- Cops descended on a raucous Beverly Hills party mansion amid reports of a home invasion on Friday
- The mansion has hosted near-nightly raves, plaguing celebrity neighbors including Lebron James and Seth McFarlane
- No charges were brought following Friday’s incident, despite growing calls from locals to bring the relentless partying to an end
A dramatic police raid descended on a raucous Beverly Hills ‘squatting’ mansion that has been plaguing its celebrity neighborhood with nightly rave parties.
The Los Angeles Police Department responded to reports of a home invasion shortly after 3pm Friday at the $4.3 million mansion, the site of a number of out-of-control parties that began in October.
Despite counting Lebron James and Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane as neighbors, police had been seemingly powerless to stop the continuing raves – until Friday’s incident reportedly included several suspects armed with a knife.
It appeared that one of the all-day parties was going on at the time, with a number of guests seen handcuffed and lined up on an outdoor patio after cops breached the home.
All detainees were later released, and no charges were brought, according to KTLA.
The mansion was owned by alleged fraudster and suspected killer Dr Munir Uwaydah, who fled the US in 2013 amid an investigation into the murder of his girlfriend.
He had been accused of swindling Medicare out of millions of dollars, and was last reportedly living in Beirut.
The property was repossessed by Uwaydah’s mortgage lender and is currently on the market for over $4.5 million, but has since been taken over by ‘squatters’ who claim they are the valid tenants.
DailyMail.com revealed this week that the suspected hard-partying squatters include a man accused of beating his ex-girlfriend, and a frequent visitor was also involved in an alleged multi-million-dollar student loans scam.
Since October, the sprawling estate has hosted wild, near-nightly parties that often don’t start until 2am.
The ‘squatters’ are even advertising rooms in the four-bed, 5,857 sq ft home on Booking.com for $300 per night and charge hundreds of party guests $75 entry fees at the gate.
The ritzy neighborhood – which also includes billionaire Jeff Bezos and John Legend – has complained ever since over the bashes, which have previously resulted in assaults, fires and arrests.
As first reported by DailyMail.com earlier this month, a relentless week of parting to begin the year resulted in the swanky cul-de-sac becoming overran with trash.
Scenes on the streets outside the mansion included nitrous oxide canisters inhaled by partygoers from balloons to get high, crushed Solo cups, pools of vomit, and condom packets.
Before the raves ruined the picturesque area, Lebron James picked a site just a stone’s throw away as the site of his ‘dream home’, and previously demolished a lavish $36.8 million mansion on the spot to make room.
James’s house manager, who asked not to be named, told DailyMail.com earlier this month that he had to keep security guards at the NBA star’s building site 24/7 in part because of the squatters’ parties.
‘I’ve heard from my security team up there about all the crazy cars, crazy parties at night, how we’re not able to get into our property sometimes because they’re blocking the street with their cars, and just the nuisance at night with the loud music and people floating out to the streets,’ he said.
‘It’s one of the reasons we have security 24/7. Otherwise, there’s no need for me to have security there 24/7 because it’s just a construction site.’
Before Friday’s raid, questions had been raised over why local police seemed powerless to bring the disruptive parties to an end.
One neighbor, Rick Rankin, told DailyMail.com that police were unable to evict the residents because they had obtained drivers licenses with the property address, and even produced a rental agreement, which the property’s current listing agent insists is fake.
‘The officers told me the house was trashed,’ Rankin, a 65-year-old technology consultant, said. ‘It’s like they’re hoarders. The garage is full of s**t.
‘Young women have been seen coming and going in and out of the house at all hours.
‘When people leave they’re stumbling. You know when someone’s high. It’s not a drunken thing. They’re jittery, nervous, eyes spinning.
‘One night they had a party I went around and there were at least 50 cars. These are one-way, narrow streets, but they just plop their cars down and get out.’
While no charges were brought as a result of Friday’s raid, the LAPD has reportedly opened a narcotics case related to drugs photographed by private investigator Mark Ebner.
Ebner was hired by the property’s legal owner and the realtor attempting to sell it, leading him to spend several nights outside the mansion watching the raucous antics from the street.
‘If you stake out at 8am after a party night, it’s like Night of the Living Dead up there. These people are zombies. They’re just completely whacked out by the binge they’ve been on,’ he said.
‘There are nitrous canisters that litter the street, broken glass, things like that.’
At the start of the month, Ebner photographed a bag of pill capsuled in the backseat of an attendee’s Porsche 911, which was subsequently towed by police.
The pills and other potential evidence of drug use around the house has prompted LAPD to refer the case to its Narcotics division.
Ebner said he has also handed over all his files on the accused squatters and their parties to the department’s Major Crimes unit.
Despite the alleged trouble stemming from the mansion, the ‘squatters’ have made no secret of their antics.
