Luxury squats: he lives in a $ 600,000 house and hasn’t been evicted in 23 years

the United States Legal System seems to have encountered his worst nightmare: a man who occupied a house on Long Island for 23 years without paying his mortgage and avoiding eviction. In case of Guramrit Hanspal goes around the world to find out how he managed to stop the courts from getting him out of a house he doesn’t own.

The man, now 52, ​​moved into a property in East Meadow in 1998. At that time made the first mortgage payment, a 1602, then stopped paying. 23 years later, he has already succeeded in defeating two banks seeking to repossess the land and faces a tough legal battle against a real estate company.

Hanspal has used various strategies throughout these more than two decades to avoid being unemployed. From the declaration of bankruptcy to the change of lawyer more than forty times to obtain an extension of the deadlines. “This guy basically doesn’t care about the courts“complained Max Sold, a representative of the real estate company Diamond Ridge Partners.

WHAT IS JUSTICE DOING?

In the latest hearing, held last week in Nassau County Court, Judge William hohauser agreed to grant a delay to the defendant. The argument was the same as seen in the rest of the trials, with the lawyer Guillaume Friedman ask for more time by pretending to be your co-lawyer, David gevanter, had been hired the day before.

On the other hand, Friedman attributed Hanspal’s decision not to pay his mortgage to the suspension of evictions New York Governor Andrew Coumo ordered in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Faced with this, Jordan Katz, the legal representative of Diamond Ridge, argued that it should not be considered in this case, since the mortgage stopped being paid more than 20 years ago. “The man in question does not legally occupy the house“, He assured and added:”We don’t think the law was put in place to protect people like this“.

HOW MUCH HAS BEEN INVESTED IN THE COURTS?

The property where Hanspal lives is 185 square meters and an approximate value of $ 600,000. It has three bedrooms, a living room, a garage and a garden. Since 1999, various legal processes have been underway to get it started.

According to the Daily Mail, the Washington Mutual Bank is the one that started with the efforts to seize and hold property. In 2000, Hanspal was urged by the courts to retire from the property and was “forever barred” from any possible claims on the house. Despite this, he decides to stay there.

It was then that he began his first strategy, which consisted of filing for bankruptcy. He did the same in November 2001, twice in 2002 and once in 2003, according to court records.

The property where Hanspal lives is 185 square meters and an approximate value of US $ 600,000.

When this remedy stopped working, I decided to choose to transfer the deed to the name of a friend, Rajender Pal, although he has no right to the property. With that, I was able to delay the legal process for a while.

In 2005, Pal filed for bankruptcy and avoided eviction. Judge Burton Joseph, in charge of the case at the time, wrote: “The apparently frivolous conduct of Hanspel and Mr. Pal in using the court system and bankruptcy proceedings as a weapon to get out of legal debt, rather than a shield, is extremely confusing for this court“.

It should be noted that declaring bankruptcy in New York presupposes the “Automatic suspension” of debt and foreclosures. This policy aims to help those who lose everything after a bad deal or other life circumstances, but Hanspel used it as “point dbil“of the court system to challenge the banks and avoid paying for a house.

The strategy of passing the deed of ownership from one friend to another continued to be used by Hanspel. At the same time, the case was claimed by the JP Morgan, who got the house after the bankruptcy of Washington Mutual with the 2008 crisis. Faced with the impossibility of reaching a consensus, the bank transferred the situation to the real estate company Diaming Ridge, which is currently handling the case.

The real estate company has already offered him $ 20,000 to vacate the land, an agreement which Hanspal accepted but did not have to comply with, as he declared bankruptcy again in 2019 and 2020. “This is a group of people who are more than willing to use the courts and abuse the legal process to the extent necessary to prolong their illegal occupation.Katz complained. And said, “The history of Hanspal’s litigation is incredibly long and sordid. I have never seen such a long occupation. “

His case has become a precedent for American justice. In the same approximately $ 150,000 was invested in legal fees and another 50,000 in taxes, while the house, from which no profit can be drawn, continued to deteriorate.