The building that houses Bolo’s Department Store in Road Town was scheduled to be auctioned next Thursday by the National Bank of the Virgin Islands, which filed a notice last month explaining that it planned to sell the building in accordance with a law that allows for public auctions in the event of a defaulted mortgage.
He declined to elaborate on the details of his settlement, but said Bolo’s will remain in operation.
Omar Hodge Building
The agreement between Mr. Crabbe and the NBVI comes after a similar public auction for the Omar Hodge Building was cancelled in December. Former legislator Omar Hodge and his wife Dr. Miriam Hodge also reached an agreement with the bank, according to Dr. Hodge.
“The auction was cancelled, and we have the [Omar Hodge Building]. We have a grace period that was extended as a result of the second settlement,” Dr. Hodge said Monday, though she declined to elaborate further on the agreement.
No records about either agreement were available at the High Court Registry or the Land Registry as of last week, and NBVI officials didn’t respond to inquiries from this reporter.
Bolo’s building
The building housing Bolo’s Department Store originally was scheduled to be auctioned for a starting price of $3,816,000, according to the NBVI’s public notice.
The notice didn’t state why the auction was taking place, but it cited a law that allows creditors to auction off the property of people who default on their mortgages, and Land Registry records show that Bolo’s owner Verlin Crabbe indeed has a mortgage with the bank.
According to the records, Mr. Crabbe took out a $4.6 million loan from the NBVI in February 2013.
Land records also show that in August 2015, Cabinet approved Mr. Crabbe to have his mortgage refinanced to $2,857,278.
The records don’t state how much of Mr. Crabbe’s $4.6 million loan was repaid before the refinancing was approved.
In January 2016, the NBVI officially discharged the $4.6 million mortgage and signed the new $2,857,278 mortgage with Mr. Crabbe, who was scheduled to repay the loan with monthly payments of around $12,000, according to land records.
Auction notice
The NBVI’s notice of public auction, which was issued in early January, stated that bids would be due by next Wednesday and would be opened the next day at the offices of O’Neal Webster.
A public auction is one of the tools the NBVI can utilise in an attempt to reduce a bloated portfolio of non-performing loans — loans that have been delinquent for at least 90 days — that is far larger than industry standards.
According to NBVI CEO Joy Francis, the NBVI’s non-performing loan portfolio was $27 million as of 2015, which amounted to 18 percent of the bank’s total loans. The industry standard is generally between two and three percent.
The NBVI has also secured court orders to recover hundreds of thousands of dollars from other debtors who have defaulted on their loans in recent years, according to documents at the High Court Registry.
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