Fox Den homes hang in balance

Nov. 28--Residents who live on Wedge View Way in the Fox Den Country Club community will have to wait until into the new year to find out what happens next in a strange title mix-up that has them fighting off foreclosure proceedings.

"It's not a nightmare. It's worse than a nightmare. It's much worse than a nightmare," said Fox Den homeowner Connie Terll following an announcement at the Iredell County Courthouse Tuesday that further dealings on this strange case would be continued until Jan. 29, 2014.

Terll, 68, paid cash for her home when she relocated to Fox Den from Florida five years ago to be close to her adult son.

"There are 18 families who bought their homes -- and they are not just houses, they are homes -- so we could be part of this community," Terll said. "We have become part of this community. And we are active in our community, we just want to keep our homes and not have to worry about all this. We are people, not crumbs. And this isn't fair."

Terll and other homeowners who gathered for the foreclosure hearing were clearly upset by the postponement, which was required when it was learned that one of the property owners involved in the matter had not been properly served papers alerting him of the hearing.

"We have been stressing over this for months," said Lynn Zanotti, who also moved to Fox Den from out of state to be near her grown children. "We can't enjoy the holidays. They can enjoy the holidays but we can't. And all of this because of something that was done wrong years ago that we had nothing to do with."

The folks on Wedge View Way first found out something was amiss in mid-August of this year when they received letters demanding they pay a total of $4.6 million or face foreclosure from a matter dating back to 2004.

"I thought it was a joke at first or some kind of scheme," Terll recalled.

It was neither of those things.

"One week later, everybody had to sign for a certified letter that it's going to court, that their properties are going to be foreclosed on, and everybody panicked," Zanotti told the R&L in September. "A lot of people are scared, and a lot of people don't have the money or resources to hire these attorneys to defend ourselves."

The matter appears to be the result of poor title work. That is, the residents of Wedge View Way may never have had their lots properly released when they purchased them. And they now find their homes at risk in a legal battle between Fox Den Development Company and the heirs of one of its founders.

Iredell County Register of Deeds Matt McCall helped explain the matter.

"Whenever you do a development, the developer typically takes out a master loan on the whole property," McCall said. "And then as they build each house and sell it, they record something called a 'release deed' releasing that particular parcel from the developer's loan."

But for whatever reason, the attorney who handled the closings on Wedge View Way apparently never released the lots.

In 2007-08, Fox Den Development sold the Wedge View Way lots to the development arm of Lockridge Homes of Charlotte without an opinion on the titles. Homebuyers like the Terll and Zanotti then worked with Lockridge Homes to purchase lots overlooking the Fox Den golf course and build custom homes on their properties.

Based on the recommendations of the developer, Zanotti said, most of the residents used the same closing attorney, Lutzel, Broadway and Associates of Mooresville, and bought title insurance from Morehead Title Company, which then sold their individual policies to other companies.

Because the lots were apparently never released, they remain part of the two parcels of land, measuring 15.6 acres and 10.6 acres, secured in a May 19, 2004, deed of trust, in which Fox Den Development borrowed $1 million from the Estate of Dwight J. Goforth. The loan matured four and a half months later, on Oct. 1, 2004, although the deed of trust was not recorded until February 2005.

As of the Aug. 9 notice the homeowners received, the amount owed has ballooned to $4.62 million, including the $1 million principal, $3.44 million of interest and $175,000 of attorney fees.

With interest accruing at a rate of 5.24 percent, another $68,000 has accumulated to the amount seemingly owed by the homeowners since the initial August notice. And by the Jan. 29 date of the new hearing date, an additional nearly $40,000 will have been tacked on.

"We can't go on with our lives until we know exactly what happens next," said Zanotti. "We are all just filled with stress. We just want to know what to do."

Terll agreed.

"We want to keep our homes," she said. "But win, lose or draw, we want to know what is at the end of the line. That is the question we want the answer to: What happens next?"

R&L reporter John Hamlin contributed to this report.

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