Paperwork error complicates home sale, raises questions about process

By Diane C. Lade and Doreen Hemlock, Sun Sentinel
5:00 p.m. EST, December 4, 2010

Real estate investor Marjorie Oster was pleased when she snagged what looked like a good deal through a Miami-Dade County foreclosure court auction: a four-bedroom house in Cutler Bay, with a swimming pool, for about $95,000.

But when her husband drove by the next day to check on the property, he saw “someone cleaning the pool, a lawn service cutting the grass and a note it was being tented for termites,” said Oster, a Miami resident who has been in real estate for 15 years.

It turns out the house she thought she had purchased had been sold in a short sale the week before to someone else — Osberto Jimenez, a 40-year-old Cuban-born truck driver. The law firm handling the foreclosure for the lender mishandled the paperwork and never canceled the auction sale.

“So we both own the same house and I’m frustrated as hell,” said Oster. “Someone screwed up.”