Font ResizeThere waS A TIME when all that Sacramento County Sheriff's Deputy Mark Habecker knew about mortgages was his own monthly payment. He had never heard of subprime loans or the term "cash for keys." The deputy could count on one hand the times he'd evicted homeowners.
Then came the housing crisis. Now, Habecker converses smartly about adjustable-rate mortgages. He knows all about home values. And while most of his evictions still involve landlord-tenant disputes, he has new layers of paper in his stack of eviction notices. They're from banks taking back houses.
On a recent Monday, it's only 9:45 a.m., but Habecker, 46, is already pulling into the driveway of a Del Paso Heights home repossessed by a bank. The 78-year-old house was foreclosed in February. But its troubles continue.
"Stay back," Habecker tells a rider in his patrol car as he goes to the front door. A barefoot woman has walked out a side door. The two talk, and Habecker goes inside. A man walks out the front. The deputy follows — mission accomplished.
"I just want them to leave," he says. "That's my duty, to get them to leave."
The image of an eviction notice being forcefully nailed to the front door — with a stern sheriff's deputy following right behind — is an old Hollywood staple. But for decades, the reality was much different.
Evicting homeowners behind on their mortgage payments was a minuscule part of any deputy's
"We used to do one (bank eviction) a month and maybe 12 all year," Habecker says. "I have 10 in my stack today just for me, and there's six of us."
Since the beginning of 2007, more than 20,000 homes in Amador, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties have been handed back to the banks. In Sacramento County, which has seen more than 15,000 foreclosures in the past 18 months, Sheriff's Department officials say as many as 100 eviction requests that originate with banks reclaiming homes now cross their desks each month.
Under California's Code of Civil Procedure, sheriff's departments are responsible for evicting occupants of a house upon receipt of a court order obtained by the owner. In Sacramento County, the owners pay the department $125 to enforce them.
Each of the six Sacramento County deputies handling foreclosures — as well as evictions from rental units — has his own zone. Most of Habecker's evictions from bank-owned homes are in Natomas.
'They're all real nice'
"They're all real nice and big and brand-new," he says of the residences.
Banks have foreclosed 840 homes in North Natomas in the past year, according to Foreclosures.com, a Fair Oaks Web site for real estate investors. Most of the people losing homes have lived in the houses for less than two years.
In the front yard of the Del Paso Heights home, real estate agent Allen Griffin of Lyon Real Estate is on a cell phone with the contractor who will repair the home and get it ready for sale.
"We've got to get this cleared up and boarded up," he said to the contractor. "This is literally one of the best disasters you'll see. We want to get great possession of this, nice and tight."
The back and side yards are filled with tires and bicycle parts. A chicken pecks for food; a discarded ham is covered with flies.
Inside the single-story house, Habecker offered a warning: "Never open a refrigerator. It's the law of the land," he said.
He doesn't have to explain why. The home's interior is ruined. Garbage and trash cover the floors. The couple had been living in the garage.
Griffin says the foreclosed house appears to be owned by an absentee owner. The evicted occupants, he suspects, are friends of the people who actually rented the house, or perhaps friends of their friends.
As of now, though, they're out. A crew is on its way to board up the house and put up a chain-link barrier.
"It's good with these bank guys," Habecker says. "They know what to do now."
Habecker, a lifelong Sacramentan with an athletic build and short-cropped hair, climbs back inside his 2007 Ford Crown Victoria. He looks up the next address. This eviction has taken 13 minutes.
At civil division headquarters on Power Inn Road, administrative commander Wanda Ferguson says the 100 eviction requests the department gets monthly are on top of as many as 600 monthly evictions it does for landlords who want to move out tenants who aren't paying their rent.
Personal dramas
For Habecker, the weekday patrols through Natomas, Rio Linda, Del Paso Heights and North Highlands have been a front-row seat to the personal dramas behind the numbers.
Twice this year, he says, homeowners about to be evicted have committed suicide as he approached to do a lockout.
In another case, he said a fellow Sacramento deputy found a note in the home that told him where to find the foreclosed homeowner's body.
Habecker declined to say more. The cases received no publicity when they happened. And such tragic events are apparently rare.
"We haven't come across that," says Ellen Caraska, a Placer County Sheriff's Department staffer. "We never want to see that."
But Placer County, too, is seeing a "huge rise" in requests for tenant evictions when landlords lose homes to banks, says Caraska, an account technician in the civil division.
"Lincoln has a lot. Roseville has a lot," she says. "Rocklin, too. Those are our biggest areas."
By contrast, the Yolo County Sheriff's Department says its eviction requests have declined so far this year compared with the same time last year.
Deputies, who first post an eviction notice on the home, come back on the sixth day to enforce it. Most often, the return is a nonevent.
'Cash for keys'
"The majority of the time, I am finding no one there," Habecker said. Often that's because the bank offered the occupant a "cash for keys" deal. That's $1,000 or more to leave quickly and not trash the place.
By far, the largest number of cases involve landlord-tenant disputes, and they usually involve a meeting between Habecker and the landlord. At bank-owned homes, though, it's the real estate agent who will market it to whom Habecker speaks.
At another home in Del Paso Heights, Habecker goes to the door, taps on the windows, announces himself.
"Sheriff," he calls out in a booming voice. "Anyone here? Sheriff's Department. Helloooo-oh."
Neighbors come out of nearby homes. They tell Habecker they saw the occupants leave the previous night.
That's what he wants to hear.
Habecker goes inside and calls out again. A locksmith is parked outside ready to change the locks.
The same day, Habecker was at a foreclosed home in Natomas posting a first-time notice: "Should you fail to vacate the premises within the allotted time, I will immediately enforce the writ by removing you from the premises," it read in part.
"From my experience, 90 percent of the time the people aren't there," said Warren Adams, a broker with Security Pacific Real Estate in Fair Oaks who is handling this listing. "You get a five-day notice "... and most people move."
But he says he likes to go through the formal eviction process anyway. It prevents misunderstandings and makes it clear that the bank now owns the property.
"That piece of paper makes it pretty clear-cut," he says.
It usually is. But Habecker will be back in six days just to be sure.
