Sandy RREM recipients can't yet sell their homes
Hundreds of those homes have been rebuilt and elevated, but a deed restriction, which is placed on all homes, remains for nearly all. While that deed restriction is in place, homeowners can't sell their homes -- even if they think they're done with the program.
Most homeowners, like Brancato, don't know that when they sign up for RREM, they're allowing the state to severely curtail what they can do with the property.
Brancato spent months attempting to have the deed restriction released so he could sell his waterfront house. Although he had a certificate of occupancy and an elevation certificate that confirmed the house has been lifted to more than 13 feet above sea level, he was unable to persuade the state to lift the restriction until earlier this month -- one year after reconstruction on his home was finished..
"I've jumped through all the hoops," said Brancato, 63, in June. "I can't get out of the RREM program."
Signed and sealed
Every recipient of a RREM grant -- 8,642 homeowners in
The covenant is meant to give the state leverage to demand that the work being paid for with federal money meets minimum federal, state and local home construction and environmental standards. The only ways to remove the restriction are to comply with the program's requirements or pay back the grant.
That means that homeowners such as Brancato, who choose to act as their own general contractor through the program's Pathway B, would be responsible for ensuring -- and proving -- that these standards have been satisfied and for setting up the final inspections. That's where some avoidable delays originate, said Tammori Petty, a spokeswoman for the DCA.
"In some instances homeowners don't immediately self-report their completion, which is critical to initiating closeout," Petty told the
Through RREM Pathway C, in which the state assigns a general contractor to oversee the reconstruction, that contractor would be responsible for ensuring these standards have been satisfied and for setting up the final inspections. A homeowner in Pathway C who isn't planning on listing his or her home in the next year or two might not ever realize that such a limitation on ownership ever existed.
Perched on a beach
Brancato, a retired teacher who taught science at
He decided to sell the property even before Sandy struck. Then Sandy's surge flooded the entire neighborhood, bringing 13 inches of water into the home and coating the floor with inches of thick muck. Not only did he lose all his appliances, he lost dozens of personal items, including guitars, amps and records.
Brancato received a certificate of occupancy from the township on
His RREM project manager, from CB&I Shaw, was the one who delivered the bad news that the house was not his to sell.
His real estate agent,
"I have an offer right now on this house," Keyasko said of the four-bedroom, two-bathroom home, which is listed for
Still paying taxes
Brancato, who has been living in a retirement community in
Two weeks after the
"Getting the
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