They appeared to list the home on Booking.com as a vacation rental, sharing photos from inside the four-bed, six-bathroom home with a pool and bar – as well as an LED-lit disco room.
The Booking.com listing for the house calls it the ‘Beverly Hills Lodge’, and offers a room for four people for $300 per night, including a ’60-min massage’.
‘At the lodge guests are welcome to use a spa center,’ the listing said. ‘A casino and a children’s playground, are available for guests at Beverly Hills Lodge.’
Parties at the house are even being advertised on events website get-in.com, showing start times as late as midnight and a $75 cover charge, which the organizers claim was ‘for the nova festival victims from the massacre on October 7’, a reference to the Hamas attacks on Israel.
The LAPD has faced a number of callouts to the mansion, with app Citizen recording incidents including a man in a bucket hat assaulting someone with a metal box on January 13, a battery incident on December 2, and a reported burglary on November 23.
An aide for councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky told neighbors in an email that ‘LAPD is working with the City Attorney’s office to file a Trespass Authorization Form so they have the authority to remove squatters from the site.’
LAPD Senior Lead Officer James Allen, who told DailyMail.com he was leading the investigation, said the controversial residents claimed to cops that they were friends of the former owner, and had been invited by him to live in the home.
But he added that the current ownership of the home is uncertain, has been the subject of a bankruptcy court case, and that the home is entering foreclosure.
‘I guess he left his friends in the house. I guess we can say they’re squatters. But they’re squatters to the owner that’s in foreclosure to the bank,’ Allen said.
‘We’re working on a plan with the bank to evict the individuals because there’s no one at this point to evict them and say they’re there illegally.
‘I’ve submitted it to the City Attorney. I’m citing the home every time we get a radio call for a party.
‘They’re using the home outside of its original purpose, illegally.’
Despite police investigations into the home, there is growing resentment from locals over a lack of action to actually stop the issue.
Jeff Scapa, a private mortgage lender, told DailyMail.com he loaned $3.8million to the current owner, a company called MDRCA Properties LLC.
Scapa said a court ruled he could foreclose on the home, but that process was frozen when MDRCA filed for bankruptcy last month.
Scapa said he discovered squatters had taken over the home in October last year, and shared videos with DailyMail.com he took of one man admitting he started moving his belongings into the house ‘the first week of October’.
He said that he and MDRCA offered the alleged squatters $25,000 cash to leave, but they declined.
Scapa said he was frustrated with police and the LA courts for not evicting the alleged unlawful residents already.
‘Everybody knows this guy is not supposed to be there, and they do nothing,’ he said.
When you lease a vehicle, you never really own it — the dealer does. So you might think that you have no equity in the vehicle.
But you’d be wrong.
In fact, if you are currently leasing a car, even if you are just a year in and have several years to go, you might be able to get out of the lease and walk away with several thousand dollars.
So how is this possible?
An auto shortage means higher prices for used cars
The fallout from COVID-19 continues to cause supply chain shortages in multiple industries. With steel and computer chip shortages, the automotive industry has not been immune.
That means fewer new cars rolling off assembly lines and thus a larger demand for used cars. The problem? Dealerships cannot keep up with this demand.
Megan Stewart of Cincinnati recently purchased a new Toyota RAV4, but the dealer was so desperate for used cars, there was an unusual stipulation to the deal.
“When I went to buy a new RAV4, the dealership would only make a deal if I agreed to trade in my 2015 Honda Civic,” Stewart says. “They said they couldn’t handle the loss of a single vehicle on their lot, given the major shortages going on.”
And that’s no isolated incident. In January 2019, there were just under 3 million used cars available in the U.S. And earlier this fall? It was down to 2.3 million for a loss of nearly 33 percent.
To put it bluntly, “dealers are hurting for inventory,” says Kyle Johnson, senior editor for The News Wheel.
To make up for the massive deficit of used cars, dealerships have resorted to emailing lessees with whom they are currently under contract, offering to end the lease early and pay a pretty sum for a buyout. San Francisco’s ABC 7 told a story of a woman offered $6,000 to end her lease early.
How to make money off your leased car
The amount of money you pay for a leased vehicle over the duration of the contract is typically the difference between the car’s initial value and the estimated residual value at the end of the lease term. In that sense, you are merely renting a vehicle from a dealership, and at the end of the contract, the dealership intends to sell the vehicle as a used model.
But what’s happening right now is that leased vehicles are worth considerably more than they were originally estimated to be at the end of their terms. As a lessee, even though you don’t own the vehicle, you hold all the power because that increased equity belongs to you … if you handle the end of the lease strategically.
According to Cars Direct, the top five selling cars of 2018 are being sold used for 40 percent more than what would have been expected pre-pandemic. For example, a 2018 Nissan Altima has a nearly 50 percent market value increase, which translates to a more than $6,000 jump. Think about that if you are turning in a 2018 Altima this year.
