Until this year, Honesdale attorney Jeffrey S. Treat thought he had seen everything in the wild world of home restoration, flipping and landlording.
CitiMortgage and its agents confused his handyman’s special — a small, long-vacant foreclosure he purchased for cash at 1526A Thackery Avenue in Scranton — with a home it foreclosed on two doors down.
In several visits from June through July, the bank cleared Mr. Treat’s building of its contents, including tools, building materials and replacement windows.
The bank changed the locks and crudely padlocked and posted the home.
This came as a great shock to Mr. Treat, who had no mortgage on the home and no relationship with Citi.
Unable to reach an agreement with the bank or the company that did the property clean-out, Safeguard Properties of Valley View, Ohio, Mr. Treat sued them and CitiMortgage Inc. of O’Fallon, Missouri, for the $3,500 estimated worth of what they removed and $5,000 for trespassing and damages.
A spokesman for Citi said Safeguard Properties and Mr. Treat are trying to resolve the issue. But Mr. Treat is past negotiating and is preparing for court.
“I don’t live there, and it was just tools, lumber and whatnot, but it’s just bizarre that this would happen,” he said. “It’s my place and all these people were in there and they took my stuff. Yeah, I feel violated.”
He purchased the small vacant home in April 2012, from an estate for $12,000 cash. It was a mess, but he liked the challenge.
Clues of mistake
All summer, there were subtle and not-so-subtle clues that a big bank was about to pounce on his property. Mr. Treat tried to warn everyone, but never suspected a confused mortgagor would trespass, break into his property and remove everything in it.
It started when he found oversized sheriff’s sale notice on the house, citing a CitiMortgage foreclosure. He called the big law firm handling CitiMortgage’s foreclosures. “You got the wrong house,” he said. He researched the Citi’s actual foreclosure, found the property they wanted was two doors up, which he said was in much better shape than his dusty gut-job. He thought that was the end of it.
He continued working on the property, often with help from his father-in-law, who is retired and enjoys the activity. Through the summer, the grass was mowed regularly.
Mr. Treat concluded his father-in-law was taking care of the lawn.
His father-in-law thought Mr. Treat was taking care of the lawn.
They never discussed it.
Turns out, it was probably CitiMortgage and Safeguard Properties.
“That shows you what kind of guy I am,” Mr. Treat said. “I didn’t even thank my father-in-law for the work I thought he was doing, otherwise I would have known that Citibank was treating my property as though it was theirs.” He gets wind of people on his property and makes a visit, finding the locks changed, the home cleared and a padlocks attached from the outside.
The neighbors watched it happened, thinking Mr. Treat fell behind on his payments.
Mr. Treat broke into his own property, saw his stuff was gone and replaced by a Safeguard sign-in clipboard where employees logged their visits and what they had done. Mr. Treat’s tools, replacement windows, even bags of cement were gone. Mr. Treat put up a sign to CitiMortgage and Safeguard, telling them to that it is not their house.
Still, in August, Mr. Treat came across a young man taking snapshots of the property on behalf of CitiMortgage.
“Wrong house. You want that house,” he said, ripping off one his warnings to CitiMortgage and Safeguard and handing it to the man and pointing him two doors down.
Homes similar
The homes on Thackery Avenue are easy to confuse. Company homes, they look nearly identical from the front, distinguished by the difference in siding, personalized touches and salt box additions for kitchens and bathrooms that the original structures were not equipped with.
“If you come home drunk,” Mr. Treat said, “you have to be extra careful not to walk into someone else’s house.”
The addresses of some homes are not only non-sequential, but some are also ½, or share a number followed by A or B. That said, he’s not making up excuses for CitiMortgage.
His house had city building permits on the front and the back, with the correct address and ownership: his company TreatCo Properties, with contact information.
He provided Safeguard with a list of items they removed and an estimated value, trying to be conservative.
But when Safeguard balked and began to delay and haggle over the values, he sued for the removed items plus $5,000 for the trespass, violation and hassle of setting the matter straight.
“As attorneys, sometimes we have to say our client is sorry and write a check,” he said. “That’s how it works but they won’t do that. What if this were a regular Joe? What chance would he have?”
A spokesman for Citi thought something like that was in the works. Mark Rodgers, Citi spokesman, said in an emailed response: “We understand that the contractor involved is currently in discussions with the homeowner and hopes to reach an amicable resolution of the matter promptly.”
However, both CitiMortgage and Safeguard have hired a attorneys to fight the small claims suit.
A spokeswoman for Safeguard, Gretchen Fri, said she was unable to comment on the case. Safeguard assigned Diane Carvell, a Harrisburg attorney, to defend the company before Magisterial District Judge Terrence V. Gallagher. Ms. Carvell said she had no comment. CitiMortgage assigned an attorney as well.
Waste of money
Mr. Treat said he thinks the expense to challenge a legitimate claim is a waste of money on the companies’ part.
“What I initially asked for to be made whole was not even an hour of fuel in a corporate jet,” Mr. Treat said.
Still, while some of the items removed the house — Mr. Treat prefers to call them “stolen” — may not have had much monetary value, at least one item had sentimental value.
Mr. Treat was raised in a construction and lumber family. When he graduated from law school in 1982, his uncle Harold gave him the used wheelbarrow in which young Jeff would mix mortar when helping his family.
“When you use it you will remember where you came from — a working family that build things,” his uncle told him.
Uncle Harold died a few months after that exchange.
His wheelbarrow was collected — and presumably discarded — by Safeguard Properties on behalf of CitiMortgage.
Contact the writer: dfalchek@timesshamrock.com