Are you being evicted?
Is the house you are living in being foreclosed by a bank?
Are you sure that your landlord is paying the mortgage?

Landlords or banks looking for a foreclosure mover Click here

If you MUST move because of foreclosure and know about it; it’s not too bad.... it could be much worse if nobody has told you, and the City Marshall shows up unannounced at your door one day, moves your belongings out on the street and padlocks you out of your apartment. In some cases, the bank or mortgage company hires a moving company to move the occupant’s belongings into storage – and there is a limit on what you can take (food and household chemicals cannot be stored in a warehouse by law), how much you can take, and the time required to pack all your delicate pieces and irreplaceable items is usually limited as well.

    I am Dave, the Webmaster of this site; I am not a lawyer, but I was evicted along with 5 other people from my Queens residence. Big Sam – a good friend of mine for many years – bailed me out of an impossible situation. You can read my story here. Since I have been in this situation, I certainly can empathize. We will do what other moving companies won’t do because it's not profitable – not only because we want your business, but mostly because it is the right thing to do.

    If you have been moved out, there is usually a restriction on what you can go retrieve from the storage company; you usually have to move everything at once, as the movers won’t allow you to retrieve just some of your possessions... such as your work clothes; you have to take everything at once.

    Regardless of whether you know about an impending eviction, or whether you were surprised to find your belongings gone and a big chain and padlock on your door when you come home, Big Sam Moving can take some of the pain and aggravation out of the experience. Here is what we will do for you:

•     If you KNOW about an impending eviction, we will work with you to plan a “graceful exit”. The best thing you can do for yourself is to download and print out our box labels, then pack everything according to what you’ll need; work clothes, medicines, valuables, etc., and fill out the label and glue or tape it to the box. Call us to arrange a pickup, and we will come and get your belongings and store them in our guarded Jersey City, New Jersey warehouse. If you need something, we will give you a special number to call and a warehouse pass and you can schedule a time to come and retrieve what you need and leave the rest in our warehouse at reasonable rates until you find a new place.
   

•     If you were EVICTED by SURPRISE, call us IMMEDIATELY. While it is probably impossible for us to get there in time before the Marshall padlocks your door, we can work with you to provide you less expensive and more convenient accessible storage than the bank has hired. We will retrieve your possessions from wherever they are stored, and move them into our huge warehouse until you secure another place to live. When you move with us, you will have FREE interim storage for 30 days. I suggest that you take advantage of any "FREE" storage the bank or mortgage company provides if it is possible, then if you STILL have not found a permanent residence, move your belongings to our warehouse. You will be charged for the storage at very reasonable rates, and when you hire us to move your possessions out of our warehouse to your new home, we will credit you with 30 days of storage fees.
   

•     In any event, we respect your belongings, and I know how it feels to be evicted without notice. In any eviction, you have legal rights. You must be served with a notice of eviction; a “certified letter” or notification by mail to "John Doe" is legally insufficient, and probably can be challenged, since landlords in default often intercept eviction notices at the building's mailbox. If this has happened to you without notice, and you have been paying your rent, you may have grounds for a lawsuit. If your landlord has been collecting rent while eviction proceedings have gone forward, you may be entitled to a full refund of all your rent money if he has not been using it to pay the mortgage and / or utilities. You may also be entitled for compensatory and punitive damages in a civil action. You must consult a lawyer with the details of your case for an accurate assessment of your case.
  
  Legal resources:
  http://www.rentlaw.com/eviction/newyorkeviction.htm – learn your rights
  www.LegalMatch.com – find a lawyer to handle your case
  Download the NYC Landlord Booklet – what the landlord is legally obligated to do.
   

•     We are working on other ways we can provide valuable services for those who find themselves in dire straits through no fault of their own.
   

FOOTNOTES

[1] If YOU pack your belongings and seal the boxes, we cannot be held responsible for damages or losses. In sudden, unannounced evictions, there is usually no time to inventory your belongings. If at all possible, arrange for our professional movers to pack your belongings. We have appropriate boxes and packing materials to insure that the property is not damaged, and you will be given a receipt for all valuable items. Of course, we are insured for any damages when WE pack you.

[2] Our warehouse is manned 24/7 and highly secure.

[3] Rates vary according to weight and cubic feet. We will treat and charge jobs scheduled in advance as a regular moving job.

[[4] Some unannounced evictions will land you on the street with your belongings. This is illegal, and you should consult a lawyer as soon as possible.

[5] Tampering with the U.S. Mail is a Federal Offense, and removing posted notices is a misdemeanor.

My Eviction Story

    In an economy perched on the brink of disaster; a disaster that by all credible and intelligent accounts will make the Great Depression pale in comparison – there are many, many smaller disasters quietly rising up to claim the quiet lifestyles of unsuspecting, innocent people. One of those disasters was my own, shared by five other people who lived in the same building I did, and who over the years, have become good friends.

