Akron   They may spell Harbour with a “u” in a head fake to make you think this is a high-class operation from London or something, but when you are dealing with Harbour Portfolio, it’s just a Dallas-based private equity operation with Wall Street roots, that leaped down into vulture financing to buy thousands of FNMA foreclosed houses. What makes them different though is that they have flaunted the fact that they were going to try to make their bucks by off-loading the homes using contract for deed land purchase agreements, which most people in Ohio and Pennsylvania just call rent-to-own, though they are a bit of a different animal.

The ACORN teams on a doorknocking blitz this week starting in Pittsburgh, then Youngstown, Ohio, finished with two teams hitting forty doors in a cumulative ten-hour sprint in Akron. Over the three days, we may have put the flesh to the wood on close to 100 homes. We wanted to listen carefully to what people were saying to understand how their experience with these high-risk and often blatantly predatory home purchase schemes were working out for them. We learned a barrel full and met some great people, and the week was invaluable in allowing us to finally get our arms around this campaign after surrounding it with almost four months of researching property records, looking at agreements, and getting a sense of the field and its cast of characters.

With few exceptions, people wanted to talk to us because they were as confused and uncertain about the fine print on their contracts and agreements as we were. They knew they wanted to buy a house and for the most part thought this was the only way they had a chance, so dove in and hoped they would never hit bottom.

One of our teams though talked about part of their conversation as the “angel of death” piece of their rap where they felt like they were giving people the news that they very likely would never going to own the house. My team was more gingerly, and as my doorknocking partner said to one Harbour Portfolio contract buyer with four years into the deal that we would like to go over the contract with them to make sure they would own the home at the end of their agreement, she looked us in the eye, and said that she also was scared that the contract would really never end up with a deed.

On one of our visit Harbour Portfolio visits in Akron, we started after identifying ourselves and asking the confirmation question about whether the man had a contract with Harbour. He quickly came to the steps saying, “You mean Harbour Portfolio!” He was mad about every part of his experience with Harbour. A bathroom ceiling had fallen down on his sister causing $1400 in repairs, and, worse, hurting her so badly she wasn’t able to work. On our first Harbour visit in Pittsburgh, we had been ushered into the living room to talk to the owner who was confined to the couch, recovering from surgery on a fused disc in her neck. Later in the conversation it turned out faulty steps in the house had caused the fall. To say some of these homes are unsafe for their new contract buyers is not speculation, but a statement of fact.

There was confusion about the contracts from start to finish. One owner noted that somehow they had allowed his sister to sign, rather than him, confusing the family and the potential ownership. Another was sure she had a mortgage despite the fact that she was paying National Assets, one of Harbour’s servicers, had only paid $1500 as a down payment on what she knew as a double-digit rate of interest and thought would cost her $100,000 before it was over on a home she knew Harbour had bought for $13,000. She finally agreed it was not a mortgage, when she recognized the term “contract for deed” was on her agreement after we mentioned that kind of instrument. Another had gone through three servicers already. None of the terms matched. One was paying insurance directly and having problems with Harbour telling her they were also paying for the insurance through them, and had been unable to stop the double payments.

None of this was “let the buyer beware,” so much as all of it was “make the buyer scared!” Every Harbour buyer we met was holding their breath that they would own these homes on a hope and a prayer without any real grip on their contracts and even a scintilla of belief that Harbour was dealing with them in good faith.

Several of our team were veterans of ACORN’s many anti-predatory lending campaigns so for some of them it seemed like déjà vu all over again. The only exception was that these contract purchase and rent-to-own schemes were so much worse. In those deals, most of the theft was on the level of the interest, points, and fees. Here it’s everyday pocket pinch on homes built on hopes and often crumbling around them.

Please enjoy Willie Nelson’s He Won’t Ever Be Gone.

Thanks to KABF.