County buys former Fleetwood buildings in Riverside

 

Two office buildings on the headquarters campus of motor-home maker Fleetwood Enterprises Inc. in Riverside have been acquired by Riverside County for $6.6 million.

CT Realty Investors Inc. sold the two buildings at 3125 and 3075 Myers St. in Citrus Park West business park just south of the 91 Freeway and west of Van Buren Boulevard, the seller said.

The county plans to use the office space for its Department of Mental Health and a data center, said James “Watty” Watson, president of CT Realty.

Aliso Viejo-based CT Realty purchased Citrus Park in 2008 from Fleetwood and converted the 417,811-square-foot, 12-building property to a multi-tenant business park offering office and warehouse buildings for sale or lease.

Fleetwood filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2009 and its assets were sold.

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-- Roger Vincent

Photo: The former Fleetwood headquarters in Riverside.  Credit: CT Realty Investors 

Former Burbank condo project sold as apartments

 

A recent Burbank condominium development where the units were never sold will be converted to apartments by its new owner.

Raintree Partners, a Laguna Niguel real estate investment and development company, paid $14 million for Taiko Village, a 43-unit condo complex at 1601 Scott Road that was built in 2009 but never opened.

“We will complete the small amount of finish work that remains at the property, obtain the certificate of occupancy and then rent the units out as apartments,” said Jeff Allen, chief executive of Raintree.

Taiko Village consists of three buildings on 1.12 acres, with a mix of townhouses and one-, two- and three-bedroom flats.

The acquisition brings Raintree’s holdings in California to 12 apartment complexes with more than 1,800 units, Allen said.

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Photo: Taiko Village in Burbank. Credit: Raintree Partners

Recording Academy, which awards Grammys, sells former headquarters

The Recording Academy, the organization that hands out the music industry’s annual Grammy Awards, sold its former Santa Monica headquarters to developers.

Developer Trammell Crow Co. and investment firm Westport Capital Partners bought the unoccupied three-story office building at 3402 Pico Blvd. and two adjacent residential parcels, real estate brokerage CB Richard Ellis said.

The price was not disclosed, but Westside real estate experts familiar with the property valued the deal at more than $10 million.

Trammell Crow hasn’t decided exactly what to do with the property yet, Senior Managing Director Brad Cox said, but some kind of residential development is likely.

“It’s a great piece of real estate in Santa Monica, where you [ordinarily] can’t find two and half acres of contiguous space,” Cox said.

The 39,128-square-foot office building constructed in 1969 has been vacant since the Recording Academy moved in 2009 to larger quarters in the nearby Lantana office park, which is home to many entertainment industry businesses.

Trammell Crow may refurbish the former Recording Academy building and rent it to a single tenant while building housing alongside. Or the developer may demolish the office and a vacant 11-unit apartment house on one of the adjacent parcels to make way for a new apartment complex.

“We’re looking at a combination of possibilities,” Cox said.

Development would conform with the city’s recent general plan update, he said. The east Santa Monica neighborhood that was formerly an industrial center is in the path of planned light rail service and is gentrifying.

“It’s turning into kind of a hipster location,” Cox said.

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-- Roger Vincent

Photo: Former Recording Academy headquarters in Santa Monica. Credit: CB Richard Ellis

 

Scam Watch: Investments, seniors, credit cards

Here is a roundup of alleged cons, frauds and schemes to watch out for.

Investment fraud –- A Fresno man has been indicted on mail and wire fraud charges related to an investment scheme that raised more than $2.9 million from victims. Janamjot “Jimmy” Sodhi is accused of defrauding investors from 2005 to 2011 through his company, Elite Financial Inc., federal prosecutors said. Sodhi told investors that he would use their money to purchase stocks, bonds and other investment instruments but instead used it for personal expenses and to pay returns to early investors, federal prosecutors said. Further, prosecutors said, Sodhi was not licensed by the state to make such investments and failed to inform clients that he was barred from the New York Stock Exchange in 2006.

