So some 10 to 20 years ago you took out a mortgage to purchase your home and live happily ever after with your family?
Then the financial crisis hit and you lost your job and income. You scrambled to make the payments and reached out to your alleged “servicer” for help and a loan modification. Ya right.
Brockton family of four faces eviction by real estate investor after foreclosure
Staff Reporter
Wicked Local
BROCKTON – One day last August cars began to park outside the Dedrick family’s home on Linwood Street.
First one, then another, until the side of the road was full.
Paul Dedrick, a stay-at-home dad, was at home with his two children at the time, and did not know what was happening until a man appeared saying he was from JPMorgan Chase, the company that owned the family’s mortgage.
He said he was going to auction off their home.
Bidders pulled out their cell phones, spoke among themselves for 10 minutes and then dispersed.
The home, assessed in 2013 at $187,200, sold for $147,100 to a real estate company based in Taunton known for purchasing foreclosed homes and flipping them for profit.
“It’s scary,” Julianne Dedrick said. “I commute by T and I get this phone call that my house is being auctioned. I can’t be there in 10 minutes.”
Julianne Dedrick, a radiology scheduler at Boston Children’s Hospital, purchased the home from her siblings when their father died in 2010. She bought it for $100,000 and moved her family from Dorchester to Brockton.
“It was a sweetheart deal,” Dedrick said.
Now the Dedrick’s are faced with packing up and leaving their home. They were scheduled to be evicted Monday. The family, including son Decland, 10, and daughter Audra, 7, plans to stay with friends in Randolph.
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“I like to play here a lot,” Deland said in his backyard Monday afternoon. “I built my own little shed and everything, and now we have to leave it. It’s sad, but that’s the way it works.”
The Dedricks are not alone.
Recent housing data shows that Brockton continues to lag behind the rest of the state with the highest rate of distressed properties within its borders, even as Massachusetts recovers from the mortgage crisis that struck the nation in 2008.
A report issued by the nonprofit Massachusetts Housing Partnership in April showed that 13.4 percent of every 1,000 housing units in Brockton are distressed.
A property is considered distressed if a foreclosure petition has been filed or an auction scheduled in the previous year, or if it has been bank-owned for up to two years.
The Brockton Bank Tenants Association works regularly with 125 homeowners in Brockton and surrounding towns who have sought help over evictions or foreclosures, said group member Emma Grigsby.
Steve Meacham is an organizer with the nonprofit housing advocacy group City Life Vida Urbana, based in Boston, which helped organize a vigil for the Dedrick’s Sunday afternoon.
He said although the Dedrick’s and homeowners in similar situations often try to work with mortgage holders to modify their mortgages while still making rent payments, the companies refuse to budge.
“That’s not what they want,” Meacham said. “They’re flippers.”
Julianne Dedrick said JPMorgan Chase gave her “the run-around” on attempts to modify her mortgage before the auction.
Afterward, she said, there was no interest on the part of Carlos Melo, owner of Solo Realty, to negotiate with the Dedrick’s and allow them to purchase or stay in their home permanently.
“They saw a chance to strike and dump it for a quick flip,” Paul Dedrick said.
Melo could not be reached for comment Monday.
Staff writer Edward Donga contributed to this report. Joseph Markman may be reached at jmarkman@enterprisenews.com.
