Monday, September 22, 2008

Another mogul not his paying bills on time and Supreme Bean closes

Like many developers in the current downturn, Moreland has experienced some financial difficulties of late:

Last Friday, Moreland’s Val Verde LLC defaulted on a $5.4 million construction loan against a 126-lot residential project on the south side of Hosking Avenue, east of South H Street. More than $3.1 million was in arrears as of Sept. 17, the default filing showed. The May 2007 loan was made by PFF Bank and Trust.

Last month, Moreland’s Monte Carlo LLC defaulted on a $15.4 million loan against northeast Bakersfield property near Highway 178 and Miramonte Drive.

In addition, liens and lawsuits from contractors and subcontractors have piled up against various projects in recent months, county filings show.


Workers: Supreme Bean closes, leaving them without paychecks :

Supreme Bean, a Bakersfield chain of drive-thru coffee stations acquired by a Texas company earlier this year, appears to have gone out of business.

It was unclear Monday whether the closure of the chain’s at least eight locations was permanent.

Employees were notified Saturday that they were not to return to work. When they asked how to obtain their final checks, one worker’s manager suggested she file for unemployment benefits.


Maybe Moreland and the owners of Supreme Bean can call up Bush/Paulson and see if they can get in on this bailout...free ponies for everyone.

14 comments:

Mike said...

Wasn't the drive thru coffee hut at Brimhall and Coffee (ha ha!) a Supreme Bean? I NEVER saw business there. All I saw was the worker and her red convertible Mercedes parked nearby. What's up with that?

jetcityqueen said...

No, that was a different place called Coffee Coffee...not sure who that owner was but they closed up months back. They actually had good drinks, I was sad to see them go. They offered something different from the other boring coffee chains.

Bakonewbie said...

She was probably making $8 an hour but has a Benz because she refi'd her home often, gave her a really nice income! (lots of toys)
Now she is renting, but that is Ok because that is where she started a few years back. Now she has a new Benz, lots of clothes, her husband has a lifted truck and a plasma TV.
The bank will pick up the tab for all that, but then the tax payer will pick up the tab for the bank.
Sound familiar?

I bet if they went after the liars who aren't paying for their liar loans there would be a lot less of them out there.

Sorry, I have to vent. I am so tired of seeing $80k trailers in front of houses that are in forclosure that I want to vomit.
($80k toy hauler with a $50k sandrail and $10k worth of motorcycles, wife is rolling a new BMW, hubby has a monster truck- $40k plus $12k in add-on and lifts!) To think I did the right thing and paid my bills and only bought what I could afford, only to be made to pay for it later in taxes makes me ill.

Mike said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mike said...

bakonewbie said:

