Months before the ground came out beneath it, the home at 161 North Oak Ave. was teetering on a different edge: Foreclosure.
“The house is going through foreclosure for back taxes,” said Kristen Glifort, the real estate agent who listed the home for the elderly couple that owns it.
“A debt company bought the back taxes and they were closing on the property, “ she said.
But the title has not been turned over yet, so Mildred Folsom still technically owns the home, Glifort said.
That gray area between foreclosure and homeownership has caused complications as the city tries to move forward with plans to demolish the house.
After a massive mudslide occurred on the land behind the home Tuesday afternoon, emergency crews have said the building could collapse and slide down the hill onto the Riverview Condominiums below.
No one was injured in the mudslide, but several homes were evacuated as a precaution.
City building officials met Wednesdsay afternoon at 2 p.m. with the insurance company that insures the home to determine who will pay for the demolition.
Tax Problems
Folsom, who is sometimes listed in court and city records as Mildred Folson, and her husband purchased the three-bedroom home in 1975 for $15,000.
But they immediately started having trouble with city tax payments. From 1977 through 1991, the city placed tax liens on the property 12 times. Tax liens are placed when property owners fail to pay their property taxes.
In 1991, city records show Folsom paid off most of the taxes.
But then in 2005, tax trouble for the Folsoms started again.
For each year forward, the city issued another tax lien. The Folsoms racked up $14,765 in back taxes during that time: money that is still owed to the city, according to city records.
Folsom’s phone number was not listed, and could not be contacted for comment.
Neighbors said the couple has moved to a retirement home in the state.
“Shifting and Shifting and Shifting”
This fall, the judge overseeing the foreclosure allowed the Folsoms to try to sell the home to pay back the taxes and avoid foreclosure.
Glifort said she originally listed the home, built in 1905, at more than $110,000 and had serious interest from three potential buyers.
The listing price was eventually reduced to $74,900, Glifort said.
“It had a lot of old colonial flare to it,” Glifort said. “It was all original inside. At least two of the people who were interested wanted to restore it.”
But the buyers could not come to an agreement with a price that satisfied the court, Glifort said. She declined to say what that price would have been.
Glifort pulled the home off the market in early December after noticing severe cracking on the foundation line.
“I decided to withdraw the listing on Dec. 4 because the house was unsafe,” Glifort said.
“From the day that I listed it the brick foundation was separating from the house. The land on the left side, which eventually slid, that had eroded away over the years,” Glifort said. “As time went on from when I listed it in September, it kept shifting and shifting and shifting.”
Noticeable Movement
Neighbors had noticed the changes too.
In August, neighbors called the city concerned that power lines leading to the house were becoming taut – an indication that the building was moving away from the street.
Building Official Elliot Wilson said his office inspected the area and decided to have the power lines taken down.
He said at the time, there was still about five feet of solid earth between the house and the edge of the cliff.
“There was not a danger of it going over the edge,” Wilson said. “Otherwise we would have condemned the house then.”
Mayor Mark Lauretti, who was on scene investigating with building officials Tuesday, said it appeared that the pipes in the vacant home froze in the recent cold weather last week.
When the water melted, it started pouring out into the basement and the dirt supporting the foundation.
“The water was running through the house and down the hillside. It appears it just became saturated,” Lauretti said.
