Fighting Back: How to Win Against the "Suits"

PEORIA, IL - Jody Kimbrell proves that you don't have to be slick, glamorous or middle class to best the banks and lawyers.

But you must be willing to stand your ground, to never back down, to refuse to be intimidated by the suits.

"I overturned a rock, and there they all were. Then they came after me," Kimbrell said. "I've never been one to run from a

fight."

She knows how to sling a phrase, calling her adversaries "sharks," and adding: "They were out for blood. Mine."

Kimbrell, 49, calls herself "a backwoods real estate broker."

She's no blow-dried business woman. Her office attire is a T-shirt and sweat pants.

Her cluttered office overflows with animal figures and papers, piled on shelves and on the metal desk with a "Bush-Cheney" bumper sticker still clinging to one side.

Her cell phone announces a call with "The Star Spangled Banner."

A sagging green couch with a ripped arm, and two Chihuahua dogs, Fang and Poncho, complete the scene. She jokes that the canines are her "attack dogs."

Despite her blue-collar image and background, Kimbrell, of Kimbrell Realty Inc. and part owner of Jeth Court Apartments, 6608 N. University St., Peoria, has survived a complex legal conflict with establishment lawyers and a bank in this downstate Illinois city where the elites stick together.

"A comedy of errors, but very vicious," she said.

Her tale of these encounters sounds like fiction, but thick legal documents from two courthouses back up her story. The files are spiced with an occasional angry letter to a judge from Kimbrell, who could not resist going beyond the formal language of the courts.

"I have little faith in the judiciary branch, no faith in the integrity and ethics of lawyers, but I have a lot of faith in the American citizens who will be sitting on that jury," she wrote in one 2002 filing.

Kimbrell wants her story told to show how an underdog can win with perseverance, research and hard work.

She is a granddaughter of a prominent Peoria area couple, Cookie and Helen Blair. Decades ago they each held the office of Peoria County Recorder of Deeds, an important local elected office.

Kimbrell lives outside Peoria with her husband, Michael, a machinist at a factory. Michael Kimbrell's name is on the lawsuits, but the fight has been hers, she said.

The mother of three children, Kimbrell is a high school graduate whose father was killed in a farm accident when she was six. After high school she worked in insurance companies, then got a real estate license.

She sold $1 million in property in her first year, she said, then more than doubled that amount the second year. It was time to move up.

In 1997, she, her husband, Michael, and her mother, Anna Isaacs, bought the Jeth Court Apartments, a run-down, five-building complex in a prime location on Peoria's north side. It was "like a diamond in the rough," she wrote in a memo about her struggles with the complex.

"I saw its potential. Being raised on a farm," she knew "blood, sweat and tears can improve anything," she wrote. The couple set to work renovating the complex.

But the hard physical work of renovation was nothing compared with the financial and legal tangles that followed.

Kimbrell, her husband and mother entered into a complex financing arrangement with National City Bank in Peoria, but the arrangement failed when the bank turned down a rehabilitation loan that she says had been promised.

Soon Kimbrell and her partners were using credit cards to pay for the renovation work, and they fell behind in their mortgage and taxes as they scrambled to refinance the property.

In a federal court motion, their lawyer accused National City Bank of fraud and misconduct in the way it handled the Jeth Court financing.

Meanwhile, behind a pile of garbage, Kimbrell found stacks of wooden shingles that had been dumped on part of the property. The bank then claimed they owned the section where the debris had been dumped.

Kimbrell, a real estate broker and appraiser, searched courthouse records to find that in 1987 a deed had been changed to take away a valuable portion of the property along University that she thought belonged to her, based on tax records she had.

"The property moved by 170 feet west," she said, but the legal description never changed.

Why would someone change a deed?

Kimbrell said the change increased the value of the adjacent property when it was sold, and also paved the way for taxpayers to construct a $4 million entrance into a nearby apartment complex then owned by an establishment figure who would later become a local elected official. That entrance was built when University was improved, with the cost bourn by taxpayers, a standard procedure in road improvements.

It gave the property precious access to University Street therefore increasing its value.

"Forging documents is the name of the game in this town," Kimbrell said.

Some of the men she suspects of being involved in the forgery died in a plane crash.

She said she has complained about this and other indiscretions to authorities. "I filed complaints and complaints. Nobody cared. Nobody's done anything about it. They covered up for them," she said.

After Kimbrell found original land documents in the city's archives, she ultimately got the property back, as part of a lawsuit. But she believes she paid a heavy price.

"I filed a claim of ownership in 1998 and all hell broke loose," Kimbrell said.

National City Bank held Kimbrell's mortgage, while claiming that it owned the two extra lots. It foreclosed on her mortgage, and planned to charge her a large fee for prepayment if she refinanced.

That refinancing was essential to meet the cash flow problems connected with renovation of the apartments.

In a federal court motion about the bank's actions, Kimbrell's attorney stated the $82,000 prepayment penalty was "inconsistent with their understanding from their loan officer (and) inconsistent with (loan documents)."

