Clouded, tangled history leads to empty, unsold Gowanus brownstone
A three-story brick townhouse in Gowanus sold for a mere $20,000 in late 2013, and is now almost impossible to sell because of its “clouded” history involving multiple sales, legal and not-so-legal entities, mortgages, banks and more.
In The Outline, Cole Hawes Louison recalls how, when he moved into an apartment in the home in 2011, the owner, Eddie, insisted that he pay in cash. Louison later learned that Eddie in fact didn’t own the house, and had sold it to someone named Barrington Adrian around the same time.
This didn’t matter until 2014, when Eddie told Louison he had sold the house and that Louison had to leave. That’s when a lawyer friend told Louison not only that Adrian had bought the house in 2011, but that subsequently, Adrian had sold the house to an entity known as AOTA LLC, according to The Outline. Adrian had reportedly taken out mortgages totaling $1 million on the house and hadn’t been making his payments. The bank was preparing to foreclose on the house but suddenly withdrew its notice to foreclose, likely because the feds were watching the situation closely, The Outline reported. In 2016, the mortgage was satisfied in Idaho with the help of a company that helps banks divide, bundle and resell mortgages. A few more changes of ownership, and Louison and the former owner were both out of the house – which is still unsold.