Scams against seniors –- The Better Business Bureau said that older U.S. residents continue to be targets of scams. A survey by Investor Protection Trust in 2010 estimated that 20% of U.S. residents older than 65 have been victims of financial scams. The schemes include bereavement scams, in which people whose spouses just died are contacted and told that that they must pay their deceased spouses’ outstanding debts that did not exist. Other popular scams are work-at-home opportunities in which people are instructed to pay a fee to receive an opportunity to work from home or lottery scams in which they’re told they need to pay taxes upfront before they can receive a nonexistent lottery prize.  The Better Business Bureau cautions seniors never to pay for a job and never to wire money to people they do not know.

Small businesses –- The Federal Trade Commission is mailing refunds to about 100 small-business owners across the U.S. who were defrauded by companies that said they could reduce their expenses for processing credit card transactions. The FTC had accused several companies, including Merchant Processing Inc., Direct Merchant Processing Inc. and Vequity Financial Group Inc., of failing to disclose fees, concealed in pages of fine print, to their customers. Under a settlement the FTC reached with the companies, about $345,000 is being returned to merchants, the FTC said. Refunds will range from about $100 to more than $25,000, the FTC said.

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 -- Stuart Pfeifer 

Podcast: European Debt, a Tax Plan and General Motors

It’s been a difficult three months for the financial markets, and the global economy is weak. Unfortunately, more problems are probably on the way.

A resolution of the Greek financial crisis is not in sight. Approval of new powers for a stopgap bailout fund depends on the approval of all 17 members of the euro zone, and Finland, Germany and Austria all gave a thumbs-up in the last several days, as I write in the Strategies column in Sunday Business. But in a conversation in the new Weekend Business podcast, Floyd Norris says that many other countries still need to vote, and that even if they approve the strengthening of the fund, further remedies for Greece — requiring many further votes — will undoubtedly be required. The global economy, meanwhile, appears to be losing steam.

The United States has not come up with a solution for its fiscal problems yet, and many Republicans in Congress are opposed to raising taxes. In a separate conversation, and in the Economic View column in Sunday Business, Tyler Cowen, the George Mason University economist, says that a tax increase is inevitable sooner or later. If it doesn’t come as part of a “grand bargain” to reduce the deficit, he says, it will be forced on the United States later on — so it’s best to try to come up with a reasonable solution now.

And in his new book, “Once Upon a Car,” Bill Vlasic says G.M.’s plight in 2008 was so serious that it contemplated a merger with its cross-town rival, Ford. That merger didn’t take place, of course, but in a conversation with David Gillen, he says that it was actually proposed in a meeting between the leaders of the two companies. An article adapted from Mr. Vlasic’s book appears on the cover of Sunday Business.

You can find specific segments of the podcast at these junctures: Floyd Norris (30:27); news headlines (18:47); Bill Vlasic on G.M. (14:45); Tyler Cowen (6:50); the week ahead (1:30).

You can download the program by subscribing from The New York Times’s podcast page or directly from iTunes.

California breaks from 50-state probe into mortgage lenders [Updated]

 

California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris will no longer take part in a national foreclosure probe of some of the nation's biggest banks, which are accused of pervasive misconduct in dealing with troubled homeowners.

Harris removed herself from talks by a coalition of state attorneys general and federal agencies investigating abusive foreclosure practices because the nation's five largest mortgage servicers were not offering California homeowners relief commensurate to what people in the state had suffered, Harris told The Times on Friday.

The big banks were also demanding to be granted overly broad immunity from legal claims that could potentially derail further investigations into Wall Street's role in the mortgage meltdown, Harris said.

“It has been  a process of negotiating and sitting at a table in good faith, but ultimately I have decided that we have to go our own course and take an independent path. And that decision is because we need to bring relief to Californians that is equal to the pain California experienced, and what is being negotiated now is insufficient," Harris told The Times in an interview.

Harris delivered the news in a letter sent Friday to Iowa Atty. Gen. Tom Miller, who has been leading the 50-state coalition.

