They bought properties at Philadelphia sheriff sales, but they never got the deed

Last November, Dave Brown bought a rowhouse in Oxford Circle at a sheriff sale as a first-time renovation project.

Brown, 54, who works for a local utility company, borrowed some of the $143,429 needed for the purchase. The deed was supposed to have been transferred within 60 to 90 days.

It ended up taking seven months because of unexplained delays in the Sheriff’s Office. He was still trying to get a copy of the deed last week; it had finally been recorded only recently. Meanwhile, he’s paying interest on the loan.

“A debacle,” said Brown, describing his experience buying a home through an auction run by Sheriff Rochelle Bilal’s office.

Buyers such as Brown who sometimes drop hundreds of thousands of dollars on a foreclosed property at auction are left without a deed for many months, according to an Inquirer analysis of city records and interviews with bidders, real estate attorneys, and real estate agents. The buyers in limbo can’t access the properties, make repairs, or rent them out.

The deed-recording process, which used to take around six to eight weeks to conclude after a Philadelphia sheriff sale, recently has taken about seven months — or more.

“I’m taking a hit on this,” he said. “I used a home equity line of credit, and I’m paying for that.”

Bid4Assets, an online auction firm that Bilal’s staff uses for sheriff sales, tells Philadelphia buyers that deeds can now take as long as 90 days to be recorded.

But The 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: Philly’s sheriff hasn’t held a tax sale in years. The city says it’s costing them millions.

Other buyers have reported similar experiences. They have tried calling and going to the Sheriff’s Office on Broad Street, near City Hall, but have received little in the way of an explanation or resolution.

The new delays with mortgage foreclosures are on top of an ongoing freeze on most tax sales: Bilal’s office has failed for more than three years to auction off hundreds of tax-delinquent properties, costing the city tens of millions of dollars in uncollected tax revenue and contributing to blight around the city.

The sheriff is poised to resume those tax sales later this month, which would drastically increase its caseload.

A spokesperson for Mayor Cherelle L. Parker declined to comment on the problem last week, referring questions to the Sheriff’s Office.

Bilal did not respond to requests for comment. Her spokesperson, Teresa Lundy, did not provide an explanation for the delays or acknowledge the existence of any widespread issue.

“Those individuals who have not received deeds should contact our office and we can further explain why their deeds were not processed in a timely fashion,” Lundy emailed.

Bid4Assets CEO Jesse Loomis did not respond to requests for comment.

Buyers and their representatives contacted by The Inquirer were reluctant to speak out by name, saying they were concerned that the Sheriff’s Office would make it even more difficult for them to purchase properties in the future — or obtain the deeds to ones they already paid for.

“It’s absolutely insane,” said one real estate investor who bought a South Philadelphia property in December. That deed also has yet to be recorded.

In Delaware and Montgomery Counties, deeds are typically recorded a month or two after sheriff sales. In Philadelphia, deeds used to be processed on a similar timeline.

“If it was two months, even three, that would be fine because that’s what they told me. But it’s seven months now,” said the investor, who described feeling like a “financial hostage.”

“Ridiculous,” said another investor who waited seven months for a deed to a property he bought with borrowed money. “I do not know what went wrong with this office.”

“It’s like a Seinfeld episode,” said one real estate agent after a recent visit to the office in a fruitless attempt to obtain a deed from last year. “If you ran a business like this, you’d be out of business.”

» READ MORE: Ammo, DJs, a $9,000 mascot: Inside the Philly sheriff’s ‘slush fund’ spending

The “recorded deeds” section of the Sheriff’s Office website, which appears to not have been updated since January 2021, repeatedly warns readers that a face mask is required for coming to the office, but provides no useful information about deeds.

“The Sheriff’s Office will STRICTLY enforce Scheduled Appointments ONLY,” the site states.

The delays appear to be tied to the Sheriff’s Office decision to replace records-management software that was put in place by the prior administration.

Sheriff John Green, who resigned in 2011 amid a federal corruption probe and later admitted to taking $675,000 in bribes, left the office’s finances in shambles. His successor, Sheriff Jewell Williams, who was elected in 2011, brought in a software firm called Teleosoft to help clean up the mess.

According to a 2022 city controller’s report, this system was known as CountySuite but later renamed the Judicial Enforcement Writ Execution Legal Ledger ― “JEWELL,” in a wink to Williams’ first name — and was used to “record financial activity related to individual sheriff’s sale properties.”

» READ MORE: Timeline: The history of Philadelphia's scandal-plagued Sheriff's Office.

“Within a year the sale process became predictable,” Cory Fregm, chief executive of Teleosoft, said last week. “We could take a sheriff sale from inception to completion in a predictable period.”

That software was not without its own issues, according to the controller’s audit. It found that officials had taken to using the software as an unofficial accounting system, despite it lacking key functions, such as the ability to generate traditional financial ledger statements.

Last year, Bilal jettisoned that software suite. The system officially went offline in April 2023, Fregm said.

City records show the number of deeds received from the sheriff plummeted almost immediately, while processing times began to increase.

In some recent months, filings seemed to nearly grind to a halt. For all of February and March, the office submitted just 29 deeds for recording, nearly all of which corresponded to auctions that occurred between 200 to 300 days prior.

Joseph Vignola, a former city controller and undersheriff for Williams who helped implement the Teleosoft system, was surprised to hear that buyers were waiting that long for deeds to be recorded.

“Wow,” Vignola said. “We were doing it in 20 days” after settlement.

The problem seems to have worsened despite the fact that Bilal, who took office in 2020, is holding far fewer auctions than her predecessor.

Before the pandemic, the Sheriff’s Office auctioned off thousands of properties annually; nearly 4,700 deeds linked to sheriff sales were recorded between May 2018 and May 2019, according to city records.

From May 2023 to May 2024, the city processed just 647 deeds submitted by the sheriff.

Most delinquent tax sales have remained on hold since April 2021 after Bilal’s staff attempted to direct a no-bid contract to Bid4Assets — without the involvement of city lawyers. That led to a protracted dispute with City Hall that froze those sales.

While the city has approved a revised contract between the office and Bid4Assets that will pave the way for these sales to resume later this month, it is unclear whether the Sheriff’s Office will be able to handle the increased volume.

Last month, Tyler Technologies, the software firm hired by the Sheriff’s Office to replace Teleosoft, announced that it had gone live after a nine-month implementation of its management system. The news release said the software included “streamlined real estate data and financial capabilities.”

“By leveraging cutting-edge technology, we are committed to creating a smarter, more efficient, and more connected community,” Bilal said in the release.

Bilal’s spokesperson did not respond to questions about whether the deeds might be recorded more quickly with the new system in place.

In the meantime, the sheriff continues to collect the fees associated with these sales, regardless of whether buyers have gotten a deed.

An April Inquirer investigation found the office was socking away millions in fees from auctions in bank accounts outside of the city’s control, and spending it on expenses such as DJs, catering, ammunition and a $9,000 costume for an office mascot.

Brown, the buyer who waited seven months for a deed, said the Sheriff’s Office should be upfront with bidders participating in auctions about when they’ll become the official property owners if they win.

“What’s right is right,” Brown said. “If you say it might take 150 days, that’s going to deter some people, but at least they would know.”

Staff writer Chris A. Williams contributed to this article.