Foreclosure hits the big guys, too

By Brendan Buhler

Wednesday, April 16, 2008 | 2 a.m.

With its lightly used 19 rooms — not counting the nine bathrooms, the studio-apartment-sized foyers and the six walk-in closets — and with its four fireplaces, three balconies, two wet bars, pool and spa, 821 Majestic Ridge Court really is what the ad says, a “luxury foreclosure.”

But the most interesting things about 821 Majestic Ridge Court in Henderson aren’t its 18-inch Travertine tiles, its marble accents or its chandeliers. Those you pretty much expect for a $2.35 million asking price. There’s nothing wrong with the house, really, if you can overlook the lack of appliances and the unfilled speaker holes in the theater room’s ceiling.

What’s interesting about 821 isn’t even that it’s a foreclosure. It’s that it’s the third foreclosure in the neighborhood.

There are seven houses in the neighborhood.

It’s not what you think.

What happened at 821 and at its neighbors wasn’t about first-time buyers and adjustable-rate mortgages.

This was more about speculation, investment, folly, a time when the market was, so to speak, still staying out late in clubs, full of interesting chemicals and convinced the weekend would never end, even if it was Sunday evening.

Its two sister houses went into foreclosure in 2006. Eight-twenty-one — the only house on the street now for sale — entered foreclosure in 2007.

“People used to pretty much put a deposit down without ever looking at the lot, just the plans,” says Ross Fabrizio, the real estate agent stuck with selling the house for the private lenders who are 821’s unhappy owners. “In 2004, you could sell anything right away. Now you just hope someone shows up to look.”

He guesses there are maybe 100 houses on the market right now that once were valued at more than $1 million. Some of them still are.

The house at 821 was built on one of five lots purchased in the middle of 2003 by a company named Phoenix Properties & Development of Henderson. It was sold to another investor, a company by the name of Park Place West. At one point the house was assessed at $3.8 million. More loans were made. A pool was put in. And then, nothing. No more work. No more payments.

Steve Portnoff, a retired swimming pool distributor and contractor, is one of 11 people who lent a total of $2.85 million to Park Place West, which he now believes was run by the same people who ran Phoenix Properties & Development. His lawyers haven’t been able to find them since the foreclosure, though he’s heard they might be in Sedona, Ariz. Call the number listed for Phoenix Properties in Henderson and the line just rings and rings.

“We took a risk,” Portnoff says. “And now we’re getting raked over the coals.”

Donna Barbee is also not enjoying her experiences on Majestic Ridge Court. She’s a regional vice president of Griswold Realty Management and runs the Majestic Ridge homeowners association. There was nothing but trouble with Phoenix Properties and its houses, Barbee says. You would think it should be easy in a neighborhood of seven multimillion-dollar homes, but the vacancies and turnovers and the lack of paid dues have made it difficult. Right now only three houses in the neighborhood are occupied by their owners, and they’re the ones she feels sorry for.

“It’s going to be a beautiful neighborhood,” Barbee says, “if only we get some more homeowners out there.”

And, getting back to 821, it could be a very beautiful house for the right kind of family, the kind that can find a use for its elevator and its several balconies, from one of which you could very easily see yourself singing to the Argentine masses, telling them not to cry for you.

Even if there’s not an oven or a fridge, the place is, Fabrizio points out, move-in ready when you consider the nine-nozzle shower in the master bathroom.

“You could take your girlfriend over here tonight and have one heck of a party,” Fabrizio says.

And, Portnoff, says, except for two weeks in 2007 when the former owners — two people from Phoenix Properties — squatted during the foreclosure, 821 Majestic Ridge Court has never been lived in.