[Updated 5:36 p.m.: Iowa Atty. Gen. Tom Miller, who has been leading the negotiations, vowed to press on.

“California has been an important part of our team and has made a significant contribution to this case,” Miller said in a statement. “However, the multistate effort is pressing forward and we fully expect to reach a settlement with the banks.”]

The removal of California from the discussions is a major blow to fraying efforts by the coalition, which has been trying to strike a settlement deal with the big banks for months. The move by Harris to reject the settlement talks is also a key departure from efforts by the Obama administration, which has been pushing for a fast resolution to the so-called robo-signing scandal that erupted last year.

“This whole concept of a settlement on foreclosure abuse is probably dead,” said Christopher Whalen, the founder of Institutional Risk Analytics. “Nobody in their right mind is going to opt into a settlement right now.”

For California homeowners, the move means the probable end of an opportunity for relatively quick relief stemming from revelations last year that banks improperly foreclosed on troubled borrowers. Key reforms to mortgage-servicing and foreclosure practices pushed by the attorneys general may also be delayed.

Harris has faced increasing pressure in recent weeks from inside and outside the state to reject any deal that was considered too weak, particularly as the foreclosure crisis in the Golden State appears to be worsening.

Among the states with the highest foreclosure rates, California led the pack in new foreclosure proceedings last month, with an increase of 55% over July, according to data from Irvine-based RealtyTrac. Metro areas in the inland parts of California posted big jumps in August, with Riverside and San Bernardino counties soaring 68%, Bakersfield 44% and Modesto 57%.

In rejecting the 50-state talks, California also widens the riff among law enforcement officials nationwide over the best approach to pursuing banks for mortgage misdeeds.

New York Atty. Gen. Eric Schneiderman, who was originally part of the 50-state negotiations, has launched a wide-ranging investigation into Wall Street's role in the mortgage meltdown -– focusing on the efforts to bundle low-quality mortgages into sophisticated bonds.

Schneiderman has been highly critical of the proposed 50-state settlement and expressed concern that his counterparts in other states may let the banks off too lightly and provide immunity from other efforts to bring them to account for misdeeds. Schneiderman has also won support from attorneys general in Delaware, Nevada, Massachusetts, Kentucky and Minnesota, some of whom have launched their own investigations.

A spokesman for Schneiderman, Danny Kanner, welcomed Harris's move.

“Attorney General Schneiderman looks forward to his continued work with Attorney General Harris and his other state and federal counterparts to ensure those responsible for the mortgage crisis are held accountable and homeowners who are suffering receive meaningful relief,” said Kanner.

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Photo: California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris speaks at a news conference in May to announce the creation of the California Attorney General's Mortgage Fraud Strike Force. At left is Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Credit: Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times

[Updated] Citibank slaps customers with $15 monthly fee for checking

Another day, another new bank fee.

As the uproar swelled over Bank of America Corp.'s planned $5 monthly charge for debit cards, megabank rival Citigroup Inc. was telling checking accounts holders that it would sock them with a $15 a month fee unless they maintain a balance above $6,000.

Customers such as Cheryl Holt of Burbank were complaining to The Times about the letters they received this week from Citibank, Citigroup’s retail arm. Holt said she opened the envelope and was confronted by what she called an "absurd salutation."

"Customers like you have told us that what they want from their banks are simple options and great rewards," the giant New York bank said. "We heard you and are writing to let you know that we are making some changes to your EZ Checking Package."

The demand for $15 a month -- $180 a year -- for a checking account sent Holt out Friday morning on a quest for free checking, an endangered service as big banks, awash in deposits, raise fees and cut costs to keep their profits up despite the sluggish economy.

"I’m on my way out the door right now," Holt wrote in an email to The Times, "off to start a new account at my nearest credit union.

"Should have done it years ago!"

Citi representatives didn’t immediately return a call for comment.

UPDATE: A Citibank spokeswoman said customers can avoid the fee by opting for a “basic” checking account, having at least one direct deposit made into it each month, and making at least one automated bill payment from the account monthly.

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-- E. Scott Reckard