A terrifying and all too common component of foreclosure….the banks just kicking down doors and breaking into homes……I’ve litigated these cases far and wide….and the banks won’t back down….
THEY TAKE THE POSITION THAT THEY HAVE THE RIGHT TO BREAK INTO YOUR HOME!
Outside in the world, Safeguard Properties was supposed to be protecting millions of homes that had slid into foreclosure, shoring up and repairing abandoned properties for the banks that were responsible for tending to all this real estate gone bad.
But inside the offices of Safeguard’s complaint department, Kevin Kubovcik says he gained a starkly different perspective on his company’s pursuits as allegations of incompetence, malevolence and larceny rolled in day after day.
People with legal title to their property called to complain that Safeguard contractors had broken into their homes and carted off family heirlooms, valuable artwork and weapons, he recalled. People living next door to foreclosed properties complained that Safeguard mixed up the addresses and locked them out of their own homes.
Complaints came in seemingly without end. “I’d pick up the phone, put it down, and then it would ring again,” Kubovcik said.
A recent Huffington Post investigation focused on Safeguard as the largest player in a little-scrutinized industry spawned by the American housing bust: the contractors tasked with the gritty work of maintaining a veritable empire of distressed real estate. Safeguard has been the target of dozens of lawsuits alleging that its contractors have wrongly broken into properties and carted off people’s property.
In response to previous questions from HuffPost about break-ins at occupied properties, Safeguard dismissed such incidents as “extremely rare” compared to the sheer volume of jobs the company manages. But Kubovcik, who logged and investigated complaints for more than two years until he left the company in April 2010, said his experience attests to precisely the opposite.
HUFFINGTON POST
