Monday, March 1, 2010

Grounded

Ground rent scandal co-conspirator cops a plea.
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4 comments:

ppatin said...

Ugh, I used to work for Jack Stollof. Just to be clear, I only did title searches for a couple of months one summer, no illegal stuff. I didn't even know about his sleazy ground rent business at the time. I didn't realize he was such a crook, although his daughter was a bitch.

Mon Mar 01, 10:25:00 PM EST
Cham said...

Baltimore got itself into the ground rent business over a hundred years ago. There is no graceful way out. It will continue to bog this city down forever.

Tue Mar 02, 07:31:00 AM EST
ppatin said...

Cham:

Stollof & Nussbaum are going to prison for rigging tax lien auctions, not for anything to do with ground rents. Also, after the legislature changed the law in response to the Sun's series of articles on the issue it has become very hard to seize homes because of unpaid ground rent. I *think* (not certain of this one) it's also impossible to create new ground rents now, so they should slowly die off as old ones are redeemed. They certainly aren't bogging the city down, nobody really cares about ground rent anymore.

Tue Mar 02, 07:41:00 AM EST
Cham said...

I have a personal ground rent story that would say otherwise, ppatin. Fortunately for me, I'm not on the losing end, it is my ground-rent holder. Transferring ownership of ground rent from one person to another is often not cost effective.

I don't know whether you saw the news last week but I found it interesting that the woman who discovered the secret room under her front yard when the ground collapsed can sue the owner of her ground. If you own the ground then it is up to you to make sure it is stable.

Low cost ground rents are a much bigger liability than people can fathom.

Tue Mar 02, 07:58:00 AM EST

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