A public dispute is heating up between at a July auction. In a filing in the foreclosure case of Spacey’s harborfront home in Baltimore’s Federal Hill, the actor asked the court to revoke the sale to a Potomac real estate investor. Trustees mishandled the auction, leading to an inadequate price of $3.
24 million, and the buyer should be disqualified because of harassment, the document says. A representative of buyer Sam Asgari called the claims “frivolous” and without merit. “This is still the house of cards,” said Sam Sheibani, a Compass real estate agent who is representing Asgari, on Monday, referring to the popular television series in which Spacey starred.
Asgari is preparing a response to the latest filings in Baltimore City Circuit Court and plans to pursue eviction, Sheibani said. Attorneys for Spacey, listed as Kevin Spacey Fowler, principal of home owner Clear Toaster LLC, accused Asgari of acting in bad faith. “Mr.
Asgari has continuously harassed Clear Toaster’s principal, Kevin Spacey Fowler, and has published false and defamatory statements and accusations against Clear Toaster’s principal, Kevin Spacey Fowler, who occupies the property as his home,” said Spacey’s attorney, Edward U. Lee III, in a motion Friday. Spacey purchased the two-unit condo in the gated The Pier Homes at Harborview for $5.
7 million in 2017. His friend and manager Evan Lowenstein owned the home, but the former “House of Cards” star recently laid claim to it, Lowenstein previously told The Sun. The Oscar-winning Spacey, who has said he was left with millions of dollars of debt from fighting several lawsuits in the U.
S. and Britain alleging sexual misconduct, owed back payments for the home. Last summer, city Circuit Court judge approved a foreclosure sale.
Spacey’s attorneys are arguing the court should revoke the and require trustees to resell the property. They say trustees failed in their obligations to maximize the home’s price. They advertised it as a dwelling, the filing said, but left out details such as its size, 9,000 square feet on five levels, and amenities, such as seven full baths, a sauna, elevator, home theaters, a rooftop terrace and four-car garage.
The price at auction fell well below both the property’s assessed value of more than $5.4 million in July, and the outstanding principal balance of more than $3.8 million, the court document said.
It says Asgari should be disqualified, in part because he threatened eviction before the auction sale had been ratified and before he had possession of the home, placing a “notice about eviction” on the home Spacey has occupied as his primary residence. The sale is not final, the filing says, until an exception period expires and the court ratifies the sale. Yet, Spacey’s filing says, the notice placed on the property on the day of the auction gave anyone residing in the home 15 days to notify Asgari, or the property would be considered abandoned and the locks changed, without a court order.
Asgari knew the home was not abandoned and intended only to “harass and coerce [Spacey] to leave his home when he was in no way obligated to do so,” the filing said. “In Mr. Asgari’s wrongful demand to have [Spacey] vacate the property, he threatened to pursue eviction as a result of the property being ‘abandoned.
'” Lee said Asgari contacted him in mid-August, “threatening to proceed with interviews with Inside Edition and CBS News that same day unless an immediate response was provided regarding the vacancy date and further threatening to start eviction proceedings the following Monday.” Asgari views the chain of events differently, Sheibani said. Spacey simply won’t return something that no longer belongs to him, he said.
He is taking advantage of “my client’s generosity, requesting a large sum of money and a long time to vacate the property,” Sheibani said. “We simply want the property that rightly belongs to my client to be vacated and handed over.” Lee, Spacey’s attorney, countered in the filing that Spacey has never “refused or threatened to refuse” to leave the home.
The document said Lee spoke with Asgari’s attorney Aug. 6 and proposed that Spacey be allowed to stay until about Feb. 1 in exchange for giving Asgari early entry to the home to begin planning to sell to an investor and agreeing not to file an objection to ratification of the sale.
But then a week later, Asgari offered $50,000 if Spacey would leave by Sept. 15, the filing says..
