Foreclosure sale on Buckfield Lane (Updated several times — I keep uncovering more details)
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43 Buckfield Lane, sold out of foreclosure for $2.5 million. 8.4 acres with a 1936 teardown (But not always — see below **) . A reverse mortgage that became due upon the borrower’s death on June 24, 2023, no one appeared on behalf of the defendant widower (if any), heirs or assigns, and the foreclosure proceeded relatively smoothly. UPDATE: Mrs. Ewles McDonnell outlived her husband and died, 100-years-old, in 2023)
Aline McDonnell, of Greenwich, Connecticut, USA, a member of the Elwes LG family and a descendant of King George II, died Aug. 7, 2023. Born Dec. 30, 1923, she was a daughter of (Francis) Guy Robert (1895-1966) and Barbara Dorothy (Wythes) Elwes (1896-1984). She was married in Brompton Oratory, July 17, 1948 to Hubert McDonnell Jr. (1919-2004), from a socially prominent New York family. Two daughters, (Aline) Ann Louise (1949) and Rosamond (1952).
Foreclosure documents show an initial sum borrowed from the reverse mortgage lender Financial Freedom Senior Fund of $2,016,960, with $3,372,000 due by 2024.
Financial Freedom is no more, alas, a victim of the 2007 crash, and neither is its owner IndyMac, but before it went, Financial Freedom racked up quite a record of senior abuse:
According to Google AI:
Complaints against Financial Freedom Senior Funding (and related company Freedom Mortgage) involve alleged deceptive practices, improper loan servicing, high fees, misleading statements about income/value, and violations of fair lending laws, leading to government actions and settlements for issues like misreporting data and accelerated foreclosures. Common complaints detail seniors being confused by complex documents, promised benefits that didn't materialize, and facing aggressive foreclosure despite paying, with issues including undisclosed fees, failure to pay property taxes, and targeting vulnerable borrowers for refinancing.
Key Complaint Areas & Issues
Misleading Sales & Advertising: Allegations of "deceptive advertising" and "misleading documents" promising guaranteed income, low fees, and preserved home equity, which proved false.
Improper Loan Servicing: Claims of accelerating foreclosures, obstructing repayment options, and not following HECM (Reverse Mortgage) rules, leading to higher foreclosure rates than other servicers.
Elder Abuse & Fraud: Lawsuits mention elder abuse, fraudulent concealment, and negligent misrepresentation, with tactics designed to confuse seniors into taking unfavorable reverse mortgages.
Data Reporting Violations: Freedom Mortgage Corporation was penalized by the CFPB, 2019} for intentionally submitting inaccurate race, ethnicity, and sex data for loan applications.
Undisclosed Costs & Fees: Seniors reported being charged high fees, effectively prepaying interest, and facing large discrepancies in payoff statements, notes a CFPB complaint.
Failure to Pay Property Taxes: HUD found Financial Freedom improperly insured loans with delinquent property taxes, violating HECM rules.
Regulatory & Legal Actions
U.S. Department of Justice & HUD: Financial Freedom settled for nearly $90 million in 2017 for allegedly obtaining improper interest payments and failing to disclose issues on claims.
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) (CFPB): Took action against Freedom Mortgage for HMDA data violations, resulting in penalties and orders for better compliance.
The record is silent on whether there were in fact any heirs to contest this suit* but if there had been, a strong defense against foreclosure might have been available. We’ll never know. Anti-disirregardless, eight and a half acres for $2.5 million seems like a bargain — probably, I (and Gideon) estimate, a $1 million or so under market.
Further research suggests that there might have been:
Aline Elwes McDonnell’s lineage is traceable back as far as King George II of England and Copped Hall in Essex was a site near the town of Epping that dates back to medieval times – originally home to the FitzAucher family who held the office of Foresters. The meaning of ‘Copped’ has its roots in the old English term for peak and denotes the vantage point of the site upon which the 18th century version of the house was built. No fewer than three grand country houses graced the site until the demise of the Wyatt aggrandized version (now thankfully undergoing restoration by a local trust) in a devastating fire of 1917.
The story goes that the few household staff and gardeners that remained during the war years, armed with only a small handpump to quell the flames, dragged furniture, paintings and objects out onto the lawn to save them from destruction. Much was sold off or dispersed thereafter to offset the huge losses incurred at the time but what remained was rehoused at The Wood House (an 1898 confection in the high Tudor revivalist style on the estate grounds) where the family moved following the catastrophic event. A number of the objects in this auction are featured in imagery from aforementioned Country Life article on The Wood House in 1959. This time capsule of 100 or so items made the transatlantic journey following Aline Mary Margaret Elwes marriage to New Yorker, Hubert McDonnell Jr. (1919-2004), in the Brompton Oratory in 1948.
The pair settled in Greenwich, Connecticut and shipped the extant portion of the collection, bequeathed to Aline, by boat in the early 1950s, where they have been lovingly preserved ever since. The family hopes a new generation of custodians will care for these heirlooms and Freeman’s I Hindman is honored to be the auction house of choice for this beautiful group of English furniture, silver, portraits and forgotten treasures. Please join us this June in New York and Philadelphia to be inspired and transported with what Disraeli described as that “soul-subduing sentiment, harshly called flirtation, which is the spell of a country house”.
** An overwrought article about the house and art collection can be found here, “Sale of a Lifetime”
If T.S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock measured his life in coffee-spoons, then mine is surely measured in auctions: I’ve devoted twenty years of my life to bringing rich tapestries of collecting to sale and it still gives me a thrill to find the stories imbued in historic objects. And so it goes – a day in the life of an auctioneer: the 21st century bombardment of emails and zoom calls is intercepted by an old fashioned phone call: the opportunity to visit a private collection in Greenwich, Connecticut of “English Furniture” from the estate of Aline Elwes McDonnell. I volunteered immediately for the chance to bathe in memories of my youth (far too well-spent in the Country House Collections department at Christie’s in London).
The visit did not disappoint! In what first appeared to be an unassuming, if much-loved home (the pink-walled kitchen bore the hallmarks of any loving family’s growth with tattered and refreshed lines denoting who grew tallest first) the cottage continued through the adjacent dining room to the library and beyond, by means of a modest passageway, to the extension built in the 1950s to house the extant collections long since removed from Copped Hall, Essex, UK.
What lay before me was a glorious recreation of an 18th century English Country House drawing room: a finely woven Brussel’s tapestry circa 1680, a rare form of commode with the signature hallmark marquetry inlay of Messrs. Mayhew & Ince, Regency period cockpen faux-bamboo armchairs, Fahua vases from the Ming Dynasty, all bound together by an illustrious group of portraits on the walls led by the tantalizing and unfinished depiction of a young woman with a fashionable late 18th century coiffure (ever the eternal optimist in me: Sir Joshua Reynolds? A precocious follower perhaps? Reverend Matthew William Peters?). By the time, dear reader, this sits in your hands, hopefully some of these riddles will be solved, but for the moment I’m armed with stories passed down through the Elwes family, Country Life articles from 1910 and 1959 respectively, a flashlight, and an insatiable curiosity as my only guide.