    The house I had been living in for the past 3-1/2 years was a run-down 3-story apartment building located in Woodside Queens, New York. Was it not that I made fast friends there; truthfully, I would have left the premises at the first available opportunity. However, run-down as the place was, the rent was reasonable compared with others in the area, the neighborhood was good, and two other US Service veterans besides myself occupied the building, and our commonality of experiences in the service to our country and our camaraderie made it easier to stay than to leave.

    Approximately two years ago, the original owner of the building passed away, and a few months later, Con Edison turned off the power for the entire building in the middle of the winter, which made heating the house impossible because the gas boiler’s thermostat requires electricity to run. So we went to Home Depot and bought a generator, and jury-rigged it into the boiler’s electrical supply so we could run the boiler and wouldn’t freeze. The City’s “3-1-1” number is a joke, as multiple complaints yielded no action that could be called “timely”. However, the electricity was finally restored a short time later. After all of this was resolved, we did some research on the Internet. We discovered that the taxes were being paid, and so we assumed the owner was paying the mortgage, because a bank always includes the property taxes in the mortgage payments since a tax foreclosure would leave the bank “swinging in the breeze” so-to-speak. However, we later found out that the owner had been lent $275,000 on a $10,000 deposit and his signature. The owner was a foreign national, and I as a Vietnam Veteran and a citizen of this country would be laughed out of the bank should I dare to propose such a deal. Apparently the house was in bank foreclosure, since the original owner had passed on, and we found out that he had not paid the mortgage or utility bills for quite some time even prior to his demise, even though he still continued to collect the rent.
 

    It seems that there is a crisis that is looming in this country; a crisis that was caused by the banks themselves. By lending out exorbitant amounts of money with hardly any collateral to foreign nationals with no stake in or ties to the community, the entire country had experienced what was falsely called “a housing boom”, that was in reality, a result of the falling value of the dollar, and the bidding-up of housing prices with the “funny-money” the banks have irresponsibly lent to unscrupulous speculators.
 

    Now that the housing market is on a downward spiral, and 1 in 200 homes in the country are in foreclosure, speculators that have obtained huge mortgages with very little if any down-payment are finding themselves in the predicament of having to pay off a $725,000 mortgage on a house that is now worth only $550,000 on the open market. Since the rental income would cover the mortgage payment no matter what the house could sell for at market value, you would think an owner who wants to have a home to live in would hang onto the property. However, the speculator never intends to become a homeowner in the traditional sense, but is merely a speculator hoping to make a quick “flip” sale, and pocket a small fortune using the bank’s money – and little or none of his own. So the speculator simply walks away from his contractual obligation with the mortgage lender, says little or nothing to anyone living in the house paying rent, continues to “milk” the situation for as long as possible, and lets the consequences of his actions and the irresponsibility of the mortgage lender for assisting him in the original transaction fall upon innocent people – and those who are least able to bear the burden when the ka-ka hits the air movement device.
 

    You would think that as a rent-paying tenant, your obligation would end with simply paying the rent on time; you should not have to worry about or even be the least bit concerned about the landlord’s contractual obligations.... but even though you are not legally responsible for what your landlord does or doesn’t do, the brunt of misfortune will fall upon you if the house goes into foreclosure.... you may be out in the street and homeless – literally in less than a few hours – with no advance notice, and no prior warning. How can I say this? Well, it happened to me and five other tenants of the building I was living in, so I know from whence I speak.
 

    It is lawfully incumbent upon the bank or the mortgage company in repossession / eviction proceedings to notify all the tenants of the building they are intending to repossess, that they are being evicted, and give them enough time to find suitable housing. Also, there is usually a requirement that the tenants being forced to vacate, are entitled to compensation for their expenses in relocating. NONE of this was done in our case. All the bank (the names are being withheld due to pending lawsuit) did was pay to move (if you call the unprofessional and hasty pack-up done by Bennett Moving of Hicksville, NY "moving") and store our property for 30 days. The house is in Woodside Queens, New York, and the property was stored in Hicksville, Long Island. We just woke up one morning after paying our rent the week before, only to find the City Marshall padlocking our doors. There was no notification whatsoever, no due process, and no compensation for relocation expenses. In addition, since most of our family and friends live far away, and since we had to be back at the house at 9AM the following morning to be there while the moving company packed up our apartments, most of us ended up sleeping on park benches in the pouring rain with just the clothes on our backs and whatever we could carry. I had my dog Rocky with me. Washington Mutual has since gone belly-up, otherwise, they would have heard from our lawyers, and I’ve been contemplating getting together with all of the displaced tenants and do a “Wa-hoo™” commercial on YouTube that they’ll never live down.... but they've been acquired by Chase Manhattan, and the aggravation frankly isn't worth it.
 

    Luckily for me, I had a friend at Big Sam Moving. Sam had wanted me to work for him for a long time, but the commute is a terror, and so I declined. Perhaps this is Divine providence, since I am now working in the Jersey City warehouse and living nearby.
 

    I’m here to tell you that YOU also have a friend at Big Sam…. And if you’re stuck in a similar situation, we understand what you’re going through. Let us help. We understand.