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DAVID MAIALETTI / Staff photographer

When Jeanette Marcano moved into her Kensington home it had no plumbing or interior walls. She needed more space after taking custody of her five grandchildren.

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READER FEEDBACK

Slumlord sold them lies, many say

To tenants, he's a slumlord, a swindler, a dream-slayer; now he's the subject of a fraud investigation

By BARBARA LAKER & WENDY RUDERMAN
Philadelphia Daily News

lakerb@phillynews.com 215-854-5933

WIND and rain blew through the shell of a house on Monmouth Street. The ceilings and walls had gaping holes; the shower and broken toilet could be seen from the floor below. There was no front door, no kitchen, no heat.

But to Isabel Santos, this derelict Kensington house held the promise of her first real home, her slice of the American Dream.

In 2002, Santos signed an "installment-sale agreement" with a Philadelphia company owned by Robert N. Coyle Sr., a real-estate mogul and self-made millionaire, widely known for peddling shabby homes to the city's poorest. Under the agreement, Santos would own the house in five years.

Santos and her ex-husband sunk at least $20,000 of their own money to create a home out of rubble. But instead of a deed, Santos recently got slapped with a foreclosure notice, and she and her teenage son, Jose, could soon be on the street.

That's because Coyle defaulted on a mortgage he took out on the house. Santos felt swindled.

So did dozens of others, the city's downtrodden, many living paycheck to paycheck, who put every last dime into fixing up homes they thought they'd own one day. Now they're just one step away from homelessness. They blame one man - Coyle, a man they call a "dream killer," a "slumlord millionaire."

The Daily News has learned that Coyle, 64, is at the center of a massive fraud investigation being conducted by the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office and federal authorities.

Coyle did not respond to requests for comment nor did his attorney, Brian E. Quinn.

* Promised people they could rent to own their homes, without being able to deliver on such a promise.

* Obtained more than $15 million in bank loans on nearly 300 homes he rented out, then stopped making bank payments and padlocked his Allegheny Avenue rowhouse real-estate office in Port Richmond. The houses are now headed for sheriff's sale.

* Forged hundreds - possibly thousands - of housing-inspection licenses that allowed him to rent the homes. Many of them had no heat or water, seeping sewage and rotted floors - violations that would've prevented Coyle from getting licenses.

* Failed to pay the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in property and business taxes and water fees, leaving tenants without water.

Broken dreams

Walk any block in the Lower Northeast and mention the name Robert Coyle or his most widely known company - Landvest - and scores of residents express outrage. There is talk of vigilante justice, meted out with baseball bats and fists.

"I feel like I've lost everything," Santos said, tears rolling down her face as her son Jose translated. "My world crashed. Now everything feels like it's just falling away."

On some blocks in Kensington, the epicenter of Coyle's tattered housing stock, as many as seven homes are in foreclosure.

"Where are we going to go?" Santos asked. "Where?"

Coyle lives in South Jersey, but it might as well be a world away. He owns a Washington Township mansion with pool, hot tub and cabana, two garages with space for nine cars, and six full bathrooms.

Inez Ramos, like many of his alleged victims, had no sink in the only bathroom in her Frankford home on Buckius Street. She uses a black garbage bag as a wall. The flimsy plastic flap is all that separates her kitchen from the outside elements.

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Comments

Posted 05:55 AM, 10/26/2009

iodine

I honestly don't know how this guy got out of Kensington alive. Those are some tough people living in that neighborhood. For him to mess with their families lives was fool-hardy. This statement; "A home means everything," Ramos said. "Anything can happen to you out there, but then you come home where you belong. It's a place you feel safe, secure, protected and loved, where you cook for your children and tuck them in at night. is enough to make you cry. It's a beautiful sentiment. I wish the banks would realize the potential to do good here. It would not benefit the banks to take over property that is basically worthless to everyone EXCEPT the tenents. Let them offer the same deals to the tenents, collect token rent for a few years, then sign over the deeds. The banks should take a loss due to their own mistakes in dealing with the slumlord's own title search agency. That fact alone is outragous. Why haven't you named the banks in this article?

