Cohen:  "more speculation"

MONTICELLO – The good news about this week’s tax foreclosure auction in Sullivan County is that very few primary residences were involved.  That according to County Treasurer Ira Cohen, who said the bad news was 130 properties on the block this year and that’s significantly higher than the 87 a year ago. 

Only two families actually lost homes.  Cohen credits the low number of displaced families to a county program that helps people in serious trouble with mortgages to find a way out.  About 40 families took advantage of the program last year, and this.

Cohen said that meant most of the properties on the block were second homes or abandoned farms and businesses, opening the door to outside speculators, who came in despite the collapse of one big boon the county was counting on.

“Not a lot of speculation on casino gaming any more, and you have what’s well know to be a down real estate market.  With those things in consideration, there was more speculation than we anticipated.”

Case in point, a house at Sackett Lake. “We had one that was run down and needed a lot of work, but it was on the lake and sold for $170,000, which is a lot more than I would have thought.”

The strangest sale, Camp Fordham, in Mamakating, purchased for about $3 million three years ago.  The Orthodox Jewish group that bought it then never paid any taxes, owing more than $53,000.  An attempt to forestall the foreclosure failed in court.  The group repurchased the property, this time for about $2.2 million. 

The camp accounted for over half the almost $4 million realized at this year’s auction.  That’s three times what the county took in last year.