Fannie Mae filed a foreclosure complaint against the owner of a North Miami apartment building.
On July 25, Fannie Mae, led by CEO Priscilla Almodovar, sued Salem House Holding and its manager, Alexander Padilla, for alleging defaulting on a $3.9 million mortgage that includes accrued interest and attorney fees, court records show.
The loan is secured by Salem House, a two-story building with 32 apartments at 13155 Northeast Sixth Avenue. The lawsuit also names as a defendant the city of North Miami, which has a lien on the property since 2023 due to alleged unresolved code violations, records show.
Padilla and Fannie Mae’s attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.
The garden-style building was completed in 1964. Salem House Holding bought the property for $3.3 million in 2019, records show. A year later, the entity nabbed a $4 million from Fannie Mae, with Padilla signing as a personal guarantor, the complaint states.
Fannie Mae alleges Salem House Holding failed to make monthly mortgage payments since March. The apartment building owner allegedly owes $3.7 million in principal, plus an additional $200,000 in interest and fees.
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Housing Finance Agency and other government agencies are in the midst of a major nationwide investigation into mortgage fraud involving loans to multifamily borrowers. The fraud could run into the billions of dollars, according to a recent investigation by The Real Deal.
Fannie Mae alone claimed to have $700 million of exposure tied to eight blacklisted sponsors, including investors that controlled roughly 1,235 apartment units in Chicago.
Some borrowers are facing criminal charges or have already been convicted. Last month, Boruch Drillman was sentenced to five years of probation for his role in a $165 million mortgage fraud scheme involving two apartment complexes.
Last year, Aron Puretz pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud affecting a financial institution. Prosecutors alleged Puretz engaged in a multi-year scam to fraudulently obtain $54.7 million in loans from Freddie Mac and private lenders. In December, he was sentenced to five years in prison.