The No. 1 advice we can give: If you are currently leasing a car, do not just turn it in at the end of a lease as originally planned.
You will be leaving money on the table if you do. Instead, explore one of these options for making money off your leased car:
1. Sell the lease to a third party
An option that lessees have long exercised during their leases has been selling their leases to a third party, like Carvana, Vroom or CarMax. For example, you could take your leased 2020 Honda Pilot and sell the vehicle — lease agreement and all — to CarMax. You’d immediately stop making payments, and you’d have a nice check if the vehicle was able to fetch enough money to cover the rest of your payments and then some.
And because of the huge demand for used cars, your lease vehicle should easily be able to command a large amount of that “and then some” cash when you sell it to a third party.
However, directly in response to the used car shortage, many lenders (branches of the automakers themselves) have begun to put a stop to this, legally prohibiting lessees from selling their contracts to third parties. Instead, they either have to return the vehicle to the dealership or buy it from the dealership at the end of the lease.
As of right now, Leasehackr is reporting that the following lenders are prohibiting third-party lease sales:
- Acura Financial Services
- BMW Financial Services
- Ford Credit
- GM Financial
- Honda Financial Services
- INFINITI Financial Services
- Lincoln Automotive Financial Services
- Mercedes-Benz Financial Services
- MINI Financial Services
- Nissan Motor Acceptance CompNY
- Southeast Toyota Finance
- Volvo Car Financial Services
- Tesla Finance
We expect this list to grow as the used car shortage continues.
2. Buy the car and sell it
Don’t let automakers have the final say. An easy enough way around the prohibited third-party lease sales is to simply buy the car from the dealership at the end of your lease and then turn around and sell it to whomever you want.
In fact, this gives you more earning potential. Once you own the car, you can see what CarMax or Carvana will pay for it, but you can also try to sell it privately for even more money.
To determine how much your vehicle is worth, try out Kelley Blue Book, which can estimate the value of your car based on model, year, features and condition. You can also check out dealer websites to see how much similar vehicles are selling for.
The beauty of buying the leased vehicle from the dealer at the end of your lease is that they can’t jack up the price. Check your lease agreement for the lease buyout wording; in it, the dealership should have spelled out exactly what you will pay to buy the car from them. This is called the guaranteed purchase option price.
A word of caution: You will need to pay sales tax and title fees when purchasing the leased vehicle, and if you can’t immediately sell the car, you need to be okay with the money you spent to buy out the lease being unavailable until the vehicle sells.
A second word of caution: This strategy applies to a lease buyout at the end of a lease contract. Early buyouts typically do not have guaranteed purchase option prices, meaning the dealer can charge you more for the vehicle. There may also be an early buyout fee.
3. Sell the lease back to the dealer
If you’re fortunate, you may not have to do much work at all. Don’t scoff when your dealer calls asking to buy you out of a lease early. Take a look at the offer, calculate what you think you could make trying to sell the vehicle on your own and determine if just simply selling the lease to the dealer is the right move.
Chances are good you may leave a little money on the table this way, but it’s certainly much less of a hassle to just sell to the dealer than buying the vehicle and selling privately.
Alternatively, you could try other nearby dealerships that sell vehicles of the same make. They may offer you more than the dealer from which you leased the vehicle. That’s the beauty of driving a leased vehicle in this shortage; you have the power to start a potential bidding war.
“Prices are way up,” confirms Johnson. “That car you leased a while back could actually net you a nice profit if you find a dealership that wants to come to the table and strike a deal with you.”
What to consider before selling your leased car
Now is a great opportunity to make some quick and serious cash by selling your lease. But before you sign on the dotted line, consider a couple of caveats:
You may be without a car
If you are not part of a multicar family and do not have access to affordable and efficient public transportation, getting rid of your vehicle may not be the right move.
New and used vehicle prices are at record highs
If you do sell and need to replace the vehicle with something new, be ready to pay those premium prices that you were charging when selling your lease. What goes around comes around.
In fact, some experts say that taking advantage of dealership incentives for ending leases is a bad idea for this very reason. “My recommendation would be: don’t do it,” says Kyle MacDonald, Director of Operations at Force by Mojio. “No matter how much you can earn in the moment, with the state of the market right now, there’s no guarantee you’d be able to find a replacement easily.”
MacDonald does offer one exception: “If you’ve already locked down a new car to purchase, in that case, ending a lease a month or two early may be worth the cash incentive.”
You leased that car because you liked it
Finally, consider if you’re ready to part with the car. At the end of the day, you work hard for a paycheck that affords you nice things. If a car to you is just a way to get from point A to point B and you couldn’t care less what make and model you’re sitting in, sure, end the lease.
Timothy Moore covers bank accounts for The Penny Hoarder from his home base in Cincinnati.