Broward County Office Owner Faces Foreclosure As It Pitches Investors On Redevelopment
A 44K SF office building in Lauderdale Lakes is staring down foreclosure as its owner looks to bring on investors to redevelop the property.
Best Meridian Insurance Co. of Florida, a subsidiary of Miami-based BMI Financial Group, filed a foreclosure suit on Feb. 13 in Broward County court seeking repayment of a $7.2M mortgage or control of the property at 3361 W. Oakland Park Blvd.
The suit, filed by attorneys at Coral Gables-based SMGQ Law and identified by the property intelligence platform Vizzda, is seeking to seize the property from LW Square Office LLC, an entity controlled by Janalie Joseph of Wells Real Estate Investment.
BMI is asking the court to grant it any rent payments at the property, known as Bank of America Financial Plaza, and to allow it to go after LW Square Office in the event that a foreclosure sale doesn't cover the balance of the mortgage.
The lender, the law firm representing it in the foreclosure suit and the property owner didn’t respond to Bisnow’s requests for comment.
Joseph took out the $7.2M mortgage on the property in March but stopped making interest payments on the loan in May, according to the suit. The loan default triggered a clause in the mortgage agreement that allows the lender to request the full repayment of the debt, according to the legal filing.
The suit states that the debt was personally secured by Joseph, who is also a sales associate at Coldwell Banker Realty covering the Boca Raton market, according to the brokerage’s website.
LW Square Office LLC paid $7.6M across two transactions for the property in October 2018, property records indicate. The seller was Rus’s Property LLC, an entity managed by Ioan and Mary Rus of Davie.
Wells Real Estate Investment is marketing the property on its website as an investment opportunity for a mixed-use redevelopment. It’s looking to raise funds to replace the three-story office building, built in 1976, with a project called LW Square that would include 400 apartments, 25K SF of office space, 17K SF of retail space and a 200-car garage.
Lauderdale Lakes, north of Lauderhill and just south of the Cypress Creek commercial district, is not an established market for office space, with just 21 active listings currently on LoopNet.
Multimillion-dollar foreclosures have been relatively rare in Broward County in recent months, especially for office buildings.
In late January, a former charter school building in Sunrise was seized by UMB Bank, acting as a trustee for investors in educational facilities revenue bonds, and set for auction after a $15M foreclosure judgment, the South Florida Business Journal reported.
Earlier that month, a 27K SF redevelopment site at 405 NE Second St. in Flagler Village where a condo hotel was planned was foreclosed on by the Miami-based lender Safe Harbor Equity, SFBJ reported.
