrill Lynch announced its first $4 Billion write-down. I thought that $4 Billion Dollars was a lot of real estate, and they would need help in getting rid of all of the properties after being foreclosures. Friends and clients were always asking me if I knew of any good foreclosures, as I have been buying and selling bank-owned real estate my entire career from Richmond County and Staten Island Savings Bank before they went public, and other Staten Island Banks that are no longer in existence. My grandfather bought properties from the banks on Staten Island during the Great Depression, always allowing the former owner to remain in the home paying rent ($6 month in those days!).

So I called an old neighbor of mine who was a big trader at Merrill Lynch, whom I used to shovel snow with in the winter years ago. After an exchange of pleasantries, I asked him what Merrill Lynch was doing with all of this real estate that they were foreclosing and just wrote down, and would he put me in the direction of the person/people handling it?

That is when he hit me with the shocker-

“We don’t own any real estate, we only own bonds”.

“Then who owns the real estate?” I asked; and he said he didn’t know. "We just own Bonds."

Whoa.

Knowing this is the first step to understanding our present financial crisis.

………………to be continued