FIVE years ago, Earl Simmons, the rap performer and actor known as DMX, joined the wave of celebrities and professionals who followed their dreams to buy brownstones and invest in Harlem, but he is still struggling to make it there.
DMX is asking $1.9 million for his town house.
In 2001, with three top-selling albums under his belt, Mr. Simmons paid $750,000 in cash to buy a vacant 18-foot-wide brownstone on Fifth Avenue at 124th Street, opposite Mount Morris Park, the center of the Harlem brownstone revival, according to property records. Mr. Simmons grew up as a troubled child and teenager in Yonkers, he says in his autobiography, but spent a lot of time hanging out in Central Harlem.
But his brownstone remains dark and empty, a silent and humbling witness to what can go wrong in the real estate business, even if you are a tattooed tough guy, up from the streets. Mr. Simmons exhorts his fans to “never give up, never give in, never stop believing in your dreams,” but when it comes to the house, he is putting it on the market.
Soon after closing on the three-story building, Mr. Simmons discovered that it was technically a rooming house, protected by city rules, and could not be rented out as individual apartments. He paid $300,000 to a contractor — no longer in business — who promised to obtain a new certificate of occupancy, but the work was never completed.
City records show that in 2002, a building inspector issued a stop-work order because of construction jobs done without a permit, and Mr. Simmons was fined $2,500 when he did not show up for a hearing. Then, he was sued by an electrician who fell off a ladder while working on a light over the front door. The electrician won a $210,000 judgment against Mr. Simmons in State Supreme Court in Manhattan when Mr. Simmons did not show up for a hearing in 2003.
Mr. Simmons went back to court to try to overturn the judgment and have the case retried. He acknowledged that his wife, Tashera Simmons, had received an envelope containing “some legal papers,” but he had been on tour and never looked at them. The judge rejected his claim, and the suit was eventually settled.
The house remained vacant all this time, with the heat turned off. During a cold spell in 2003, a pipe burst, sending a cascade of water throughout the house and causing considerable damage.
But that was nothing compared with the financial damage from the liens that began showing up in public records.
The Workers Compensation Board of New York put a $30,000 lien against Mr. Simmons’s properties, and last year, the Internal Revenue Service put a $370,459 lien on them for unpaid taxes, followed by a $44,357 judgment by the New York State Tax Department in March.
In March, he transferred title in the house to his wife through a limited liability corporation, a move that could shield it from additional liens. He hired a new team to file new plans to legalize the conversion from a rooming house with six rented rooms and a basement apartment to four apartments, and he put the building up for sale for $1.9 million through Fillmore Real Estate, a large Brooklyn brokerage.
A few years after buying the house, Mr. Simmons took out a $400,000 mortgage on it to help cover his costs. But toward the end of September, the Bank of New York filed a foreclosure suit, the first step in eviction proceedings, when Mr. Simmons fell behind in his payments.
Trisha Lum, Mr. Simmons’s manager, said last week that he was on tour in Germany. She said that Mr. Simmons’s mortgage payments were now up to date, and she ascribed late payments to a change in staff members. She said that Mr. Simmons was working with the I.R.S. to resolve the lien over his back taxes.
“This place has been basically vacant all this time,” she said, “and we are getting a new certificate of occupancy.”
Lincoln Minott, the agent handling the sale, said that there was an offer of $1.6 million on the house but that it was contingent on obtaining the new certificate of occupancy. Once that happens, he said, he expects it to sell quickly.
And even if it does, Ms. Lum said that Mr. Simmons, who lives in Mount Kisco, N.Y., would maintain close ties to Harlem and New York City. She said he provides Thanksgiving dinner at a Harlem homeless shelter and because of his own troubled childhood, he was working with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to support children in foster care.
Source: NY Times
Posted on November 12, 2006 by D. Bell