Bank Repossessed Homes And Famous People

Bank repossessed homes are more common than you would think. And it isnt just the poor or regular working people who are faced with losing their homes to foreclosure. Yahoo! Finance recently published an article on their website that listed some very famous people who have lost their homes to foreclosure or were in danger of losing their homes to bank repossession. Heres a brief summary of that article and some information on the celebrities who were in this situation.

Lenny Dykstra. Lenny Dykstra became famous in the 1980s and 1990s as a professional baseball player, on such teams as the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets. In 2009 Dykstra filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, but it wasnt until 2010 that he faced foreclosure on his home. He had purchased a large property (6.5 acres) from professional hockey player Wayne Gretsky in 2007 for the price of $18.5 million dollars. The property was located in Thousand Oaks, California. In November 2010 his property went up for sale at a foreclosure sale and the winning bidder came home with it for $760,712.

Erin Moran. Erin Moran will forever be known as Joanie Cunningham on the 1970s era sitcom Happy Days. A foreclosure was filed against her under her married name (Erin Fleishmann) and was purchased at an auction for $291,150 in July 2010. TMZ reported that Moran remained in the home after losing it to foreclosure and had to be evicted.

Veronica Hearst. Veronica Hearst is the widow of newspaper heir Randolph Hearst. Her home located near Palm Beach, FL was a mansion, featuring 52 rooms and 28,000 square feet of living space. The home was originally built for the great grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt. The foreclosed home was sold at an auction in 2008 and went for $22 million.

Nicolas Cage. Nicolas Cage is an Academy Award Winning Actor best known for his roles in films such as Leaving Las Vegas, The Rock, National Treasure, Face/Off and Guarding Tess. He has the distinction of having multiple homes foreclosed on him, both in the city of New Orleans. It was reported that the two homes were worth (combined) in excess of $6.5 million dollars. The foreclosure took place because Cage was behind in both mortgage payments and property taxes. In November 2009 Regions Bank obtained both properties for $4.5 million dollars.

Lisa Wu-Hartwell. Lisa Wu-Hartwell is one of the original Real Housewives of Atlanta, from the Bravo television networks hit reality television series. She appeared only in the first season of the show. Her home in Atlanta was foreclosed on when she and her husband (former Oakland Raiders linebacker Edgerton Hartwell) defaulted on their adjustable rate mortgage. In 2009 their home was purchased at a foreclosure sale for $1.9 million. In 2007 the Hartwells had reportedly borrowed $2.9 million to purchase the home in suburban Atlanta.

No one likes to see a person lose their home to foreclosure. However, foreclosure is not a phenomenon that is limited to the working class and middle class of America. Any person, no matter what their income, can fall victim to foreclosure at any time.