Sommerset Villas Condo Sells for $46,000

Published: Wednesday, September 30, 2009 2:21 PM PDT

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The lowest price so far for one of the condos involved in the real estate swindle in Escondido was just recorded: $46,000.

The studio unit, #17 in Sommerset Villas, sold in July 2008 for $265,000 (with a $212,000 mortgage) to one of the buyers assembled by Jim McConville, the Bay Area man at the center of the swindle.

That's an 83 percent price drop in 14 months.

We mentioned the high prices for the studios in our story back in April:

Even more striking, McConville's buyers were sold four 480-square-foot studios in the same complex for $265,000 each last summer, taking out loans for $212,000 on each one.

"Property values will have to quadruple before that condo is even worth the loan amount," said Todd Lackner, a local real estate appraiser and mortgage fraud expert.

Lackner wrote me this morning with the news of the sale and retroactively corrected his estimate:

I shoulda said 4.6 times.

-- KELLY BENNETT

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