Who could resist a prime piece of Oregon Coast real estate, a one-acre parcel on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean and beautiful Stonefield Beach, just seven miles south of trendy Yachats?
Everyone, it turns out.
The property — 93550 Highway 101 — comes with baggage. It has the shell of a huge house ravaged by fire in 2023.
The blaze was spectacular, drawing more than 60 firefighters from 10 agencies. It ruined the four-story, pyramid-style 6,400-square-foot house. A state investigation was unable to determine the cause of the fire. The cost of demolishing and removing the ruins could run into six figures.
And the place has a tangled history: a nearly 20-year battle between the owners and their mortgage lenders that culminated in a Lane County Sheriff’s Office foreclosure sale on April 21. Nobody showed up to bid in the sheriff’s neon-lit basement meeting room in Eugene, so the place will likely soon become the lender’s property.
The Bank of New York, which represents the owner of the loan, had set the starting bid at $479,200.
What happens now is murky. That may help explain why no one bid. At least three entities are involved in the foreclosure: An investment trust, set up by the now-defunct lender Countrywide, that owns the loan; the Bank of New York, which represents the trust; and Pennsylvania-based NewRez, which administers the loan. A Bank of New York spokesperson tells Eugene Weekly the foreclosure process is now up to NewRez. NewRez declines to comment.
A dense thicket hides the gutted remains of the house from the view of traffic on Highway 101.
In its heyday it was an impressive pile. Built in 1985 — in the middle of the state’s wrenching economic recession — it rose up four stories, with three bedrooms and five bathrooms, county records show.
It was known as a ziggurat house, after a pyramid style used in ancient Mesopotamia.
Before the fire, the property had a market value of $2.7 million, county records show. Now, who knows?
Pamela Staton and her husband, Russell Baldwin, bought it in 2004 from the original builders for $950,000, taking out a $730,000 mortgage, records show. They stopped making mortgage payments in 2009 and have been fighting their lender ever since, court records show. The couple lived in the house until the 2023 fire that swept the top two floors, opening the rest of the structure to rain damage.
The Bank of New York began its foreclosure lawsuit in 2018. Baldwin, an attorney with a Lincoln City office, represented the couple. The court file runs to thousands of pages. The bank won its foreclosure lawsuit in 2024, and after Staton and Baldwin lost subsequent appeals, the bank was clear to go through with the sheriff’s auction. Under state law, the couple may still have time after the sheriff’s event to pay off their debt and keep the property. If they don’t, the property typically goes to the lender — but in this case it’s not clear who that is.
How much would the couple have to pay?
There’s the original principal of $730,000, plus $655,000 in interest, and $151,000 in legal and other fees, says the judge’s 2024 decision. That’s $1.54 million. The bank had fire insurance on the property, which paid out $675,000 to the bank. Subtract that from the $1.54 million, and the couples’ debt comes to $866,000, says the decision. That was back on April 18, 2024. The decision says the debt incurs interest at 9 percent a year.