Jocelyn Foreman faced down a real estate giant, and won.
A mother of five and grandmother of three, Foreman’s victory was the first test of a new California law intended to give communities and tenants the chance to stem the massive tide of large real estate investors who’ve bought up hundreds of thousands of distressed single-family residential properties across the state over the past decade, flipping them for profit or turning them into market-rate rentals.
Local public radio station KQED first reported earlier this month on how the home Foreman had been renting ended up on the foreclosure auction block. Bidding started at $175,000. The winning bid was for $600,000, from Redondo Beach-based real estate firm Wedgewood.
(Beth LaBerge/KQED)
Jocelyn Foreman was full of nervous energy and dread.
It was a crisp morning in early March. She arrived at the Pleasant Hill Community Center to find a handful of men and women in a semicircle outside the sandstone-colored building, clutching folders and holding cell phones.
They were there for a foreclosure auction, poised to bid on the house that Foreman rents: a single-story, 1,500-square-foot tract home in Pinole. It’s a simple home, set back from the street, with a steep sloping backyard, worn carpets and a roof that leaks when it rains.
A man with a clipboard started the bidding at $175,000. A woman in a maroon sweatshirt and another man offered competing bids. First $176,000. Then $177,000. Then $180,000.