Exclusive: Nonprofit that flipped homes to investors faces scrutiny

By Matthew Goldstein and Emily Flitter NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. housing regulator has been investigating the actions of a small California not-for-revenue that offered hundreds of foreclosed homes via a federally backed software intended to assist native communities hurt by means of the housing bust, in line with executive documents reviewed with the aid of Reuters. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Administrative center of the Inspector Common late remaining 12 months started out probing San Diego-based totally Heartland Coalition’s participation within the “First Appear” software in Las Vegas and other U.S. cities, in step with a redacted investigation file and a letter from the regulator in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. In keeping with the paperwork and a overview of native property records in Las Vegas, the charity flipped a major choice of the properties to investors, producing thousands and thousands of dollars in profits for these financing Heartland’s activities with slightly brief-term loans. The First Seem to be software, set up in the aftermath of the monetary drawback, helps nonprofits and native communities buy foreclosed homes from U.S. banks at a bargain, with the expectation that they would then renovate them and first attempt to sell the homes to low- and average-profits households or to traders who would hire to such households.