The bank also told another bank not to refinance the Kimbrell's mortgage, using "false reports" about the Kimbrells, the federal motion states.

Laurie Judd, an attorney for the bank, said she could not comment on the case. "I can't and don't discuss a client's matter," she said.

At the same time, someone filed an anonymous complaint against Kimbrell for conducting bad appraisals, charges she calls "trumped up." Kimbrell believes it was retaliation for her effort to get the land back.

Soon another complaint was filed, this time against Kimbrell's real estate license. This complaint was a hardball tactic by those who stood to profit if they could sell or buy the apartment complex, she said.

Kimbrell fought the appraiser complaint herself without a lawyer, only to lose. She then found a lawyer, who was unable to salvage the appraisal decision at the appeals court.

Kimbrell had learned her lesson about handling litigation herself, so she hired Peoria attorney Richard Steagall to stop the foreclosure. But he told her the case was hopeless, she said, and offered no solution to stop the bank foreclosure and receivership. She fired him.

Steagall doesn't believe Kimbrell's conspiracy theories. "There was a lot of smoke, but ultimately it (was) a dispute over a loan that needed to be refinanced," he said. The bank, which answers to federal regulators, had no choice except foreclosure, he said.

"There wasn't any conspiracy. It's a classic business problem, not enough money. It happens all the time in real estate," Steagall said.

But the weirdness continued. While the bank was the receiver, property in the apartment buildings was stolen, and damage was done to the buildings, Kimbrell said, furnishing a list that included wires cut in furnace rooms that could have caused a fire.

She had earlier installed safety wiring that prevented the wires from igniting, she said. Otherwise buildings, occupied with tenants, would have burned.

Kimbrell found another Peoria lawyer, Eric Homa, and in 2003 she filed for bankruptcy to stop the foreclosure. Soon Realtors were calling her about buying the apartment complex cheaply, she said. Homa then quit, she said.

She believes Homa had friends who hoped to buy the complex at a bargain price, and others who wanted to sell it themselves, collecting fat commissions.

Homa denies that. "Our relationship went sour. That's Jody," Homa said.

He admires Kimbrell, he said. "She's worked hard for what she has. She's got a nice piece of property, and she's done a good job (with the complex). I've sent (prospective tenants) out there," he said.

Every step in the three-year court procedure was a fight, Kimbrell said. She almost lost not only Jeth Court but also her residence and a child's college fund, she said, as the bankruptcy, an unusual individual Chapter 11, proceeded through court .

At one point, she said, "I had no lawyer, no broker's license, no hope."

She learned to be present at every court hearing, she said, especially when a lawyer said she need not attend.

Seven lawyers failed her, she said, before she found attorney Jonathan Bachman of Bloomington, Il. "He busted chops," she said, and saved her business and her real estate license.

Bachman did not respond to requests for his comment on Kimbrell's saga.

Of the other lawyers, one lost his license for a time for cases not connected to hers. Another left town and disappeared, she said.

"Everybody I thought I could trust, I couldn't. Everybody I hired to help me couldn't or wouldn't," she said. Except Bachman.

Bachman enabled her to regain control of the apartment complex from the bank. Ultimately she was able to refinance the complex through a Chicago bank.

Last summer, she exited bankruptcy court through the reorganization plan Bachman developed.

Kimbrell has some advice for anyone contemplating a real estate purchase, where fine print and red tape can obscure minefields.

Despite her distrust of lawyers, she believes they can be helpful. "Get a lawyer to read it over for you if you have any qualms whatever," she said.

If serious issues arise, she said, "get a lawyer from out of town," someone not tied to the local court and real estate establishments.

She also advises people buying property to use small companies, where they're more likely to get personal service and someone to help them navigate the difficulties and work for their best interests. "Stay away from the great big ones," she said, since they're under pressure to make money first. They can be "cut-throats," she said.

Examine a property several times, at all times of the day and night, And have someone go with you who will not be living there, she said, who can see beyond the new paint job and carpeting.

"Ask questions. Drive the neighborhood. See what goes on after dark, 10 p.m. to midnight," she said.

The final test for a property is a small rubber ball, she said. Place it on the floor and watch whether it rolls. That will show the soundness of the foundation.

Kimbrell's court battles are not over yet. Her grandmother, Helen Blair, died in 2002 leaving a $300,000 estate. Kimbrell has sued, alleging that relatives close to Blair took money from it unlawfully, depriving a mentally retarded heir of needed funds.

She also isn't ruling out more real estate acquisitions. Next door to her complex sits a lovely but troubled apartment complex with several buildings closed by the city of Peoria in Sept. 2006 for multiple code violations.

The Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as Fannie Mae, holds its $6.4 million mortgage, on which $5.8 million is owed.

The property is worth only $3 million, Kimbrell said, because the closed buildings are filled with mold from water leaks and should be demolished.

She envisions new, solidly built buildings on the grassy, hilly, tree-filled site. An upscale strip mall along University on the land Kimbrell successfully reclaimed from the bank, with a coffee house and other local businesses that residents want, would enhance the area, she said.

"I'd love to have that property," Kimbrell said.