The 352-362 Elgin St sale was on the up & up
The seller says the buyer's claim he was duped into the sale are untrue.
On 08 September 2023, Jenny Lamothe published a second news article on the Sudbury.com website about the sale of the S.M. Apartments on Elgin Street. This time, we hear what Cedric Ferrier, the seller, has to say.
The main points
• the sale was above board as far as he’s concerned.
• he would have expected a real estate agent like Xia would be a “knowledgeable purchaser” and use due diligence before making a purchase.
• the investor visited the building “at least six times” prior to purchasing.
• there was a home inspection and legal help on the sale and transfer.
• the real estate investor was entirely focused on the rental income generated yet his property manager was not collecting the rent during the first two months.
• Ferrier said that he introduced the buyer and his manager to his contacts with the Homelessness Network and staff at the next door mission. He knew the demographic.
• he also warned both the buyer and the manager that security would be of the utmost importance, since the building was purchased in October, ahead of winter. “They allowed the perimeter security to get breached within that first 60 days, just when the cold weather started to happen,” said Ferrier, leading to squatters taking over the building, and later, tenants moving out.
• there were 35 registered tenants in the building when it was sold.
(There were only six when the building was closed by the city.)
• Ferrier said: “there's clear-cut legal protections in place to protect buyers who have been duped,” and so far Xia hasn’t used any of them.
At the end of the day
Cedric Ferrier has purchased other rental properties in Sudbury. Yinan Xia has learnt an expensive lesson on the perils of being an absentee landlord.
The real losers are the thirty-five tenants who lost their homes.