Notorious Address In Eco-Village Sold At Sheriff's Sale TODAY (Neptune, God Of The Sea, Watches Impassively)

Photos By John Hoff, September 12

At 10 a.m. today, the house which is the fly in our eco-ointment, the "bane of the Eco-Village," the notorious crack house and periodic brothel, yes, 3020 6th St. N. changed hands at a sheriff's sale...

The sale took place in Room 30 at 350 S. 5th Street, the exterior of which is shown in the top photo. Lots of sheriff's sales take place there and, in the last year or so, this has been a VERY busy room.

The house sold for $244,117.96 to Deutsche Bank National Trust Co., as trustee. The law firm of Shapiro, Nordmeyer & Zielke represented the trustee. The mortgage holder, Evander Haymon, was reportedly not present at the sale.

Jeff Skrenes described for me some of the routine of a sheriff's sale under these circumstances, because it's a bit of an archane process. The idea of a sophisticated entity like Deutsche Bank paying a quarter of a million dollars for a crack house worth, perhaps, $24,900 on the market seems...somewhat counter-intuitive.

I asked Jeff, "Is the mortgage company basically buying this thing FROM THEMSELVES?" Jeff was, like, well...sort of, yes. The bid will be for the precise amount of the outstanding mortgage, because that is exactly how much they need. They don't want to bid less--say, $50,000--and have somebody else come along with that exact amount and say, "Here, I can redeem the mortgage."

Arg. Mortgages. I let Jeff handle the ins and outs of that stuff.

Jeff says when the market was hot, buyers would actually show up at these sales and bid $150,000 on a home they knew could be sold for $200,000 a short while later. Those days are gone. So gone. Well, for now.

The bottom two photos show details of a statue in the spectacular lobby of 350 S. 5th Street, a.k.a. "City Hall."

Over the years, this statue has seen much. Just what did Neptune see TODAY? What did the (alleged) "God of the Oceans" know, and when did he know it?

This is a watershed moment, but virtually no changes are expected in the short term. We expect the drug sales, drug loitering, and periodic prostitution activity to continue at 3020 6th St. N. in the heart of the multi-million dollar Eco-Village project.

City officials are reportedly working hard to solve our problems. I hope they succeed. We wait, we endure, we watch over our shoulders, we watch each other's backs. We can't really watch our vehicles very well, so the vehicles get the brunt of the "push back."