Rivermist buyback offers are being taken
Two homes have been sold back to the builder and developer of Rivermist and The Hills of Rivermist, while 11 more property owners either have verbally agreed to sell their homes to the company or are in the process of signing paperwork, Centex spokeswoman Valerie Dolenga said Thursday...The ground shifted and a large retaining wall collapsed on a steep slope in the neighborhood Jan. 24. Since then, many of the homeowners have been living in hotels, apartments and rental homes with limited access to their property.

Rivermist buyback offers are being taken

By Jennifer Hiller - Express-News
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Some homeowners already have accepted buyback offers made by Centex Homes to those who had to evacuate in the wake of a January retaining wall collapse.

Two homes have been sold back to the builder and developer of Rivermist and The Hills of Rivermist, while 11 more property owners either have verbally agreed to sell their homes to the company or are in the process of signing paperwork, Centex spokeswoman Valerie Dolenga said Thursday.

Centex this week announced it would offer to repurchase 27 homes where the city has suspended certificates of occupancy.

The ground shifted and a large retaining wall collapsed on a steep slope in the neighborhood Jan. 24. Since then, many of the homeowners have been living in hotels, apartments and rental homes with limited access to their property.

The buyback offers were made to 20 homeowners in the Hills of Rivermist who live along the top of the slope, as well as to the owners of the seven homes in the Rivermist neighborhood whose homes sit just below the spot where the wall split open and crumbled.

The offer covers the purchase price, closing costs, moving expenses, home improvements and incidental expenses, as well as some attorney fees.

In addition to the 13 people who have accepted or appear to be close to accepting an offer from the company, Centex is negotiating with the attorneys of another five homeowners. Eight people have told Centex they are undecided. And the company expects to meet with one homeowner today, Dolenga said.

The offers, some of which were made within days of the wall collapse, appear to follow a section of the Texas Property Code that deals with buybacks.

San Antonio attorney Gary Javore said the code doesn't specify precisely what should be included in buyback agreements. But it does say that if the contractor pays the purchase price, closing costs, cost of transferring title, reimbursements for improvements, moving costs and reasonable attorney and expert fees, the deal is a valid one.

“If you have an agreement to buy back the property and you have these as your terms, it's deemed reasonable as a matter of law,” Javore said.

James Gaines, research economist with the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University, said the offer appears to be an attempt to reimburse the owners without providing a windfall in damages.

“Obviously they're saying, ‘OK, we screwed up, and we're going to make you whole.' What else can they do?” Gaines asked. “The 27 houses out of however many Centex builds is not that many, but if you're one of those 27, it's a really big deal.”

Large buybacks aren't the norm in residential real estate, but they do happen, especially in situations of chemical or environmental contamination or near Superfund sites, Gaines said.

The builder plans to rebuild the retaining wall — a process likely to take six months and cost $4 million to $5 million. The city will not allow the homes closest to the retaining wall to be occupied during construction.

“This is the right thing to do for these homeowners who will be unable to occupy their homes for a lengthy time period while we construct the new retaining wall and restore the slope,” Laurin Darnell, a vice president of Centex Homes, said in a prepared statement Wednesday.

Centex says its engineering firm has determined that the “slope failure and damage to the retaining wall was the result of deep soil movement on the slope above and below the wall.”

               

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