Sorry, I have to vent. I am so tired of seeing $80k trailers in front of houses that are in forclosure that I want to vomit.
($80k toy hauler with a $50k sandrail and $10k worth of motorcycles, wife is rolling a new BMW, hubby has a monster truck- $40k plus $12k in add-on and lifts!) To think I did the right thing and paid my bills and only bought what I could afford, only to be made to pay for it later in taxes makes me ill.


~~~

Hey, I told you to stop driving by my house!

Anonymous said...

What happened to the other Moguls that went on trial for their licenses? Its been over a month whats with the verdict?

civil-ized said...

"Bakonewbie said...

Sorry, I have to vent. I am so tired of seeing $80k trailers...To think I did the right thing and paid my bills and only bought what I could afford, only to be made to pay for it later in taxes makes me ill."

I am right there with you - It makes me sick too. It is of little comfort to know that they have destroyed their credit and will be stuck with all those toys - renting in a bad neighborhood. I don't care how they justify it - "everybody is doing it", "the banks screwed us, so we are screwing them", "we somehow deserve to live like we worked hard all our lives and earned these toys" whatever.

I would like to think that their credit will haunt them. I would like to think that credit scores are like grades in school - we were A students then, and have great credit scores now - wise choices.

But the reality is, the banks or whoever - will most likely "forgive" their bad credit and allow them to buy again - with great rates - just to get the economy going again. They will not have learned their lessons and they will be further ahead in life in 5 years than you or I who choose to play by the rules. Life sucks like that. That is the direction I see things going in.

Lone Ranger said...

Back in the early 1980’s, when I had first opened my business, I made the mistake of doing business with Terry Moreland.

I knew I was in trouble soon after. Mentioning his name to any local architect usually brought on a long string of profanity. “Get your money up front” was the most common advice I received.

Luckily I got paid in full, unlike many others, thanks to his mom.

My payment came in the form of 4 seperate checks, all written on different accounts.


How can professional bankers be such idiots?

Anonymous said...

BB: do you see this $700Billion "Bail-out" having any affect locally?

Anonymous said...

Hey Ranger - you mean professional bankers with names like PFF Bank and Trust? I guess the P could stand for "Professional" but I can only guess what the F stands for. A double F at that.

Bakersfield Bubble said...

BB: do you see this $700Billion "Bail-out" having any affect locally?

____________________________



NONE!

Based on research by Bank of America this helps Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley...that is all. Nothing for Main Street all for Wall Street crooks who created this mess.

Anonymous said...

The bailout can assist local markets if it includes provisions to help distressed homeowners. Which it shouldn't, but I can see the logic of including it. Many of the home purchases during the bubble were at inflated valuations. Short of writing down the loan, I don't see how they can help the squatters. The houses will go bank to the lender, and will be sold at foreclosure for their correct value.

civil-ized said...

The Bailout could not possibly include help for distressed individuals and still be fair...if the people who overbought or took out all their equity to buy their BMWs are going to get free money to lower their house debt, then I want that same amount to lower mine. If my neighbor made an unwise decision and overpaid for their house, why should they get a fat check from the gov'ment to lower their obligation? I want that same amount so I can lower my obligation as well. Should we reward stupidity?

Wise decisions should be rewarded - in a fair world. Unfortunately, the world is not fair - not by a long shot. Lots of people should be going to jail the same week the bailout goes into effect. They know who is responsible - no trial necessary - send them to the slammer. They go after the people who start fires in California and try to make them responsible for the damages they cause - why is this so different?

I am way on the outside of this, so I could be way wrong, but it seems to me Bushy waited for quite a while before acting - to see if the banks would do the right thing...and of course they didn't - so it became necessary to bail them out - I see this as a last resort - not a rich guy rescue. If they had wanted to, the gov'ment could have swooped in and saved thousands of families a long time ago. but the republicans were letting the chips fall where they should and letting the people go through the pain of foreclosure - a heavy price for buying what they could not afford. But the banks being stupid - they made it more and more difficult to get loans - even for people with great credit. So of course their revenues went down and they could not deal with the massive losses. On top of that, the banks handled the foreclosures and short sales very poorly - rejecting legit offers and taking too long to close deals. They turned a $50,000 loss on each house into a $150,000 loss through incompitence. And not just once - but thousands of times in every major city in the country.

If the gov'ment wanted to, they could have set up an agency to refinance "distressed" homeowners and put them on a 40, 50, 60 year plan to pay back what they owed - backed the loans with government money and made it all legal and safe and fair. If banks had any sense, they could have set up something similar - I kept waiting to hear of any good ideas from any of the banks, but no. Not one came up with a plan to keep people in their homes. Does anyone else see this or am I the idiot?

Bakonewbie said...

That is the only fair way I see to help homeowners stay in their houses. Maybe some kind of gov't insured loan that takes their ARM and makes it a fixed 40 or 50 year loan with PMI.
At least they will end up paying what they own and can have a payment they can afford. If in 10 years the market is back, they can sell or refi, etc. But for now, that seems to be the smartest "help" the gov't could offer.
Let the banks take their lumps.

Housing prices in this country are too damn high! There is NO fix for this situation other than to let the prices FALL back in line with incomes. Nothing will get better until that is reached. Congress can throw 10 trillion at this ad it won't matter.