The often-delayed sale of the Florida mansion once the property of Jeffrey Prosser, the now-bankrupt former owner and CEO of Innovative Telephone, has hit another snag.
An auction was to be held in a federal courtroom in Pittsburgh on March 1, but no final order from the court has been issued at this writing.
Meanwhile, however, the proposed purchaser has been identified, the proposed price lowered by close to $2 million, and the (at least partial) report of a building inspector has been quoted in court documents.
The would-be purchaser is PB Purchase, LLC, presumably a Palm Beach real estate firm.
The price offered has dropped from $7.98 million to $6.18 million.
The lowered price was explained in a court document as relating to the inspector’s finding “significant water damage and intrusion in numerous areas of the house, necessitating significant and expensive repairs to the property ….”
Among the specifics noted were: “numerous cracks in tiles on the roof of the staff quarters … extensive cracking in the exterior walls …. Further, buyer’s survey revealed a wall partially enclosing the driveway was not located on the Property ….”
The would-be buyer apparently remains interested enough in the property to have filed a formal request with the court seeking – and getting – permission to make an amended offer to buy the place. The amended price is $1.8 million less than the earlier bid.
The water damage report appears to explain why the building inspector had drilled holes in the house, something that the Prossers had vehemently objected to in the recent past.
Since there is a $5 million-plus mortgage on the Palm Beach mansion, the creditors will not get much if the house is sold at the $6.18 price, given the carrying costs (such as taxes, insurance, and legal fees) that have been shouldered by the creditors through the court-appointed trustee. The Prossers, as noted in earlier articles, have been living in the mansion cost-free, something the non-Prosser lawyers mention at every opportunity.
Meanwhile, and the Prosser bankruptcy trials always have further complications, an earlier 134-page order by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Judith Fitzgerald has been appealed by the Prossers to the U.S. District Court in St. Thomas.
In that order she had, among other things, ruled that Prosser’s valuable cigar and win collections be turned over to a court-appointed trustee for ultimate sale.
