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Read the press release here.

Inwood Building on Auction Block After Landlord Defaults on Loan

By Carla Zanoni | April 7, 2011 7:03pm
One building resident said repairs in the building have been from bad to worse in the past ten years he has lived there.
One building resident said repairs in the building have been from bad to worse in the past ten years he has lived there.
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DNAinfo/Carla Zanoni

By Carla Zanoni

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

INWOOD — An Inwood building owned by a California-based real estate firm went on the auction block Wednesday after the group took out a $2 million mortgage to cover the costs of the building, but defaulted on payments, according to reports.

Milbank Real Estate purchased the rent stabilized 45-unit apartment building at 509 W. 212th St. in 2007 for $4.79 million. 

The rent-stabilized building has logged 47 violations with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), including citations for no heat and hot water, since Millbank defaulted last year. 

The company owes the department $13,000 for emergency repairs, reported the Wall Street Journal.

An Inwood building is on the auction block after its landlord defaulted on a $2 million loan.
An Inwood building is on the auction block after its landlord defaulted on a $2 million loan.
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DNAinfo/Carla Zanoni

The same group defaulted on a $35 million loan on 10 apartment buildings in the Bronx in 2010, according to the New York Times.

"They are the perfect representation of what went wrong during the housing boom," Dina Levy, a director at the housing advocacy group Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, told the Journal. "They wreaked havoc and left a lot of turmoil in their wake and lot of us are struggling to clean it up."

Milbank did not respond to requests for comment. 

LNR Property Corp., who is handling the auction, also did not return calls for comment.

One building resident, who asked to remain anonymous, said that although maintenance in the building had always been problematic in the nearly 10 years he has lived there, getting repairs in his apartment had become even more difficult over the past year.

"The more things change the more things stay the same," he said. "All of these guys get away with murder, who knows if the next landlord will be any better."