A Missouri appellate court, without trying, may have drawn a map to a defense to foreclosures–if borrowers can figure it out before the Missouri Supreme Court overturns the decision in Bellistri v Ocwen. The opinion shows how an assignment of a loan to a servicing company for collection can actually make the loan uncollectible from the mortgaged property. Read the rest of this entry
Tag Archives: Missouri
Taney County will seek stimulus money
Ken Kline, chair of the Taney County (Missouri) Industrial Development Authority (IDA), persuaded the Taney County Commission yesterday to fund an Office of Economic Development, so that Taney County will have people actively pursuing money dedicated to rural projects in the stimulus package pushed through Congress by the Obama Administration.
Ken’s presentation was well-organized, with detailed descriptions of the duties of the persons that he wanted the county to hire. The request suggested that these county employees report to the IDA, which consists of unpaid appointees.
I spoke in support of Ken’s proposal and pointed out that many of the functions of the proposed Office of Economic Development were within the statutory duties of the county’s planning commission, but were not currently being performed.
Sarah Klinefelter, chair of the planning commission, agreed that the planning commission had been primarily responding to requests for zoning permits, rather than performing its planning function. New county commissioner Jim Strafuss told me after the meeting that the county commission had issued an RFP for a comprehensive plan.
I hope that rural counties in the Ozarks will take advantage of the opportunity to upgrade roads and bridges, water and sewer facilities, school buildings, and parks and to establish technology facilities. Otherwise, we’ll be faced with doing our part to pay for improvements made elsewhere, putting us even further behind.
Eureka School District loses TIF battle
School districts are the natural enemies of tax-increment financing projects (TIFs). The TIF designation of a redevelopment area limits a school district’s share of the increases in property taxes that occur in that redevelopment area, diverting what would have been the school district’s share of property taxes to paying for a portion of the developer’s cost of infrastructure.
On February 24, 2009, Missouri’s Eastern District Court of Appeals issued its opinion Read the rest of this entry
Styron & Shilling’s HOA database project
Suppose you are buying a home in a subdivision. You don’t see many occupied houses in the subdivision, which is not in a city or town. But you see a water wellhouse and storage tank and maybe an odd looking structure that must be a sewer treatment plant or pumping station. You don’t see any signs indicating that these belong to a local government entity. You wonder who maintains the streets, the water system and the sewer system. The answer is that a homeowners’ association (HOA) is responsible for maintenance and operation of these essential facilities.
But where is the HOA? You can’t find it in the phone book or on the internet. The public records are sketchy. Read the rest of this entry
HOA trustees can enforce covenants, even though they didn’t have annual meetings
If you want to stop a homeowners association from collecting assessments or enforcing restrictions, often the best tactic is to smear the HOA.
Here’s how the smear works. Read the rest of this entry
Is tourism impoverishing?
Many community leaders are jealous of the sales tax revenue and economic activity generated by tourism. They wish that their own communities had some of what Branson and other tourist towns have (the municipal revenue, the perceived business opportunities, and options for shopping, dining, entertainment and outdoor activities), but not the other stuff (the seasonal economy, the high percentage of residents who move in and move out, the number of business failures, the constant need to expand schools, the high sales taxes, the traffic snarls, the disorder of constant construction projects, etc.). Read the rest of this entry
Wish list for the Ozarks economy
Congress is going to do something. The House has approved a stimulus package, full of all kinds of goodies–only a few months after “earmarks” was a dirty, dirty word. And the Senate will put a few more pork cutlets into the package.
IRONY ALERT: THIS BLOG POST IS NOT ENTIRELY SERIOUS! PARTS OF IT ARE! WATCH FOR HINTS.
But what do we need in the Ozarks?
Whatever we don’t get here will go somewhere else. No matter how ineffective cash infusions are when injected elsewhere, we’d like it to have it go to waste in the Ozarks, where we know how to spend wisely because we’re not liberals mostly.
We might as well make a list Read the rest of this entry
Defunct HOAs: what to do?
Outside of incorporated cities in the Ozarks, the homeowner association (HOA) is often the government for homes in subdivisions and condominiums. The clean water rules enforced by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources include HOAs as eligible “continuing authorities” to own and operate drinking water or sewer facilities, or both, in subdivisions not served by public utility companies regulated by the Public Service Commission or by governmental providers. In addition, the HOAs often have the responsibility of maintaining subdivision streets unless and until the county commission adopts an ordinance to maintain the streets.
HOAs are ordinarily established by the subdivision developer, in order to obtain permits for sewer or water facilities and to create an entity for road maintenance. An HOA’s power to collect assessments from lot owners (or unit owners, in the case of condominiums) is established by the recording of subdivision covenants (usually called CCRs or a declaration). The HOA is almost always set up as a non-profit corporation, with the developer and the developer’s associates making up the initial board of directors.
Even under the best of circumstances, the developer fails to file annual reports for the HOA with the Missouri Secretary of State, and the HOA, as a corporation, is administratively dissolved. When few lots are sold, that also happens. And there are worse omissions and consequences: Read the rest of this entry
Contracts for deed still cause problems
At least once a month, I get a call–usually a referral from a title company–about a problem caused by a contract for deed transaction. I wince, because the people who sell or buy under contracts for deed usually are people who don’t like working with lawyers, which makes my job harder. The people needing help for a problem that is difficult to assess and to fix often want to know exactly how much it will cost and how long it will take to fix. I could have prevented the problem in a couple of hours for $500 or less by configuring the transaction with a note and deed of trust or a lease with purchase option.
Now, fixing the problem it will require a lawsuit that could drag on for a couple of years or even longer. Legal fees and costs will be at least $2,000, but more likely $5,000 to $10,000.
If the property has been paid for under the contract for deed, but the seller has meanwhile died or become incapacitated due to Alzheimer’s or a stroke, solving the problem may require a probate or guardianship proceeding which may involve a nasty fight among the seller’s heirs.
If the buyer has defaulted, but won’t relinquish possession or has recorded some kind of claim in the county land records, a judicial foreclosure or quiet title suit and an unlawful detainer suit may be required. Sometimes the buyer, who has recorded the claim, is hard to find, and the best that we can do is get a default judgment based on service by publication, so the title is still uninsurable for years after the legal procedure to fix it.
I’ve added an article here to explain some of the problems I have encountered with contracts for deed.
Have you been slimed on the internet?
By Harry Styron
I have been slimed on the internet by accusations that were completely false, and I don’t like it one bit (I say “don’t” rather than “didn’t” because the false statements are still there for all who look). The Missouri Court of Appeals for the Eastern District of Missouri has indicated that an old legal doctrine (the tort of “false light invasion of privacy”) can be applied to intentional statements on the internet that falsely make a private person look bad.
The opinion, dated December 23, 2008, was in the case Meyerkord v. The Zipatoni Company, which involved the situation of Meyerkord, a former Zipatoni employee, who was listed on a website for web domain Read the rest of this entry
Ozarks Law & Economy 