Agoura Chateau Park condo owners sink into foreclosure

Faulty construction, market crash provided a recipe for disaster



CRACKED—A wall behind one of the Chateau Park condos.

CRACKED—A wall behind one of the Chateau Park condos.

A single mother who could be homeless within a matter of weeks is being forced out of her Chateau Park condominium in Agoura Hills while banks, lawyers and insurance companies try to deflect blame for the damage to her home caused by alleged faulty construction.

Corrine Foster’s condo isn’t the only one with cracked walls, ceilings and floors due to a shifting foundation stemming from loose, poorly compacted soil. Her next-door neighbor, also a single mother, faces similar problems— and similar legal headaches.

Foster’s $259,000 condo, purchased in 2000, doubled in value at the height of the housing boom, but dropped in price just as swiftly due to the market crash and—more disturbingly— because of the massive damage to the unit that experts say was caused by the water-laden construction site where developer Dale Poe built the homes in 1981.

Last year, offers as low as $60,000 were made on Foster’s distressed property, an 1,800-square-foot unit with three bedrooms and two-and-a-half bathrooms in the heart of Agoura Hills.

When the 49-year-old mother of two saw the price of the home plummeting, she and her parents, Bruce and Lydie Foster of Virginia, the homeowners on the title, stopped making payments and became entangled in a lawsuit with the Chateau Park Homeowners Association.

“Why should we pay on something that had no value? Nobody would do anything,” Lydie Foster said.

As the Fosters fell deeper underwater, Wells Fargo bank took possession of the property and sold it in March. Corrine Foster faces pending eviction and her parents have lost everything.

Early signals

A pre-construction soils report from Dale Poe in 1979 said the site contained areas of “intermittent springs” and “groundwater seepage,” but recommended the condo development should still proceed. A 1981 Los Angeles County inspector’s report said moisture content of the underlying soils exceeded “optimum” levels. And as late as 2010, a geologist for State Farm insurance labeled the soils “highly expansive.”

In the soon-to-be new city of Agoura Hills, where growth was booming and the price of raw land was escalating, construction on the 200-unit condo development went full tilt ahead, despite the experts’ warnings.

Today, the city acknowledges the site on Canwood Street just east of Reyes Adobe Road remains a porous mess that has caused large cracks on the public street and has left one light pole leaning like the Tower of Pisa.

“When they constructed that whole area it probably wasn’t properly engineered or compacted,” said Ramiro Adeva, Agoura Hills city engineer. The city plans to begin rebuilding the road this fall.

When told about the plight of the Chateau Park homeowners, Adeva said, “It’s both of us going through the same thing.”

As pressure from homeowners mounted, Poe’s insurance company settled with the HOA in the late 1990s in a deal more than $20 million, money that was supposed to repair the loose ground soil, the improper drainage, and the driveways that were separating from the buildings.

Some homeowners question whether the corrective work was ever done.

According to Michael Harper, Foster’s attorney, “There’s been a lot of issues with respect to what the board did with the money.”

And when Bruce Foster purchased the home for his daughter to live in, he said he was left in the dark about the settlement.

“I’m frustrated because nothing was ever disclosed to us at the time we bought,” Foster said.

Bank ‘merry-go-round’

As the value of the home plummeted, the family sought a loan modification in 2009 but was placed on what it calls a bank “merry-go-round.”

“The banks wouldn’t even talk to us about a modification,” Corrine Foster said. “They turned a total blind eye.

“With disclosures and everything, the value is completely gone,” she said.

The Fosters tried to short sell the property starting in 2010— while offering full disclosure about its problems—but there weren’t any takers. Trying to refi nance a distressed home at the height of the recession became a fruitless endeavor.

In February of this year, federal and state officials announced a settlement in which five of the nation’s largest banks, including Wells Fargo, would pay $26 billion to help distressed homeowners.

It’s the largest agreement yet to address the U.S. housing crisis.

But for the Fosters, any possible help came too late. They lost their home in March.

Legal remedy

The family still wonders why the huge insurance settlement with Poe didn’t result in necessary repairs to the failing units in the development, including theirs.

They hope to find relief through the courts.

Last September the Fosters joined with Alexandra Lee, Corrine Foster’s next-door neighbor, in a nuisance suit against the homeowners association stating that the HOA “chose not to make the necessary and appropriate repairs to the association common area, and in particular the drainage systems, thus knowingly exposing the plaintiffs’ property to the effects of long-term soil expansion and compaction. . . .”

Each family is seeking $1 million in damages.

Repeated calls by The Acorn to the homeowners association and its lawyer went unreturned.

“It has been a drainage issue from the very day they started construction,” Harper said.

Now, Foster contends the HOA wants the lawsuit disallowed because the Fosters aren’t the legal homeowners any more.

Although mediation was attempted, nothing was resolved. The homeowners now are being asked to produce additional soil readings, at their expense.

“If we get the borings, these buildings will be red-tagged,” said Lee, a single mother also worried about losing her home.

“It’s just been a mess. My daughter’s terrified to sleep in her room. I can’t open my garage (due to warped floors). There are cracks all over my house.

“Every week it’s been getting worse and worse.”

Lee said she’s being foreclosed by the HOA but is seeking a settlement with her bank, Bank of America.

For Foster, the outlook remains bleak.

“After you’ve been broken you start feeling like a broken person.”

She said St. Maximilian Kolbe Church in Thousand Oaks has been trying to assist her and her children.

For members of the community wishing to make contact, Foster’s email is bodhi900@live.com.


WARPED—Evidence of the warped floors inside Foster's home can be seen at the bottom of a door. Below left, Alexandra Lee points to cracks on Canwood Street caused by loose soil as Corrine Foster looks on.

WARPED—Evidence of the warped floors inside Foster’s home can be seen at the bottom of a door. Below left, Alexandra Lee points to cracks on Canwood Street caused by loose soil as Corrine Foster looks on.

 

 

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