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PALM BEACH, FL—Three more receivership properties have found new owners in Palm Beach County. NAI/Merin Hunter Codman just resolved a trio of receivership deals in the past 30 days.

Specifically, the firm arranged the sale of two of the properties for a collective $9 million. Both are mixed office and retail and together span 112,000 square feet. The third property, an 80,000-square-foot office building on PGA Boulevard, was transferred to the lender. The firm now manages and leases all three properties.

“Due to the backlog in the foreclosure courts, it is taking a long time for a lender to get a receiver in control of a property,” Neil Merin, chairman of NAI, tells GlobeSt.com. “In the meantime, we are finding huge amounts of unpaid bills, deferred maintenance, and other issues of neglect at properties in control of owners who know they are going to lose the property.”

In many instances, Merin says, tenants have broken their leases and buildings are vacant, with fire systems and elevators not working, a lapse of insurance, unpaid taxes, and incomplete construction. Once stabilized, the firm develops short- and long-term strategies for asset optimization including repositioning properties in their respective markets.

As a result, one of the office and retail properties, Village Center in Delray Beach, was sold to Village Center of Delray LLC for $5.5 million. Village Center is a 51,000 square-foot, medical office complex with two-buildings. Diagnostic Centers of America (DCA), a state-of-the-art diagnostic imaging company, leased 15,000 square feet at the complex and will be relocating its current Delray center to Village Center. When DCA moves in, the center will be 91% leased.

Habitat Center, a 62,000-square-foot office and retail center in West Palm Beach, sold for $3.5 million. The transaction involved the sale of a mortgage note on the property to an affiliate of the Schumacher Auto Group. The nine-acre property is expected to remain a retail center for the near term and is 70% occupied.

The third Palm Beach County receivership assignment was for an 80,000-square-foot office building at 4400 PGA Boulevard in Palm Beach Gardens. Merin facilitated the special servicer efforts to foreclosure there, with the lender then acquiring title. The property stands 55% leased with larger tenants including Fifth Third Bank and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

“According to our research, in December 2010 there were about $880 million of non-performing loans on income producing property valued over $2.5 million in the three counties of South Florida, and non in foreclosure,” Merin says. “By September of 2011, we found $1.8 billion in the same category in a non-performing status, with $910 million in a foreclosure action.  Zero to a billion in 9 months, easy to spot a trend.”