Foreclosure surge hits home in Lynchburg area

Thomas Veasey sat on the front porch that no longer belongs to him and gazed at the lawn he had just mowed on a balmy August Friday. A bead of sweat slipped down his nose and dropped onto the porch.

While his grandchildren played inside, he recalled the events that led to him losing his Appomattox home in foreclosure less than two years after he bought it. He said he is trying to move on, but emotionally, that is hard to do.

“When you make a bad decision, of course it affects people … It affects your own family, and as a husband, a father and a citizen, you’re embarrassed,” Veasey said.

“To me it wasn’t so much the personal property being gone. It was that I let people down.”

Veasey is one of hundreds of people in Central Virginia to lose a home to foreclosure this year. Although some aspects of the economy have improved, the number of people losing their homes in the Lynchburg area continues to surge, jumping more than 40 percent in the past year.

The News & Advance gathered property records from the cities of Lynchburg and Bedford and the counties of Amherst, Appomattox, Bedford and Campbell to determine the number of home foreclosures that took place from January through June this year.

The records show about 220 residential properties foreclosed on in those six months.

That equals more than one foreclosure in Central Virginia every day, and one foreclosure for every four homes sold in the region in the first six months of the year, according to real estate agent data on home sales.

It is a 46 percent increase over the number of foreclosures in the first six months of 2009. It was a 41 percent increase from the first six months of 2008, when The News & Advance began tracking details on local foreclosures.

Real estate agent Kevin Turner has seen the higher foreclosure rate personally. Banks hire him to sell homes that have been repossessed in foreclosure. In all of last year he sold 63 foreclosures. He has sold that many already this year, and has eight more under contract.

Turner hears the stories behind many of the foreclosures when he visits each home to ask the foreclosed homeowners to leave.

“I get to talk to them. Most of the time they just volunteer what happened to them,” said Turner, owner and broker at Century 21 All Service in Lynchburg.

Many of those who have been through foreclosure have lost their jobs, had their work hours reduced or faced large medical bills, he said. Many had too much debt. “When the economy was going really good, they bought at the highest level that they could qualify for, which is just not a good thing to do,” Turner said.

“Because then if you have any hiccup in the market, or your employer has to cut back hours, you have these people who have tremendous house payments.”

Veasey said a number of mistakes led to the foreclosure on his Appomattox home. “Usually what leads to foreclosure is one bad decision after another,” he said.

In retrospect, he and his wife were happy renting a trailer on Promised Land Road in Appomattox County for $350 per month, he said. But a few years ago, Veasey, a veteran, learned that a Department of Veteran Affairs program would help him obtain a home loan.

He had rebuilt his credit score after earlier financial mistakes, and he and his wife decided to buy a home as an investment.

In June 2008, Veasey used an $111,000 loan to buy a 1,700- square-foot-house on a lot just less than one acre, court records show.

Their monthly payments jumped to about $800 per month, plus water and sewer fees of about $100, Veasey said. They could afford the payments — Veasey was earning between $50,000 and $60,000 a year as a sales representative for a local cable company — but the expense was a shock to his finances, he said.

About six months later, Veasey decided to leave his job and start his own company.

“I had about $10,000 saved, and I was going to sell satellite (TV service) door to door.

“I did a lot of research on it. A lot of people seemed to be making a lot of money on it,” he said. “Unfortunately, I never did. That took about five months to fail.”

His savings gone, Veasey traveled for contract sales jobs with other cable companies. He went months at a time without work, he said. He fell behind in his mortgage payments. In the summer of 2009 his lender sent him a letter threatening foreclosure.

Veasey would try saving enough money to get caught up on his mortgage, but then other expenses would emerge. Veasey said he wished he had made a better budget. “If I had it to do over again, I would have sent them every nickel I got,” he said. “Nothing’s more important than your house.”

Finally in May, a lawyer called a foreclosure auction in front of the Appomattox County Courthouse. Veasey did not go. He said he was distraught that day.

Court records show that Veasey’s lender repossessed the home, which means that if anyone came to the auction, they did not meet the lender’s minimum bid. After that, the lender transferred the home to the VA, which had guaranteed the loan.

Since then, Veasey’s family has lived in limbo. They never received word about what happened at the auction. No one gave them instructions about needing to move out, Veasey said. So they are staying. Waiting.

Turner said that when he is hired to conduct sell a repossessed home, he visits and finds out whether someone is living there. If so, he tells them about their options.

Lenders usually offer an option called “cash for keys.” They pay the residents about $500 to move out in 30 to 45 days, leaving the home clean and the yard mowed. If the residents were renters with a lease, the lenders might let them rent until the end of the lease, Turner said.

Veasey said he takes full responsibility for the mistakes that led to his foreclosure. He also is trying to come to grips fully with the situation. “It’s not the end of the world,” he said.

“I’m a human being, and as a human being, I make mistakes.

Earlier this month, he received a license to sell real estate in Virginia. He hopes to get back on his feet helping people gain the dream he lost.

He said he harbors no grudge against his lender or the government. He doesn’t expect a bailout. “Of course we’ve bailed out the banks (but) they don’t owe me nothing,” he said.

“If they want to grant me mercy, I would take it.”