I've been busy improving the site and I can't believe I missed this listing yesterday. A notice of sale was issued for a property in Fort Lee, NJ with a judgment of $31,342,684.70. The address of the property is a fairly non descript "Vacant Land Along Lemoine Ave."

I won't be able to verify it until Monday, but the only property I can think of that it could possibly be is the 16 acre plot of land near the George Washington Bridge on Lemoine Ave in Fort Lee that was supposed to be the future home of the Centuria Project.

Update: It is indeed the Centuria Project that is being foreclosed. The plaintiff in the case is TDC Fort Lee, LCC which I believe is a company set up by Tucker Development Corp to invest in the project. Tucker Development corporation is a commercial real estate firm from Chicago, IL that was going to invest up to $1.5 billion in the Centuria Project. In May 2008, they put out a press release that they purchased a $29 million loan from an affiliate of Principal Financial that was secured by a portion of the development. That's probably the loan in question that is being foreclosed on.

The Centuria Project was supposed to be a mixed use development that would build over 1.7 million square feet of residential, retail, office and hotel space in downtown Fort Lee. For over 35 years, the property has been vacant and the project was an important part of Fort Lee's redevelopment plans.

Since 2003, the only thing that ever developed on the site was a fence and a sales office. Town & Country ran into problems early on with contaminated soil from a previous dry cleaning business on the site. Before the foundation could even be dug, the tigtening credit markets made find financing for such a project difficult, if not impossible.

Driving through Fort Lee, you see many signs for vacant storefronts and office space. The slowing residential market and current abbundance of luxury highrises probably made the project seem unviable.

Back in May 2008, Town & Country Developers announced they had engaged the services of Cushman & Wakefield's Metropolitan Area Capital Markets Group to sell the project for $1 billion. According to the various news articles on the project, Town & Country had secured around $80 million in financing for the project. If this foreclosure takes precedent over the other loans secured by the property, it could be a great deal for the next developer but bad news for the other lenders.

In June 2008, Town & Country was stripped of it's rights to develop the property it bought for $45 million in 2003, because it was behind $878,000 in taxes and fees. Town & Country seemed to also have another agreement with the Borough of Fort Lee to be the approved redeveloper for the Borough, and that status was also going to be revoked. At the same time, one of Town & Country's lenders began foreclosure proceedings in which the Borough of Fort Lee was also a named defendant. That's likely the loan associated with this notice of sale.

The property has quite a history. It used to have one and two family homes that were built after World War I and some stores and a movie theater along Lemoine Ave. Most development proposals since included a movie theater. With Fort Lee's rich history in film making, it's very strange for the Borough not to have a movie theater.

Investors Funding Corporation started buying up and demolishing all the properties in the 70's. They ran into problems when serveral officers of Investors Funding were convicted of attempting to bribe the Mayor of Fort Lee in order to obtain the approvals necessary to build the proposed project.

In 1980, Harry B. Helmsley started looking to acquire the property and after purchasing it proposed a mixed residential/office project in 1985 which was never built. By 1990, Helmsley had received approval from the town, but not from the county.

Quite a troubled history for a project considered to be one of the prime commercial real estate plots in the north east.

This week, 2 additional NJ Counties were added to the site. You can now find Morris County foreclosures and Monmouth County foreclosures on this site.

Adding more counties has been the most frequent request I've received so I'll do what I can to in that regard. To access other counties, use the drop down menu in the header of the site. Put your mouse over the white county box and it will drop down to show a list of counties. Click on the county you are interested in. The following screen shot illustrates how to do this. (currently this menu is not on the blog so click the logo to get to the home page)

Once you select a county, you will go to the county page, which shows overview information and statistics about the foreclosure auctions in that county. There are charts that show the top 10 cities by foreclosure auction activity in that county, number of foreclosures and average foreclosure judgment for the past few months as well as average winning bids and the average judgment of homes sold at foreclosure auction. You'll also see number of current foreclosure auctions scheduled and when the next foreclosure auction is scheduled.

To see foreclosure listings, select the municipality (city) from the Municipality drop down list. Only municipalites for that county will be displayed. Or you can use the link at the bottom of the page.

The interface for viewing foreclosure home listings is the same interface you know and (hopefully?) love from viewing Bergen County foreclosures on this site.

There were some other enhancements to the site that should improve performance. Some of you were having a problem where the table of foreclosure listings was not being populated unless you reloaded the page. That should now be fixed as well.

If you have any feedback on the changes or thoughts please leave a comment on this blog post or use the Contact form on the top menu.

If you're looking for other NJ foreclosures use the page for US Foreclosures & REOs. The listings are provided by a third party. To get detailed listing information you need to sign up but they have a free trial period.