Posted 07:48 AM, 10/26/2009

cosrivron2

Lock him up, put him in the same cell as the father of 10-year-old Charlenni Ferreira was in and give Slumlord Coyle the same sheets.

Posted 07:48 AM, 10/26/2009

dewey1951

Someome needs to look into the office manager "John" who was a great enabler of this situation.

Posted 08:14 AM, 10/26/2009

fedupphilly

People need to read what they are signing and understand what they are agreeing to. I would never "Purchase" a house from someone unless a bank, realtor and or lawyer is involved. iodine - there may be some tough people in this world but with no smarts and commonsense that means nothing.

Posted 08:38 AM, 10/26/2009

Niko

I would sentence him to live in the same neighborhoods as he rented. See how long he lasts. This is a true indication of why education needs to be improved. The more you know, the less likely you'll allow someone to take advantage of you. However, his business model is not without merit. Act as the middle man for hard working people who have bad credit but otherwise are consistant with paying rent. By the descriptions of the houses described in this article, they couldn't cost more than $15G. At $600/month for 5 years comes to $36G (of which tenant then owns the house). Not a substantial profit, but good passive income that helps people. Only if he wasn't such a greedy b@st@ard.

Posted 08:42 AM, 10/26/2009

Nickawampus Leroy

I'm sure Coyle had been greasing the palms down at L&I for many years for this to go on so long.

Posted 08:43 AM, 10/26/2009

Peacemaker

Vigilante justice should be served.

Posted 08:51 AM, 10/26/2009

aNutterInDgutter

Nickawampus, you hit the nail right on the head. I know for a fact you can grease the skids with L&I and city officials. By the way, check the records for Coyle's campaign contributions.

Posted 08:58 AM, 10/26/2009

beezer77

I sent an email to avalar real estate in Huntingdon Valley, asking them how they could employ such a piece of garbage, with a link to the article. The baks were probably in on it. They're not stupid. They should definitely absorb some loss, not these poor people. In all fairness, they shouldn't have entered into an agreement for a major purchase for a house without proper paperwork and representation....but i'm sure they just didn't know any better. In any case this guy shouldnt even be allowed top live a "cookie-cutter" house anywhere. He should be in a cookie cutter pentitentiary.

Posted 09:12 AM, 10/26/2009

JBA

I wonder how many million he have left over for a smart guy like him. Someone has all that money now because he has to go back to work. Please keep us up on the out come.

Posted 09:19 AM, 10/26/2009

ease

The banks should just give these people the deeds and write off the loss. they can't make much from eviction and paying all the back taxes.Just do the right thing and take coyles house to pay for all this mess. the city drops the ball again and guess who suffers. take everything he has and make good for the people he conned. BTW L&I has to be the most corrupt organization around worse than the mob. theres no way they can say they missed this, I wont even get into the banks we all know what they are without saying anything

Comment removed.

Posted 09:26 AM, 10/26/2009

FM Talks

As someone said earlier, why are the banks that are involved not mentioned in the story. The public needs to know who these swindlers are.

Posted 09:31 AM, 10/26/2009

Ilmare

... I don't condone it but I'm really surprised no one has killed him yet. Just seems like he should have a BIG target on his back.

Posted 09:36 AM, 10/26/2009

James

You go to a bank for 5k to purchase a used car to commute to and from work, watch how the banks handle your loan request. You ask to borrow 15M to pass off slumlord housing and they give you the loan and serve you coffee. The bankers behind this harebrained scheme - houses said to be worth 6M are only worth 2M minus 800K in unpaid property taxes which leaves bank with netting 1.2M for the houses. Bankers have a lots of zeros on their heads - no brains at all compared to hard working people struggling to put a roof over their heads. If only a single bank employee took a look at the slums of housing and questioned the loan, millions would have been saved with the bad loan cancelled! Put Coyle deep in the bowels of hell where he will have to forever move a rock up the hill and do it again once the rock falls down the hill.