A man managed to stay in a three-bedroom house without keeping up with his mortgage payments for 23 years.
According to the New York Post, 52-year-old Guramrit Hanspal of Long Island only made one mortgage payment towards the 2,081-square-foot property which he bought for $290,000 in 1998.
Hanspal borrowed the money for his home from Washington Mutual but only paid $1,602.37 towards it before defaulting, per the outlet.
In a bid to stay in the sizable East Meadow home, Hanspal filed four lawsuits and claimed bankruptcy seven times.
Taking advantage of the US Bankruptcy Code's "automatic stay" rule, the not-quite-homeowner was given a temporary reprieve from repossession - a reprieve that went on for a while.
Despite the home being taken over by a real estate firm and two banks since he moved in, he remained living in the home, essentially for free.
In May 2000, the bank managed to take possession of the property, and Hanspal was "forever barred" from any claim to the house, as per the judgment of foreclosure. But Hanspal simply continued his occupancy of the home.
By the following year, he filed his first bankruptcy claim and then went on to file another in November 2001, a further two in 2002, and another the year after.
By 2008, Washington Mutual went bust amid the financial crisis, and its assets were later taken over by JP Morgan Chase.
However, JP, too, struggled to remove Hanspal from the home and was embroiled in a legal case over the property.
Several big names, including a judge and lawyer of the property's current owner Diamond Ridge Partners, publicly stated that it was time for Hanspal to leave his home of more than two decades for good.
Per the Post, Nassau District Court Judge Scott Fairgrieve wrote in a housing court proceeding back in December 2019: "The history of this case going on for approximately 20 years must come to an end."
Attorney Jordan Katz, who reps Diamond Ridge Partners, added that people like Hanspal are "more than willing to use the courts and abuse the courts to whatever extent they need to extend their illegal occupancy."
"Nothing even approaches the length" of time Hanspal managed to stay in a foreclosed home," he added.
In November, 2021, Hanspal was finally removed from his Long Island home by authorities after losing another legal case to avoid his mortgage repayments, The Sun reported.
Nassau County Sheriff's deputies arrived at the two-storey corner house to change the locks some weeks after a judge ruled Hanspal was not living in the house legally.
This marked the second time officials tried to kick the 52-year-old out of the property since the previous September 14 decision.
Not long after the judgement, Hanspal's tenant Parmjit Puar submitted an emergency notion to the court asking for a 30-day moratorium as he had nowhere to live.
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