Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office sued over failure to promptly transfer deeds after property auctions

The Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office is being sued over its lengthy delays in transferring deeds after property auctions — an ongoing problem for the past year that has left some winning bidders unable to take possession of properties for seven months or longer.

The lawsuit was filed last week on behalf of ING Properties, a Virginia-based investor and lender to commercial developers. The firm is seeking to obtain deeds to six properties following a sheriff sale nearly four months ago.

“Someone has got to pay attention to this,” said ING’s lawyer, Daniel Bernheim, who alleged that the Sheriff’s Office has repeatedly violated Pennsylvania’s rules of civil procedure by not promptly processing deeds after auctions.

Bernheim said the office appears overwhelmed. He has not received an explanation for the delays.

The deed-recording process in Philadelphia used to take around six to eight weeks to conclude after a sheriff sale. But a recent Inquirer analysis of more than 130 sheriff sale deeds recorded between October 2023 and March 2024 found that their auctions were held, on average, just over 200 days prior.

» READ MORE: They bought properties at Philadelphia sheriff sales, but they never got the deed

Sheriff Rochelle Bilal had initially denied that there was a problem, despite repeated phone calls and in-office visits from frustrated buyers. She’d said her office was processing deeds normally.

“You insist there is a widespread delay, but that is incorrect,” Bilal’s spokesperson, Teresa Lundy, said in an email to The Inquirer in July.

Bilal’s staff later reversed course, and acknowledged they were wrong. They blamed the problem on an unspecified staffing issue and said they would conduct an audit and fix the problem.

Bilal did not respond to a request for comment on the ING lawsuit. The City of Philadelphia is also named as a defendant. A spokesperson for the city’s Law Department declined to comment.

Bernheim, who also serves as a Lower Merion commissioner, said he is hoping the lawsuit leads to a systemic fix.

In ING’s case, the firm became the owner of the South Philadelphia properties after the development project it had financed fell through and no one bid on the properties at the June 4 sheriff sale.

The half-built foundations have become a trash-strewn eyesore and have drawn several violations from the Department of Licenses and Inspections. But Bernheim said ING has been unable to take action because they are not yet the legal owners.

“People were just using it as a garbage pit,” he said. “If you don’t have the deed, you can’t take care of the property, and you can’t sell it. It’s unsightly and it’s a safety hazard.”

City records show that the Sheriff’s Office has recently been processing more deeds than it had in the past. From July 1 to Sept. 1, 256 sheriff deeds were recorded by the city’s Department of Records, finalizing those sales. During the prior six months, just 304 sheriff deeds were recorded.

The problem, however, does not appear to have been fixed, with some auction winners waiting for deeds from sheriff sales that were held at least as far back as April. In some cases, buyers have purchased properties with borrowed money, so they must pay interest on loans as they wait months to get copies of deeds.

“I haven’t seen any improvement on our end,” said Clayton Pronold, a lawyer who represents mortgage servicing companies. “We’re just sitting around waiting on deeds.”

Pronold said he just received a deed last month from a property that went to sheriff sale in September 2023. In suburban Philadelphia counties, he said, the process typically takes about 60 days.

“It’s terrible,” Pronold said. “It’s really affecting a lot of people.”