NEW: 47th Street House sells for $100

Carol E. Lee
Published Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at 10:43 a.m.
Last updated Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at 10:47 a.m.

SARASOTA — The north Sarasota house where New College students have lived communally since 1992 sold in a public auction this morning for $100.

The buyer was HSBC Bank USA, which held the mortgage that the home’s owner failed to pay.

The tenants at “The 47th Street House,” as it is called, vowed to again attempt to purchase the home, even as they were told they have ten days to move out.

Six of them sat front row in the courtroom during the foreclosure sale of their residence, an anticlimactic purchase that took just minutes.

“I wish we could have done something,” tenant and New College graduate Sarah Kell, 28, said after the sale.

“I felt a mixture of anger and frustration,” added tenant April Doner, 25. “I really hope we can save the house.”

The renters said they tried to buy the house after learning in January that their landlord had not used their $2,075-a-month rent to pay her mortgage.

They said the bank denied their offer.

The 47th Street House was built by New College student Al Leonard in 1992 with yellow pine and cypress lumber from local sawmills. His goal was to create an off-campus residence where New College students could live in a communal atmosphere.

The house has served that purpose ever since: Chores are divided evenly among the tenants; they hold potluck dinners and house meetings every other week at their kitchen table.

The tradition became threatened when Leonard, now 53 and living in Vermont, sold the home to Carmen Palomino for $190,000 in 2006.

Palomino said in an interview this week that she could not afford her mortgage after her homeowners’ insurance increased.

“Heartbreaking,” tenant Lynn Jacobsen, 26, said of the situation with the house. “It’s part of our life.”