I'm told Sonny Vestal was caught by the real estate commission for stealing from a trust account. He took a five year plea deal. To get Sonny Vestal's full name I looked up Vestal Property Management where I discovered he is in-fact G A Sonny Vestal jr. Then I went to the Guilford County register of Deeds where I discovered that Mr Vestal lives at 130 Sunset Circle #101 in Irving Park where he's a neighbor of former Greensboro Mayor Robbie Perkins.
Doesn't our current mayor live just up the street? I wonder how she feels about living in such close proximity to so many known criminals. It must surely be terrifying in Irving Park these days.
From Vestal's website:
"We also pride ourselves on regular reporting and communication to all of our clients. Our goal is to create a solid business relationship with our homeowners. We advertise properties, screen prospective tenants, negotiate contracts and leases, and collect rent. We expect the best at Vestal Property Management. We provide regular maintenance. We have our own 24-hour, on call, emergency maintenance staff to protect our homeowners. By offering these quality services, maintenance requests and complaints are reduced while resident retention and positive relationships are increased."
From everything we've read in the newspapers about deteriorating conditions, drug dealers, defecating in the halls, crime and everything else that went on at Heritage House it appears Vestal may have been screening for the worst residents they could possibly find to place as residents there.
Speaking of crime: remember that 2800 plus figure that Councilmen Matheny and Barber loosely tossed around and the News & Record picked up on without even missing a beat? The bastards lied through their teeth. The real numbers only slightly inflated from the Greensboro Police Department: 780 in 4 years. Lying bastards! Why are Greensboro City Councilmen making up excuses to take people's homes away from them and inflating the crime rate there by almost 400%?
You can thank Sal Leon for digging up that little bit of very important information. I suspect Sal might be running for City Council at large come next election.
Mr Vestal is also the owner of GAV Properties, LLC which attempted in 2011 to take over management of the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market from the City of Greensboro. I wonder what other business Mr Vestal might have done with the City of Greensboro over the years?
Then, from the list of owners at Heritage House. The News & Record made a big deal of the "fact" that "most" of the units there belonged to out of state owners citing EOC Rental Properties with 32 properties there. According to the NC Secretary of State, EOC Rental Properties is a Greensboro company located at 1400 Battleground Avenue, Suite 134 A, 27408 and owned by Christopher D Johnson and Thomas L Garner.
That just happens to be Thomas L Garner PA. who also owns Greve Ted A & Assoc PA, a paralegal firm and Grd and Associates, Inc, a personal credit institution. I can see the possibility of loosing some state licenses to practice on the horizon.
As for Mr Christopher Johnson, could he be one in the same with Chris Johnson of Urgent Money Services, a pawn shop and gold buyer on JJ Drive located not far from Heritage House? Anyone know? As it turns out Christopher Johnson might not own a pawn shop but he is a social worker.
Of course, being named here doesn't mean you've done anything wrong. (Well except for Barber and Matheny who obviously lied). It's just that the more we get out into the open the cleared the picture becomes. At some point some of these people are going to start talking. Christopher D Johnson and Thomas L Garner also own Heritage House units under their own names.
Why didn't Ben Holder, superblogger, dig all this stuff up? Just askin' that's all. Anyone checked his blog lately to see if it has been made public again? No? What's Ben hiding?
Another of those "out of state" owners are Charles and Nina Coffey who own 26 units under the names Charles and Nina Coffey and Coffey of Greensboro LLC. As I made mention before, "Mr Coffey is the chairman of the board at Central Gateway Business Alliance, President of Coffey of GSO,LLC and works in management at Industries of the Blind in Greensboro. He's a member of the Guilford Merchants Association and Triad After Work Social Business Networking."
The 3rd largest owner of properties at Heritage House is the Heritage House Homeowners Association, a Greensboro non profit with 15 units. Remember: Charles Coffey is President of the HOA and his wife Nina the secretary. So far we're up to 59 units out of 170 and I've yet to find a single owner living outside of the city limits of Greensboro.
Other owners are pointing their fingers at the Coffeys but if poor management was really the problem then why didn't the members of the HOA vote the Coffeys out of office before it got to this point? Besides, how did Charles Coffey become so successful at business if he is in-fact a poor manager.
Something that has puzzled me: If the Heritage House Homeowners Association owed a $59,000 water bill to the City of Greensboro, why did the city take all 170 units when the HOA owned 15 units of their own? Why not collect the debt from who owes the debt then take over management of the HOA from Vestal Property Management instead of punishing property owners who paid their bills? Let's not forget the 5.87 acre paved parking lot no one is paying taxes on-- why has the City and Guilford County allowed that to go on for almost 10 years? How many other large properties are getting by tax free in Greensboro and Guilford County and who owns them?
You don't take poor peoples' homes away from them without first trying to figure out a way to help them keep the homes they paid for.
Another interesting owner is STUDIO HH LLC Studio HH LLC owned by Robert H Akin of 202 Meadowbrook Terrace in Irving Park and John W Black of 2415 Philadelphia Lake Court in the New Irving Park area just off of West Cone Blvd with a view of Philadelphia Lake. Together Mr Akin and Mr Black own 7 units there bringing us to 66 and I've yet to find a single landlord who doesn't live in Greensboro.
Yes, there will be some absentee landlords but not nearly so many as the City of Greensboro, Mayor Vaughan, Councilman Barber, Ben Holder and the News & Record lead you to believe.
If you'd like to check my results or if you just don't want to wait on my next post the tools I'm using are all located under the heading, Tool Box in the left column of every page of this website. Of course these numbers are subject to change as I research who owns the rest of the corporate owners of properties at Heritage House, don't be surprised if someone you once thought very highly of gets made mention. After all, it's nothing personal, it's just that I don't understand how someone who paid his or her bills could be kicked out of their home to which they had a deed without a Council vote, no use of eminent domain and no proof that he or she has done anything wrong.
To me, that looks very much like the work of a Fascist dictatorship. Is Nancy Barakat Vaughan somehow related to Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini?
To be continued...
