Four years ago, Deborah Thomas got a call from an unknown number.
The stranger on the line introduced himself as Eddie Doran and informed her that he was a new co-owner or soon to be co-owner of her home — a two-story brownstone just blocks away from the upscale restaurants and bars that gentrification had brought to Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Malcolm X Boulevard.
Doran’s announcement seemed ridiculous to the 56-year-old Thomas and her husband, Aston Smith, a retired Jamaican-born municipal truck driver. Smith bought the house in 1995, paid taxes on it and co-owned it with Thomas and his mother, who had recently passed away.
But Doran and his co-investors had found Aston Smith’s estranged brother, Raymond Smith, in North Carolina. After their mother’s death, Raymond had inherited half of her real estate holdings, including 16.66% of the Brooklyn brownstone. The investors were urging him to sell them that minority share — a transaction that, through the intricacies of New York state law, would soon threaten Smith and Thomas’ ability to stay in their home.
By law, anyone with any fractional interest in a property can go to court and demand that a judge order its sale, splitting the proportional proceeds among its recognized shareholders.
Three months after scooping up Smith’s brother’s inheritance stake, the investors did just that.
In order to avoid litigation that could have forced a sale of the home in which they were living, Thomas and her husband wound up paying Doran and his two co-investors $235,000 to buy the share the Doran operation had picked up from the estranged sibling for $65,000.
In an interview with THE CITY, Doran explained that the looming forced sale of the house triggered the eventual agreement with the couple.
“We were gonna squeeze them and sell [the property] at auction, and then we decided to settle,” he recalled.
Ingenious Business Model
Deborah Thomas and Aston Smith aren’t alone.
An investigation by THE CITY found that a group of investors — Doran, Jonathan Marcus, Vincent Longobardi and Earl Davis — have acquired or attempted to acquire fractional stakes in more than 50 properties, mostly in Brooklyn’s gentrifying historically Black and Latino neighborhoods, in some cases enriching themselves many times more than the heirs they profess to help.
Their ingenious business model is rooted in finding far-flung heirs, leveraging family animosities and pushing or sweet-talking longtime Brooklyn residents into deals that some now say they regret or feel they had no choice but to make. One of the speculators is a convicted burglar. The other three were convicted for possession of stolen property.
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“I’m giving voiceless people options where they didn’t have any. I’m trying to work something out with the other owners in a way that’s positive for everyone,” said Marcus, expressing a view the other three echoed.
“I’m not looking to steal generational wealth from families. But I also didn’t create the situation where you and your other co-owners are at such odds with each other that there are irreconcilable differences,” he continued.
While such real estate transactions have been scrutinized at times by courts and city officials, much of it is in fact legal through a little known but historically fraught legal tenet called “partition,” which speculators have used to
extract wealth from generations of Black and Latino families across the country.
In New York City today, the opportunities for profit through such maneuvers are especially ripe in neighborhoods where real estate is rapidly appreciating and longtime homeowners often die without wills, which can leave a scattering of heirs whose fractional interests speculators can pursue for purchase. Even when homeowners do have wills, they may be written in a vague manner, opening the door to fractious family disputes over what the deceased intended
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www.thecity.nyc
Article is too long and theres some graphs. Read it. Make sure your parents have their affairs in order
And, yeah, you already know it's old cats getting finessed for this shyt.
