The neighbors who don't talk

It's not easy finding a place to live in Havre. Ask anyone who has come to Havre within the last few years and they're likely to have a frustrating story that might include spending weeks in a hotel or settling for a less-than-ideal place.

Renting options are especially few, their correlating property managers even fewer. Every employee who has come to work for Havre Daily News within the last year has had trouble settling down in an apartment.

A company from Great Falls named Sunrise Financial Group LLC has been acquiring properties in Hill County, Havre especially, for more than three years. The company's modus operandi has been to buy tax liens in annual tax lien sales in July and keep the properties whose owners do not pay the back taxes within three years.

The properties Sunrise owns in Havre are usually rundown because nobody lives in them. Sunrise's abandoned and neglected properties contribute to the city's blight and housing shortage.

Local employers said scant renting options are such a problem in Havre that it has even kept people from moving to Havre altogether.

When talking about hiring staff, Havre Public Schools Superintendent Andy Carlson said, "one of the roadblocks we encounter is lack of housing - we've lost candidates because of that."

Northern Montana Hospital has also had problems bringing in staff. Marketing and Public Relations Coordinator Julianne LaSmith said rentals in Havre are "very few," and for those bringing family or pets, the housing prospects are even fewer.

Montana State University-Northern Chancellor Greg Kegel said the university goes to great lengths to attract and keep candidates. MSU-Northern has staff housing, bungalows where employees can stay until they find more permanent living situations. Although the bungalows are meant to be temporary, Kegel said they are usually full because it's hard to find a place to rent.

In Part I of this series, Havre Daily News reported that Shaylee Lewis, a Havre resident who, together with her husband, wanted to buy a derelict Sunrise-owned house in her Washington Avenue neighborhood for one of two purposes, one of those being to revamp and rent the building.

The Lewises were told their offer might be considered if they would pay a price set far above the home's market value. Lewis said the owners didn't seem eager to sell.

The person Shaylee Lewis spoke to about buying the house was somehow associated with the mysterious group Sunrise Financial Group, which owns many more properties in addition to the one down the street from Lewis.

The Lewises aren't the only locals who wanted to buy one of Sunrise's properties.

Marc Whitacre and his wife, Erica Farmer, made national news last year when the couple won the 2015 Preservation Award for Outstanding Project for renovating the historic post office building on 3rd Avenue. They know about restoring old buildings and making them livable. Whitacre said they wanted to talk to Sunrise about buying the rundown apartments on 5th Avenue and renovating those as well.

Whitacre, an ophthalmologist at Northern Montana Vision Center, said he especially liked that the units in those apartments are individually metered. It meant the building could be repaired in phases - he wouldn't have to wait until the entire building was fixed to start moving people in.

Whitacre found a phone number for someone associated with Sunrise and called a few times. No one answered or called back, he said. So Whitacre didn't even get a chance to make an offer. He gave up and moved on. He and Farmer are now working on the former Masonic Temple on 3rd Avenue.

Greg Wood was more persistent than Whitacre.

Wood is a local construction contractor who grew up in Havre, moved away for 30 years and came back about three years ago. He was looking to invest in Havre properties. He noticed vacant homes and apartments and became interested in the 5th Avenue apartments.

After the trip to the county treasurer and navigating the Web, he, like Lewis and Whitacre, arrived at Sunrise. Wood said he called and, like Whitacre, got nothing. He then emailed Sunrise. Still nothing. Because calling and emailing didn't get any results, Wood took a trip to Great Falls, where the company incorporation papers lists the address of Sunrise's managers.

Wood said the address turned out to be an empty brick, "warehouse-like building."

It is tempting to assume that Wood simply went to the wrong address, or that he got the wrong information. Or maybe Wood was not very savvy with directions and reading street signs. But this wasn't the only time someone went to an address that was listed in Sunrise's paperwork and found nothing.

Investigative reports by KRTV a few years ago yielded the same result: an empty building.

Havre Daily News went to the same building Wood and KRTV said they found empty and will report on what was found in the next part of the series, which takes a closer look at the people connected with Sunrise.

If Sunrise isn't interested in sprucing up the properties and renting them, and if it isn't interested in selling them, what is it interested in? And why keep buying?

By all indications, the company keeps buying delinquent liens. Five of the 20 properties it has come to own in Hill County, through liens, officially became theirs while this report was being put together.

Why is the company holding onto something that is actually costing money in taxes and doesn't seem to be making any money?

Jean Kenney from Hill County Title said property owners can sell a property as soon as they have the tax deed. Getting insurance, however, might be a different story. Kenney said insurance is different for every property and not having a title can prohibit the owner from insuring the property.

But properties such as the 5th Avenue apartments have been Sunrise's for three years and the company has yet to attain the title. The elapsed time indicates a possible disinterest in obtaining the title.

For years, residents and city officials have been wondering: What is Sunrise's plan for its Havre properties?

Because Sunrise won't answer the question, city leaders have been left to speculate.

Public Works Director David Peterson said it wouldn't be far-fetched to think Sunrise was making its moves based on oil speculation in the Bakken oil fields, whose effect has been felt as nearby as Malta.

"Now, of course, that's just a thought - I don't have any proof that's what they're doing," Peterson said, in a phone interview that concentrated mostly on city ordinances.

Havre City Council President Andrew Brekke seconded Peterson's Bakken conjectures.

"I remember four or five years ago when the Bakken was really starting to roll, there was always talk about Havre," Brekke said.

Sunrise came to town when the oil production in the region was booming and Havre is a midpoint between Bakken and oil development along the Rocky Mountain front. Neighboring North Dakota's oil industry was doing so well it didn't have enough room to house all the oil workers coming into the state.

Wood, the local who had no luck talking to anyone from Sunrise, speculated the properties may be a way to strategically invest money.

Although the individual liens held aren't expensive, 80 properties in Hill County alone add up. All Sunrise would have to do, Wood said, is liquidate them when it wanted the money. And for the liens that never become deeds because the owners buy their liens back, Sunrise would get their money back, with interest.

Brekke said he saw the sense in this plan too. Although it may seem like reaching, mainly because the tax liens being bought are cheap - the Washington Avenue lien cost a total of $1,602.93 - and doesn't seem like a sum of money worth the effort of hiding, the strategy would make more sense when taking into account the properties Sunrise has bought across all of Montana.

"If you're in an 11- or 12-county area and you got 50 or 60 properties in each county, now you're getting into something serious," Brekke said.

Fifty or 60 properties is understating the number of liens Sunrise has bought throughout Montana.

As of late January of this year, Sunrise bought 2,799 liens in Cascade County, the Great Falls area, since July 2011. Less than half of those were bought back by the owners, 1,046 to be exact.

Sunrise owns properties in at least 13 counties in Montana, sometimes under different names like Montana Land Project or Montana Land Protection or The Parent Company, but documents indicate the same management. In Cascade County, Sunrise owns properties under Sunrise Financial Group LLC and Montana Land Protection.

Tomorrow, the Havre Daily News will look at what Sunrise could be and what was found in Great Falls where their address is listed.