Twelve properties had been scheduled for last Friday's foreclosure auction in Bergen County.  Of the 8 that seemed to be auctioned off, only 2 were sold. Both were sold to an investor that also had the winning bid on 2 foreclosures in the previous auction.

8 Orchard Ct, Lodi, NJ - had a winning bid of $337,500 by John Gloria, which was 25.73% below the foreclosure judgment of $454,428.03. The home was last sold in December 2005 for $515,000. The winning bid was 34% less than the bubble price. From 2004 to 2005, this house was sold 3 times for $424k, $467k and finally $515k. Not sure if people were going crazy flipping this house of if there were issues because of the odd shaped lot that backs up to an apartment building and a commercial business.

804 Grand Ave, Leonia, NJ - had a winning bid of $174,000 also by John Gloria. The winning bid was 65.94% below the foreclosure judgment of $510,854,59. The house changed hands twice during the bubble. Selling for $370k in 2004 and $580k in 2006. The winning bid was 70% below the 2006 price. I think that's the biggest drop we've seen in Bergen County.

Deutsche Bank had 3 properties at auction that didn't sell, one property appears to have gone back to the cond association and one went to HUD.

28 properties were scheduled for last Friday's foreclosure auction, 3 were sold out of the 10 that were put on auction. Two were sold below the awarded foreclosure judgment.

67 Willow Ave, Hackensack, NJ - had a winning bid of $235,00 from John Gloria. The house was last sold in 2006 for $455,000. The winning bid was 39% less than the foreclosure judgment of $384,445.57 and over 50% below the 2006 bubble price. It looks like the home was picked up by an investor in 2005 for $285,000 and flipped a a few months later for 60% more than paid for it.

68 Cresskill Ave, Dumont, NJ - had a winning bid of $260,000, also from John Gloria. The house was last sold in 2005 for $364,500. The winning bid was 19% below the foreclosure judgement of $320,037.94 and about 29% below the bubble price.

549 Howard St, Washington Twp, NJ - took a while to get to auction. The foreclosure judgment on the property was awarded almost a full year ago. The winning bid of $355,00 by East Coast Acquisitions, LLC was 53% above the foreclosure judgment of $231,752.59 awarded to US Bank NA in January 2008. This house was last purchased before the bubble for a price of $284,900 back in November 1993.

The first auction of the year had 42 properties scheduled, 22 weren't auctioned off, 18 didn't receive bids and 2 were sold.

555 Kipp St., Teaneck, NJ - had a winning bid of $239,000 by Eric Van Auken. The property was last sold in September 2006 for $420,000. That's a 43% discount compared to the bubble price. The judgment awarded was $381,124.65 and the winning bid was about 15% less than that.

2 Valley Lane, Upper Saddle River, NJ - had a winning bid of $510,100 by James Vercelli. That's about 28% off the foreclosure judgment of $712,596.15 awrded to Avelo Mortgage, LLC. The home was also last sold in September 2006 for $$1,160,000.  That's 56% below the bubble price.

The strange thing about the Upper Saddle River property is that it was previously auctioned off before and I mentioned it in the November 7 auction report. Back then it had a winning bid of $504,000 by Matthew LLC.

BusinessWeek is reporting that foreclosure.com released data that 1 million homes were lost through foreclosure in 2008. Up 63% compared to 2007.

President of Foreclosures.com, Alexis McGee, believes that the worst is behind us. I'm not sure that this is the case. While home prices have fallen a bit, and interest rates are low, house prices are still overpriced compared to incomes and many Americans are dealing with losing their jobs or seeing their income decline.

While the bailout has helped some banks cover their loses, it hasn't opened up lending much. Especially for those looking to refianance out of problem mortgages.

So far, the programs aimed to help homeowners in foreclosure haven't had much success.

RealtyTrac, another company that tracks nationwide foreclosure information, reported slightly different numbers.

U.S. foreclosure activity jumped 81 percent in 2008, with one in every 54 households getting at least one filing notice, suggesting various state laws and private programs to slow the process have been ineffective, RealtyTrac reported on Thursday.

Nearly 3.2 million foreclosure filings on 2.3 million properties were made last year, the Irvine, California-based research firm said. Filings include notice of default, auction sale or bank repossession.

While foreclosure activity did slow in the 4th quarter, it was still up 40% from the 4th quarter of 2007. If other parts of the country are similar to what happened here in Bergen County, many foreclosures were likely postponed due to the holidays. Hundreds of foreclosures that were scheduled to be auctioned off in November and December were pushed back to January 2009.